Alessio Cuozzo

Alessio Cuozzo has short dark hair. He is wearing a white shirt and navy blazer, and is standing in front of a glass building.
Person type:
Alumni

Alessio graduated with an MSc in Comparative Social Policy in 2017 at the University of Oxford (Corpus Christi College), having been awarded the Oxford Renato Morelli Scholarship in Social Policy. He also holds a BA in Political Science (University of Florence, 2015) and a joint European MA in Labour Studies (University of Florence and Warwick Business School, 2017). 

Following his time in Oxford, Alessio worked for international and policy-oriented organisations, including UNICEF (Amman, Jordan) and Ecorys (London, UK), delivering evidence-based policy advice to governments in the areas of employment, education, and social policy, including via impact assessments and budget analyses. Later on, Alessio moved to Brussels (Belgium) to join the European Commission, where he contributed to the modernisation of social protection systems in Europe (2019) and coordinated EU guidance to Member States to support national reforms and investments, including through the negotiation of Recovery and Resilience Plans under NextGenerationEU (2020–2022).

Since 2022, within the EU economic governance framework, Alessio has led the Secretariat of the EU Employment Committee (EMCO) - where national governments and the Commission work together to address labour market and skills challenges - supporting the EU institutional decision-making processes that shape how policies contributing to economic and social objectives are analysed, designed, and coordinated. In this role, he translates evidence and diverse national experiences into common EU positions that Member States can agree on and implement. Acting as a mediator between the Commission and Member States, his work has increasingly focused on how labour market, skills and social policies can not only achieve social objectives, but also support economic performance and EU competitiveness, notably through:

  • coordinating EU policy guidance to Member States within the European Semester, the EU’s annual cycle of economic policy coordination;
  • designing (2022–2023) and implementing (since 2024) the Social Convergence Framework  as a core EU instrument for analysing employment and social trends across Europe;
  • developing a common EU position on the economic returns of social investment (2023–2024);
  • analysing job quality as a driver of productivity and EU competitiveness (2025).