In 14th to early 16th century Europe the nature of access to skilled labour of industrial and artisanal activities was very diverse in different European regions and even within one same region. This session aims to focus on two different perspectives, opposing in some ways but also complementary: the labourers’ point of view and the consumers’ perspective. The first one will focus on the how the access to do skilled labour was regulated. It could be quite controlled in some places, accessing the individual skills, conceding authorisations to work, limiting the numbers of crafts specialists permitted for each sector, or on the contrary its control could be quite loose and not much enforced. Sometimes opposite logics prevailed, when controls were completely relaxed or active measures were taken in order to attract further specialists where demand was high within crafts with few practitioners available. From the consumer’s point of view, whether the final individual consumer, a merchant or corporate consumer, the question was how to have access to skilled labour, that could be easy or hard to find, cheaper or expensive, of high quality or less good, made in due time or having to wait for too long, and so on. Furthermore, the availability of goods depended upon the functioning of the market for labour, in turn affecting consumer behaviour (choice, taste, price), as well as the ability of distributors to organise and plan the marketing and distribution of goods, and their interactions with consumers in terms of price, quantity and delivery times. These realities could differ a lot from region to region, but also within one same region, vary across periods (for example following plagues) and from crafts to crafts, or among different economic sectors. Therefore, it is important for this session to compare different European regions in order to identify similarities as well as differences and trying to explain them. And assessing change over time in order to underline diachronic evolutions, whilst being able to connect with strong context changes.