Finding a vaccine against the coronavirus is a biochemical challenge. Ensuring universal access to it, however, is a political choice.
Columns & Interviews
The EU is muddling through another crisis—which may be good enough
The divisions exposed by the coronavirus have reopened fundamental questions about the ultimate aims of the EU. But now is not the time to answer them.
No more free-lunch bailouts
With governments spending on a massive scale to mitigate the economic fallout from Covid-19, they should be positioning their economies for a more sustainable future.
Emerging stronger from the crisis
Europe needs to do more at federal level if a recovery plan is to be successful.
Technological sovereignty—and a sepia-image Britain
Paul Mason bemoans how ‘Brexit’ has left the UK a beached whale in a world in need of technological regulation driven by European values.
The Main Street manifesto
The historic protests which have swept America were long overdue, not just as a response to racism and police violence but also as a revolt against entrenched plutocracy.
Rekindled north-south stereotypes are harmful for the European project
Underlying the divisions bedeviling a recovery from the pandemic are stereotypes echoing those which emerged during the eurozone crisis.
A new social contract
The 2020 ITUC Global Rights Index exposes the failings of the world’s economic model—a new social contract can help us build a new one.
Explaining artificial intelligence in human-centred terms
Since AI involves interactions between machines and humans—rather than just the former replacing the latter—’explainable AI’ is a new challenge.
Yes, someone is to blame
A pandemic may be represented as a ‘natural disaster’. A global depression is however the product of ideology and powerful political actors.
Protests, the left and the power of democracy
Sheri Berman urges the American left not to squander the sea-change in public opinion of recent weeks by only preaching to the converted.
Pandemic deepens social and political cleavages
The coronavirus crisis has inflamed cleavages in democratic societies which will be difficult to heal.
Welfare states need reinforcement, not reinvention
Old ideas about welfare are not broken—but the politics sustaining them is in peril.
Social commons: the social protection we want
Universal basic income would offer a deadweight subsidy to low-paying employers. The route to security for all lies in the concept of ‘social commons’.
Blogs
Let this time be different!
Europe needs a green industrial recovery strategy to exit the pandemic.
Seven ‘surprising’ facts about the Italian economy
Why would affluent northern-European taxpayers want to pour money into an Italian economy that is a basket-case? Except it isn’t.
Covid-19 fallout takes higher toll on women
While women appear to be more resilient than men to Covid-19 in terms of health outcomes, that is not the case when it comes to the economic and social fallout.
Europe needs a new Youth Guarantee
The Youth Guarantee has failed to deliver on its promise. The deepening economic crisis makes a well-functioning guarantee even more imperative.
The Covid-19 crisis: inflationary or deflationary?
Peter Bofinger warns especially German inflation-phobes that deflation is a greater downside risk in the aftermath of the pandemic.
