Rethinking Work: Driving Growth and Prosperity

The annual report of the Stiftung Familienunternehmen, titled "Rethinking Work", addresses key challenges facing the labour market: demographic-driven labour shortages, growing uncertainty amid geopolitical upheavals, increasing investment and bureaucracy burdens on firms, and structural change caused by digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on multiple perspectives, the volume explores how lasting prosperity and growth can be secured, and what role work plays as an economic foundation, a pillar of social cohesion, and a constitutionally protected space for individual development. A central structural deficit highlighted in the report concerns the European internal market: despite the existing right to worker mobility (freedom of movement for workers), actual cross-border labour mobility within the EU remains limited. The main obstacles are less rooted in formal law than in practical barriers – such as diverging social and tax systems with insufficient portability, complex recognition procedures for qualifications, and a lack of affordable housing in economically dynamic regions. Policy options discussed include building a single market for talent, improving the portability of social rights, and reforming conditions "on the ground" to make mobility more feasible. Complementing this, the report on AI emphasizes that the technology can create significant productivity and growth opportunities, but also triggers substantial structural transformation, requiring targeted upskilling, workplace reorganization, and innovation-friendly policy frameworks. Overall, the volume argues that reforms are needed to align labour-market adjustment, innovation capacity, and social balance.