Introduction

Some strong claims have been made in recent years of the benefits to European citizens of the privatisation and liberalisation of public services in Europe. Supporters of liberalisation and privatisation have argued that the creation of public service markets at the national and European level will boost productivity, improve quality and thereby benefit workers and consumers.

The one-day conference will have a closer look at the outcomes of liberalisation and privatisation and related processes such as marketisation, with a specific focus on employment, working conditions, productivity, service quality and prices.

The conference will present the main results of a three-year European research project on "Privatisation of Public Services and the Impact on Employment, Productivity and Service Quality" (PIQUE). The project is funded by the European Commission and has studied the consequences of liberalisation and privatisation in four sectors (electricity, postal services, local public transport and health/hospitals) and six countries (AT, BE, GE, PO, SW, UK). In addition the conference will present evidence and conclusions from further research by distinguished European experts on the privatisation of network industries and health services.

Rather than just presenting results, the conference aims at discussing the findings with participants and providing a platform for stakeholder for a discussion of the political consequences. For this reason, parallel sector workshops are planned for, offering presentations, comments and in-depth discussions, as well as a final panel with representatives from the European Commission, the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), the Vienna Chamber of Labour and other interest organisations.

Speakers include:

• Allyson Pollock (Edinburgh University)
• Massimo Florio (Università degli Studi di Milano)
• Thorsten Schulten (WSI-Institute for Economic and Social Research, Düsseldorf)
• Guy van Gyes (Higher Institute for Labour Studies, Catholic University of Leuven)
• Christoph Hermann (FORBA-Working Life Research Centre, Vienna)
• Jörg Huffschmid (University of Bremen)
• Werner Stengg (European Commission, DG Internal Market)
• Jörg Flecker (FORBA-Working Life Research Centre, Vienna)
• Brian Synnott (European Federation of Public Service Unions)
• Michael Boeheim (Austrian Institute of Economic Reseach)

Contributions will be held in English or German. Head-phone translation will be available for all plenary sessions and two of the workshops (to be announced). Two workshops will only be held in German.

• Details on practical information
• Preliminary programme
• Registration