SOCIAL POLICY : STRIKES IN EU: CERTAIN COUNTRIES DO NOT REPORT DATA.

• Position: Brief article

Workers in Finland, Denmark, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Iceland take the most time off work to take industrial action, according to the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI). On 20 January, the ETUI published an infographic(1) giving a country by country overview of the number of strikes staged over the last ten years. In theory, the interactive maps should cover the EU28, EU accession candidates as well as Norway and Switzerland. In practice, Greece, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Bulgaria are nowhere to be found. "While showing that the evolution of the number of strikes remains unstable with significant peaks in specific moments followed by a period of calm, the map also reveals a worrying trend of certain governments no longer providing strike data," concludes the ETUI.

The interactive maps show the average number of days not worked due to industrial action per 1,000 employees between 2001 and 2010. Based on the yearly volume, the ETUI confirms that Finnish, Danish...