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The five contributions of this 2024 open issue of Transfer cover a very broad range of themes.Indeed, diversity is perhaps the key note of this open issue.What ties the articles together, on the other hand, is their association with the recent expansion of the EU social agenda.This has been one of the novelties of the past eight years: the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights in 2017 and the subsequent adoption of a whole range of new EU Directives, Recommendations and financial instruments in the social field (Keune and Pochet, 2023).This surprising development came after a long period -from 2008 to 2017 -during which there was scarcely any EU social agenda except for enormous pressure on the Member States to deregulate collective bargaining and social protection systems at national level.It is therefore not by chance that most of the articles of this open issue deal mainly with recently adopted EU social regulations and their impact at the national level.The diversity of the articles reflects the fact that the EU social agenda in 2017-2024 was rather broad, covering a wide variety of socio-economic and sustainability issues, including platform work, the green economy, democracy at work and the digital transformation (we use the past tense here as it remains to be seen whether the social agenda will be continued under the von der Leyen II Commission).We can see the same diversity in the contributors, who come from France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and are affiliated to universities and unions in various countries.We consider this diversity to be a major asset.Not so much because nationality has a direct impact on the content of the articles, but rather because the researchers are embedded in different national and transnational communities.This may give a characteristic flavour to their approaches and visions and they may develop research questions from different perspectives.Indeed, in this open issue the methodological approaches are diverse, too.Some articles are more theoretical, for example the one on eco-social policy based on the capability approach, and others are based more on case studies.For example, one article on the platform economy presents 13 case studies from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria, and another on workers' participation compares four countries: France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.Finally, one benefits from inside information, the author being a member of a trade union, to underpin a theoretical argument.It is also notable that all have a strong interest in particular for the actors of the trade union movement, including a critical analysis of current union action in the relevant domain.Moreover, they all, in their own particular ways, deal with the complex issue of articulation -between levels, between policies, between institutions and between actors.This represents rather well what we aim to achieve in our annual open issue of Transfer: to attract a diversity of approaches and methods from different academic and national backgrounds, analysing key social questions that are of interest to the trade union movement within the multilevel governance of the EU.Let's turn now to present the key arguments of the five papers.
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