ABSTRACT
European Union-wide tax-benefit model (EUROMOD) is a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union (EU). This chapter outlines the main challenges that were identified in EUROMOD first phase, before the I-CUE project. The main challenges fall under three headings – barriers for users, relevance for academic research and relevance for policy-making or policy analysis. The two main barriers have been the lack of ease of use of EUROMOD and the difficulty in obtaining data access permission for all the EUROMOD input datasets. The EUROMOD operating system was put to a comprehensive test by new users, "old" users and the developer team itself. In the medium term, if EUROMOD is to be fully exploited, there is a need for the provision of training courses and access visits and for the exploration of remote web-based access possibilities. There are many directions in which EUROMOD could be developed in the more distant future, each with its own potential and associated challenges.
