The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions' (Eurofound) is a agency of the European Union, with offices located in Dublin, Ireland. It was set up by in May 1975 by the European Council

European Council

The European Council is an institution of the European Union. It comprises the heads of state or government of the EU member states, along with the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council, currently Herman Van Rompuy...

 to help improve living and working conditions across Europe.

The Foundation focuses on managing research, gathering information, and communicating its findings. It maintains a number of specialized operations monitoring and measuring conditions in Europe, including:

• the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO)
• the European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO)

  Regular surveys on European working conditions, quality of life, and company policies on working time issues (the first working conditions survey was carried out in 1990)

• the European Monitoring Centre on Change
  European Monitoring Centre on Change
  The European Monitoring Centre on Change is "a place for exchanging practice, information and ideas on the management and anticipation of change," consisting primarily of an informational website. It was founded at a on "What drives change?", which was organized by the European Foundation for...
  
   (EMCC)
• the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)

Role and mission

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions describes its role on its own information page as follows:

To provide information, advice and expertise – on living and working conditions, industrial relations and managing change in Europe – for key actors in the field of EU social policy on the basis of comparative information, research and analysis.

It was one of the first bodies established to work on a specific subset of EU policy.

Governance and offices

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions is overseen by a Director, a Deputy Director, and a Governing Board. The Governing Board meets once a year to set budgets and policy, and to decide on one-year and four-year work programmes. The current Director, Juan Menéndez-Valdés, was appointed in December 2010. The Deputy Director is Erika Mezger.

The Foundation budget (20.2M euros in 2007) comes from the general European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

budget.

The offices of the Foundation (map) are located at
Loughlinstown House
Wyattville Road, Dublin 18