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The European Union (EU) launched the European Pillar of Social Rights to improve social rights for EU citizens. However, little is known about the domestic dynamics of implementing these new rights. This article examines the implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive in three member states with different policy traditions (Denmark, Germany, and Poland). Based on an actor-centred approach, the article demonstrates that two main factors were crucial in motivating national actors to shape the implementation of these rights. First, the economic costs, including new permanent costs emerging from the provisions and the administrative costs of implementing an EU directive, shaped actors’ positions in all three countries. Second, the values of gender equality – whether promoting gender-equal leave or traditional family values – constituted an underlying reason for actors to customise the EU rules differently. Both factors, used as a defence or driver for change, increase differentiated policy implementation., EuSocialCit: The Future of European Social Citizenship

This working paper presents a comparative study on the health and safety conditions workers face in two sectors (construction and PHS/domestic work) and concerning the extent to which workers in these sectors can effectively exercise their social rights concerning OSH. Also, it examines how the main EU acquis on occupational health and safety at work has been transposed and applied and what its impact has been in terms of available power resources for workers in the two sectors. It explains the way the respective Directives foster effective social rights for workers through legislation and collective agreements. The study includes seven EU member states, namely, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Poland, and Ireland. We combine legal analysis with document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and descriptive statistics from national sources. According to our research, in general terms, the national transposing legislation of the OSH is in conformity with the studied EU OSH Directives. Our research also shows that, in many of the country cases, compliance with the OSH Directives minimum requirements is better in large establishments than in SMEs. However, there are some cases where the national legislation goes beyond the requirements of the EU framework directive. For example, in certain EU Member States domestic workers are included in the definition of ‘worker’ when transposing the Framework Directive, setting a broader personal scope of application than the Directive. But still, the workers in the two sectors face many health and safety problems and lack sufficient power resources to deal with them. Based on our analysis we present a series of policy recommendations that can help to improve this situation and strengthen the power resources of workers in the two sectors.

This article examines factors that could contribute to explaining variation in take-up of leave among fathers in the light of the EU’s Work–Life Balance Directive (WLBD). The WLBD seeks to equalize care responsibilities between fathers and mothers, especially through reserved leave, with high compensation. The article begins with a cross-country overview of take-up of leave among eligible fathers, considering earmarking and the degree of compensation. Our results show variation, which cannot fully be explained by policy design (presence of high compensation with reserved leave for fathers). The article then theorizes that instrumental resources – information and accessible administrative application procedures – could be a missing link to understand the actual shift from de jure to de facto social rights. The article then carries out embedded case studies on these two aspects of instrumental resources, using original qualitative data collected during the implementation of the WLBD. The most striking finding is that countries with similar formal implementation of earmarked paid parental leave, display significant differences in commitment to instrumental resources. Put differently, the WLBD is being implemented differently, not regarding formal social rights, but on instrumental resources. This finding is important because it means that EU-initiated legislation on parental leave, could lead to differences in outcomes, that is, take-up of leave among fathers. The implication of our findings is that decision-makers and policy actors at EU level and in member states, should focus more on instrumental resources in the implementation process. This is particularly important for enhancing the de facto legitimacy of the EU in social policy, given that EU social regulation is increasing via the European Pillar of Social Rights., EuSocialCit: The Future of European Social Citizenship

This paper examines institutional change in father-specific leave - a centre-piece of the EU's work-life balance directive (WLBD) - from the perspective of gradual institutional change. The WLBD, a highly contentious directive, represents a litmus test for the possible impact of the European pillar of social rights (EPSR), on welfare state institutions, which are responsible for the organisation, financing and delivery of social rights in member states. The analysis comprises in-depth case studies in Denmark, Germany, France and Poland, with different combinations of family and parental leave policies prior to the WLBD. The findings reveal that the EU's directive is leading to convergence in paternity leave, but to divergence in parental leave. Our study is important because it shows that even if EU directives in social policy in principle can lead to upwards social convergence across the EU, when they are relatively weak in terms of precise constraint, for instance, for the level of remuneration for leave, this leads to differentiated integration. This could undermine the very purpose of the EPSR, which seeks to improve social rights for all citizens across the EU. Similar dynamics are likely to be present in other areas at the welfare state-labor market nexus, such as minimum wages or platform work, where the EU is also developing regulation under the auspices of the EPSR., EuSocialCit: The Future of European Social Citizenship

The establishment of cellular identity is driven by transcriptional and epigenetic regulators of the chromatin proteome - the chromatome. Comprehensive analyses of the chromatome composition and dynamics can therefore greatly improve our understanding of gene regulatory mechanisms. Here, we developed an accurate mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomic method called Chromatin Aggregation Capture (ChAC) followed by Data-Independent Acquisition (DIA) and analyzed chromatome reorganizations during major phases of pluripotency. This enabled us to generate a comprehensive atlas of proteomes, chromatomes, and chromatin affinities for the ground, formative and primed pluripotency states, and to pinpoint the specific binding and rearrangement of regulatory components. These comprehensive datasets combined with extensive analyses identified phase-specific factors like QSER1 and JADE1/2/3 and provide a detailed foundation for an in-depth understanding of mechanisms that govern the phased progression of pluripotency. The technical advances reported here can be readily applied to other models in development and disease.