Social Europe

EU enlargement: prospects and challenges

Emilija Tudzarovska

The geopolitical impetus behind further EU enlargement meets formidable forces of inertia.

Erdoğan, ultranationalists and ‘family values’

Balki Begumhan Bayhan

The victorious Turkish president is likely to pursue a hardline conservative agenda with his ultranationalist allies.

Decarbonising the built environment: circularity key

Ivan Thung and Megan Murdie

The World Circular Economy Forum meets today in Helsinki—construction is one of the biggest challenges.

Politically disengaged youth in the former eastern bloc

Michael Jennewein and Elena Avramovska

Young people across the eastern-EU member states believe in Europe and universal norms—but their governments turn them off.

Europe’s just transition—still out of reach

Amandine Crespy and Mario Munta

If it holds on to ‘green growth’ and tight fiscal constraints, the EU will be unable to negotiate a just transition.

Big Toxics and their lobby firepower

The chemical giants outspend even Big Tech and Big Energy on lobbying the EU—and it’s working.

Cities harnessing innovation for the circular economy

Pau Ruiz and Ana Birliga Sutherland

Cities have the agility to lead the transition to circularity and already have a body of good practice to show.

SPÖ: how not to run a leadership contest

The messy struggle for leadership of Austria’s social democrats, Robert Misik writes, nevertheless has echoes for others.

How much work is enough?

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Autumn McDonald

Three years of pandemic-related disruptions could herald the most significant labour-market transformation since the dawn of industry.

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.

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The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.

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New Europe-wide survey on living and working conditions

Eurofound, in partnership with the European Training Foundation, has launched a new online survey to document living and working conditions in Europe and the evolving concerns of citizens, amid the cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine and the broader post-Covid-19 context.

The survey is available in 33 languages and is open to everyone over the age of 16. It asks specific questions on perceptions of quality of life and quality of society, as well as working situation, housing and finances.

Add your voice and contribute to the research.

COMPLETE THE SURVEY HERE

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

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to Feminist Foreign Policy, to try to gauge its potential but also the risk that it could be perceived as another attempt by the west to impose its vision on the global south.

In this issue, we also look at the human cost of the war in Ukraine, analyse the increasing connection between the centre right and the far right, and explore the difficulties, particularly for women, of finding a good work-life balance and living good working lives.

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