Parabolic variational inequalities of Allen-Cahn and Cahn-
Hilliard type are solved using methods involving constrained optimization. Time discrete variants are formulated with the help of Lagrange multipliers for local and non-local equality and inequality constraints. Fully discrete problems resulting from finite element discretizations in space are solved with the help of a primal-dual active set approach. We
show several numerical computations also involving systems of parabolic variational inequalities.