On 17 and 18 November, a conference will be held on strengthening co-operation between Member States in order to fight social security fraud.

A Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Health, co-chaired by Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, the French Minister of Health, Youth, Sports and the Voluntary Sector, and Hatem Mostafa El-Gabali, the Egyptian Minister for Health and Population, will be held in Cairo on 16 and 17 November 2008. It will bring together the health ministers the 27 European Union countries and the 16 countries around the Mediterranean.

European Development Days are a major event in the European calendar. Each year they attract 3 000 participants from all the continents, representing over 1 200 organisations.

The EU ministers responsible for equality between women and men are to meet on 14 November 2008 in Lille.
Two issues will be on the agenda: reducing wage gaps and best practices in terms of professional equality in companies.

Under the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the French Ministry of Labour are organising a conference dedicated to the issue of transnational social dialogue in Lyons on 13 and 14 November, 2008.
This conference will be an opportunity to examine the development of transnational business agreements throughout the EU.

The 21st 'professional days', focusing on the European dimension of careers for professional engineers, will take place at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 13 and 14 November 2008.

This conference offers an opportunity to identify the challenges that must be tackled by public policies in order to improve lifelong learning.

The purpose of this conference is to contribute to defining policies to promote professional equality between women and men.

Under the aegis of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, a conference on the new social questions in a changing Europe will be held on 12 November 2008 in Paris. It will facilitate debate on the questions posed by new social realities at European level, on the basis of the results of the consultation organised by the European Commission and in the context of the renewed European social agenda. The conference is organized by DREES, the research, evaluation and statistics directorate of the French ministry of health.

The employment and labour ministers from the Euro-Mediterranean partner countries and European Commission representatives will meet at their first ministerial conference in Marrakech on 9 and 10 November 2008, under the Franco-Egyptian co-presidency of the Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean.

A European conference on the link between social security and demographic change will be held on 7 and 8 November 2008 in Paris. It is being organised by the French social security funds, in the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The creation of a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area requires the development of co-operation agreements and particular attention paid to product conformity.

The conference on human biomonitoring, a tool which allows the degree of exposure to chemical substances in the environment to be monitored, is organised by the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance in partnership with the Ministry of Health.

This forum aims to encourage companies to develop professional risk evaluation by presenting practical initiatives put in place in several EU countries.

Improving European coordination to effectively combat Alzheimer's disease and related diseases is the central focus of this conference.

The European Union has made corporate social responsibility (CSR) a component of its strategy for growth and employment and its renewed social agenda. The Economic and Social Committee, the European Commission and the French Economic and Social Committeee are holding a conference on this subject on 30 October 2008 in Paris.

This European conference aims to deepen the proposed Small Business Act by enhancing the role and contribution of craftsmen and small enterprises.

This conference is in line with the European initiative on the rights of disabled children, established by the Lisbon Declaration of 17 September 2007.

Organised by the French Ministry for Labour, Labour Relations, the Family and Solidarity, this forum follows a meeting of the same name organised in Lisbon in 2007. It will be an opportunity to highlight the contribution of social services of general interest to social cohesion in Europe and to ensure that the Community legal framework encourages the development and modernisation of these services.

The European Women's Lobby aims to provide extensive information on texts and policies currently under debate on issues of equality and parity.

In Strasbourg on 23 and 24 October, the École nationale d'administration (ENA - European School of Governance, France) will host a meeting of the heads of institutions responsible for training senior civil servants in all States of the European Union and in European institutions.

This conference aims to foster exchange and debate between retail trade specialists from the 27 Member States.

A meeting to discuss Europe organized in collaboration with the Cultural Season

National drugs coordinators will debate the new ways of consuming alcohol, particularly in the context of poly-consumption, and the communication on illegal drugs.

This symposium will bring together 300 European stakeholders involved in public procurement and social policies relating to employment.

To achieve concrete results in the fight against poverty and social exclusion within the European Union implies strong political commitment by the Member States: the first meeting of European ministers on poverty and social exclusion, chaired Martin Hirsch, High Commissioner for Active Solidarity against Poverty, will mark a significant step towards this objective.

9th Colloquium of EPPOSI (the European platform for patient organisations, science and industry).     

16% of the European population lives below the poverty risk threshold. In this context, the seventh European Round Table on poverty and social exclusion aims to bring together all the actors in the field to develop specific proposals to combat poverty and exclusion.

The tripartite social summit held today in Brussels and presided over by François Fillon, the French Prime Minister representing the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, allowed the social partners opinons on the consequences of the financial crisis for companies and workers to be obtained.