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This chapter summarises the role of EU actions in supporting healthcare policies in the EU Member States, both looking at implemented actions and describing current priorities for the future. It argues that these coordinated actions can be beneficial for EU Member States by helping them to avoid duplication of effort and to attain economies of scale. Moreover, data sharing with proper safeguards can unleash vast amount of ‘learning what works’ both for medical treatments and for healthcare sustainability measures. The need for this common learning appears ever more urgent while facing the health and economic consequences of the present pandemic.

Global drug policy has undergone significant change over the past decade, especially with the advent of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs. This was a catalyst moment both in highlighting the need for a gender perspective in drug policy, and in initiating a review of the indicators used to evaluate progress in drug policy.

To date, the UN has not adequately tracked gender-specific data in drug policy. This is symptomatic of the lack of focus granted to the specific vulnerabilities and needs of women in the illicit drug trade. This has resulted in a knowledge and understanding gap in relation to the issues faced by women worldwide.

The importance of quantitative and qualitative data and analysis of how and why women are involved in the illicit drug trade, and how this relates to their age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, family situation and history of trauma, violence and mental illness cannot be understated. Without adequate indicators on the underlying factors of their engagement in the trade, the differentiated impacts that both drugs and drug policies have on their lives, and the vulnerabilities they may face, policy makers will be unable to design and implement drug policies that are truly effective.

This chapter provides a historic overview of how data on women has so far been tracked by the UN. The chapter will then look to the future, focussing on opportunities to identify more meaningful indicators within a revised Annual Reports Questionnaire, and also by leveraging the Sustainable Development Goals, UN human rights mechanisms and civil society research.

Involvement of children in research on different aspects of children's rights, including research on violence against children, is continuously increasing, as is the interest in participatory approaches (European Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA], 2014; Larsson et al., 2018; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2011). Svevo-Cianci et al. (2011) noted that ‘as researchers commit to learning from community members, including children and adolescents themselves, it has become more clear that an understanding of the lived reality and definition of violence for children in their individual communities, is essential to envision and implement effective child protection’ (p. 985).

In this chapter, the legislative context regarding children's rights to be heard and participate is initially discussed; currently applied age requirements for children to acquire rights across the countries of the European Union (EU) are briefly presented; and children's potential roles and relevant provisions for their participation in social research are explored. The last part is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR; Regulation [EU] 2016/679, 2016) – specifically, children's personal data–related recitals and articles; the importance of the definition of a legal basis for personal data processing according to the GDPR, including consent; and the necessary information to be provided to children before their data are processed.

The research management and administrator (RMA) profession in the Western Balkans (WB) has not yet been investigated. In this chapter, we provide a first insight into the current state of the profession, its evolution and existing network of peers within the region and between the region and Europe at large. We focus on the RMAs’ opinions about the policy level, on the institutional background and on networking initiatives that allow for the understanding of further development of the profession. Based on the findings of a focus group and a survey with the region’s RMAs, we provide insight into the challenges and opportunities as perceived by the RMAs themselves.

The development of Research Management and Administration (RMA) in Europe is strongly connected with the development of the Science and Technology (S&T) policy of the European Union (EU). These policies were the result of a continuous debate between the member states and the European Commission and European Parliament.

Although there is no data on the early development of RMA, there are some publications on the history of the development of the S&T policy in Europe: the excellent publication ‘A History of European Union Research Policy’ by Luca Guzzetti (Guzzetti, 1995). Guzzetti’s book investigates the history of EU research policies from 1948 up to the preparation of the Fourth Framework Programme (FP) (1994–1998).

The RMA aspects are constructed mainly by oral history complemented with some written sources. The history shows a gradual development of the profession unevenly spread in time and European geography. This has mainly with the EU enlargement in the same period, when new member states were connected to the FP. The profession started with a few colleagues’ way back in the eighties of the last century as financial people were dealing with the first European financial reporting up to the present day where RMA is becoming a field of work attracting many new colleagues.