Restructuring

Restructuring is a term used to describe a wide range of activities which lead to the reorganisation of an enterprise. Restructuring can have serious consequences for the workforce as far as levels of employment and terms and conditions of employment offered to workers are concerned.

Factory workers working on car assembly line

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Article

New

15 October 2025

Battery manufacturing in the EU: From hope to crisis to hope again?

Elin Brattlundand 2 other authors

Can Europe still achieve its ambitions for battery manufacturing? To answer this, the article looks at data from Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor and explores what recent large-scale restructuring events reveal about the state of play in the EU battery sector.

Eurofound research paper

18 September 2025

Company restructuring and the twin transitions: Evidence from the European Restructuring Monitor

Chiara Litardi,

Garance Hingre

This Eurofound research paper explores key trends in restructuring in recent years, highlighting the companies that announced the largest job losses and job gains in the EU. It builds on an analysis of company announcements recorded in Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor (ERM), alongside a new classification of restructuring events involving changes in company location.

Article

12 June 2025

Fired through a screen: The validity of digital dismissals in the EU

Elin Brattlund,

Chiara Litardi

Employers increasingly use tools such as email, SMS and messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal to communicate with employees. While these technologies offer both efficiency and convenience, their use in communicating sensitive information, particularly for notifying employees of dismissal, raises legal concerns. This article explores the legal framework on dismissals across the EU, with a special focus on the use of digital means for communicating employment dismissals. Drawing on examples from various Member States, it examines the legal validity of digital dismissals.

About Restructuring

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Highlights for Restructuring

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18 September 2025

Eurofound research paper

Company restructuring and the twin transitions: Evidence from the European Restructuring Monitor

27 January 2025

Article

Employment in the EU’s automotive sector

In 2024, the automotive sector in the EU came to the fore in public and policy discussions. The focus was on the slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) sales, rising global competition, belated investments in new technologies, and the potential closure of production lines in Europe. A number of European car manufacturers and suppliers announced their intention to make large-scale redundancies and change long-standing collective agreements on job security and wages, while workers raised concerns amid demonstrations and industrial action.This Eurofound briefing note provides more information on the latest EU employment statistics and the emerging data from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM). It focuses on the core of the sector: NACE C29 (Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers) and G45 (Wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles). A Eurofound study on the impact of the twin transition on the automotive sector is forthcoming in 2025.

25 September 2022

Research report

Going digital: Restructuring trends in retail banking

The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions. Many banks in the sector have been undergoing serial restructuring since the global financial crisis, and it is one of the few service sectors with stagnant or declining employment. In addition to the technological changes in how services are provided, the sector is also responding to other challenges, including an increased regulatory and compliance burden, competition from fintech, and low interest rates and reduced profitability. The case studies in this report describe examples of recent restructuring in the sector, what motivated the restructuring, how it was managed and how it affected employment, work organisation, and other business and employee outcomes.

10 November 2020

Research report

ERM report 2020: Restructuring across borders

This report has a dual focus. First, it reviews recent restructuring activity in the EU, from January 2019 up to and including the first impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The second part presents an analysis of transnational restructuring cases – those that affect workers in more than one country. The main source for both analyses is the European Restructuring Monitor events database, which has collected details of over 25,000 large-scale restructurings since it began in 2002, including nearly 2,000 since the beginning of 2019. The review of the data on transnational restructuring is complemented with a summary of case studies based on international relocations of production. The aim is to highlight the types of dispute that arise, how the restructuring is managed by management and the social partners, and what the outcomes are for the workers affected.

Experts on Restructuring

Researchers at Eurofound provide expert insights and can be contacted for questions or media requests.

Chiara Litardi

Research officer

Employment research

Chiara Litardi is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. She works on topics related to restructuring, employment and upward convergence. Chiara manages the European Restructuring Monitor and supervises the information processing, quality control and analysis of its databases. Prior to joining Eurofound in 2021, she worked as an analyst at the European Central Bank, running pan-euro area surveys and researching payment behaviour and financial inclusion. She holds a Master's degree in Economics and Finance from LUISS University in Rome, and a double degree in Quantitative Techniques for Economics and Management (QTEM), and is currently a PhD student at University College Dublin.

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Sara Riso

Senior research manager

Working life research

Sara Riso joined Eurofound in 2006 and is currently a senior research manager in the Working Life unit. She is engaged in research projects focusing on digitalisation and working conditions. Before joining Eurofound, Sara managed research projects for large Brussels-based European associations and networks. Her academic background is in psychology, communication and languages. Her main research interest lies in exploring new workplace stressors arising from increased digitalisation of work, evolving organisational practices, and change management strategies to address the challenges posed by digitalisation in modern working environments.

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