Strengthening economic policy coordination and setting EU wide standards, for example for labor markets, is high on the political agenda in Europe (Five Presidents’ Report 2015). One important aspect in the debate is convergence of unemployment benefit schemes. The aim of this research project is to analyse the impact of convergence of unemployment insurance systems in Europe in some key parameters such as duration of benefits, replacement rates and eligibility conditions on household incomes and coverage of unemployment benefits, work incentives as well as public budgets.