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The left and freedomPolitics

The left and freedom

Robert Misik

Democratic socialists must take back the concept of freedom from the libertarians, Robert Misik writes.

Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeEcology

Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injustice

Zareen Zahid Qureshi

The $9 billion promised to Pakistan is only a sticking plaster until the west acknowledges the dire climate legacy in south Asia.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUPolitics

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EU

Heidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright

The war has been widely portrayed as a turning point for EU foreign policy but it is more of an epiphany.

Homelessness among asylum-seekers in BrusselsSociety

Homelessness among asylum-seekers in Brussels

Simona Barbu

The ‘securitisation’ of migration and asylum has not only meant drownings in the Mediterranean but also destitution in Europe’s cities.

Towards a permanent EU investment fundEcology

Towards a permanent EU investment fund

Philipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger

Meeting the EU’s climate and energy goals will mean ramping up public investment via a permanent fund.

Embedding sustainability in a government programmeEcology

Embedding sustainability in a government programme

Johanna Juselius

Sustainable development is a global task largely to be delivered by national governments. What can they learn from the leader—Finland?

Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureSociety

Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s future

Claes-Mikael Ståhl

This week the European Commission will publish a proposal to revivify social dialogue. It must be more than words.

What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePolitics

What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls time

Peter Davis

Jacinda Ardern’s resignation reflects the tough headwinds young progressive women face as political leaders.

Behind Britain’s strike waveEconomy

Behind Britain’s strike wave

Paul Mason

The Tory government, Paul Mason writes, is a victim of the skills shortages its ‘free markets’ have engendered.

Labour conflicts in the digital ageSociety

Labour conflicts in the digital age

Donatella Della Porta, Riccardo Emilio Chesta and Lorenzo Cini

Digitalisation is not technologically determined but socially shaped—including by new forms of collective action.

Ukraine: the Kremlin’s misinformationPolitics

Ukraine: the Kremlin’s misinformation

Stefan Wolff

In the Ukraine war, the Kremlin’s campaign of misinformation keeps Kyiv and its allies guessing.

Unions are giving workers a European voice in the crisisEconomy

Unions are giving workers a European voice in the crisis

Isabelle Barthès and Patricia Velicu

Trade unions have been winning battles across Europe to halt the erosion of real wages but can’t win this war alone.

Corporate power: arbitrage in a fractured worldEconomy

Corporate power: arbitrage in a fractured world

Anastasia Nesvetailova

At Davos the corporate elite are discussing a more co-operative world—yet their arbitrage relies on its rifts.

Making labour law fit for all those who labourPolitics

Making labour law fit for all those who labour

Nicola Countouris, Mark Freedland and Valerio De Stefano

EU anti-discrimination law applies to all ‘personal work’—not just employment contracts—the Court of Justice has ruled.

Arms exports and human rightsPolitics

Arms exports and human rights

Chiara Bonaiuti

The EU makes a difference on whether arms exports are governed by values or interests—but it could do more.

How not to deal with a debt crisisEconomy

How not to deal with a debt crisis

Jayati Ghosh

Jayati Ghosh warns against historically disastrous approaches to the sovereign-debt crisis hitting low- and middle-income countries.

Will NextGenerationEU assist Europe’s cohesion?Economy

Will NextGenerationEU assist Europe’s cohesion?

Daniele Archibugi

Addressing Europe’s huge challenges requires treating Europe as more than the sum of its national parts.

Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarSociety

Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and Qatar

Frank Hoffer

With the ITUC General Council due to meet tomorrow, answers are urgently needed to the deeper issues raised by this affair.

Gendering labour time—regulating domestic workEconomy

Gendering labour time—regulating domestic work

Liberty Chee

Too few countries have ratified the ILO convention on domestic work. Too many don’t see the need.

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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