The participants in the conference were the members of the working groups who carried out individual projects of collaboration among the Swedish institutions (AMS, Ministry of Labour, Labour Environment Organisation, etc.), the institutions of the present ten new EU member states and three candidate countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey), as well as the representatives of the EU institutions (trade unions, employers' organisations, European Parliament, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions).

The conference, which was opened by the Swedish minister for labour, was divided into two parts. The first part of the conference focused on the final part of the Work Life and EU Enlargement project (WLE) which was funded by the Swedish government in the period from 2001 to 2004. The second part of the conference was devoted to the agreement on the initial participation in the new project Work Life Development Programme (WLDP), which will also be funded by the Swedish government in the 2004–2006 period.

In the first part of the conference the participants in the working groups exchanged their experience on the topics, results and forms of work within the WLE project. In collaboration with the Swedish employment service three study visits for the participants from the Employment Service of Slovenia were organised within this project. The study visits' topics included entering into the EURES network, preparations for the participation in the ESF, the improvement of the IT system in order to support the work with the unemployed and self-service methods of work with the customers. Within this project, a workshop in Ljubljana, Slovenia, was organised in Autumn 2003, also in co-operation with the Swedish employment service. The Swedish colleagues presented concrete forms of work with a larger number of redundant workers in companies, as well as the development of the Swedish employment policy.