Join Us Online for Our Final Conference!
The Sustainability@Leave COST Action is holding its final conference on 26 May 2026 in Prague. The event marks the conclusion of four years of collaborative research on the role of paid parental leave in building more equal and socially sustainable societies, and brings together researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders from across Europe and beyond.
The programme opens with keynote addresses from Dr. Tomáš Sobotka (Vienna Institute of Demography) and Prof. Anne Lise Ellingsæter (University of Oslo). This will be followed by presentations of the Action’s key outputs by the Working Group leaders, including a new book, reports, and a white paper. A stakeholder panel will examine how these findings connect with policy practice, drawing on perspectives from organisations including Population Europe (Dr. Andreas Edel), EIGE (Dr. Jolanta Reingarde), UN Women (Majlinda Nesturi), ELFAC – European Large Families Confederation (Raúl Sánchez), UNFPA (Dr. Visare Mujko-Nimani), COFACE Families Europe (Sven Iversen), and a former Czech Minister of Labour and social Affair, Michaela Marksová Tominová. The afternoon features the launch of the book Care Leaves and Care Time for All: Towards Caring Democracies, Economies, and Worlds and the official release of the Czech GGS dataset, before the day closes with a panel on future directions for parental leave research in Europe.