Six new Flash Reports prepared by the European Social policy Network (ESPN) are now available and provide information on recent social policy developments in Ireland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.

• Against a context of high (but falling) levels of mortgage arrears and indebtedness, the Irish government in the last months has instituted or updated a number of measures as part of a concerted action to better deal with these issues.
• The close link between the Office for Equal Opportunities and the Liechtenstein government has triggered criticism since 2013. At the end of 2015, the government proposed to set up a non-profit organisation, which would be an independent institution acting on its own initiative.
• In Norway, the measure to make participation in activation initiatives mandatory for all claimants of financial social assistance support (passed in May 2015) has not yet been implemented due to disagreements over how municipalities will be compensated for the implementation cost.
• The Polish government has proposed to cancel the scheduled increase of the legal retirement age to 67 years, and lower the retirement age again to 60 for women and 65 for men. This decision is likely to result in lower pensions, stagnation of employment of older workers and a worsening of the financial sustainability of the pension system.
• When the new Portuguese government began discussing the phased-out increase of the minimum wage in December 2015, a policy debate emerged as the amount for 2016 was set at EUR 530, a very modest improvement according to employees’ representatives, but an excessive increase according to employers.
• To address the challenges posed by the current refugee crisis, Sweden has increased expenditure on migration by EUR 1.12 billion (primarily to improve the capacity of the municipalities) to deal with the crisis while a number of measures have been introduced (including tighter border controls) to reduce the number of refugees.