Our Activities

EU Peer Reviews

EU peer reviews are a key instrument in the social Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) by promoting policy learning, capacity building and support for exchange of good practice. In 2014, the Department of Social Protection participated in two EU peer reviews on topics related to poverty and social impact assessment.

• Belgium hosted a peer review in mid-January on the Belgian Platform against Poverty and Social Exclusion EU 2020.Peer Reviewers met in Brussels to hear about the approach in Belgium to formulate policy recommendations in the context of the onset of the economic crisis, which increased the risk of poverty across Europe, making the need for action to fight poverty all the more pressing.

• Austria hosted a peer review on the use of micro-simulation models in social impact assessment. Such models can provide policy-makers with a useful evidence base, and can enable stakeholders such as NGOs to play a more active role in policy formation. Austria has broken new ground by creating an easy-to-use public website that enables any citizen to calculate the effects of tax and benefit changes on different sections of the population. Ireland’s shared its experience of the use of the ESRI SWITCH model in conducting a social impact assessment of the annual Budget.