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‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsEcology

‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuels

Faye Holder

Documents from the International Gas Union have revealed the strategy of disinformation pursued by the powerful lobby.

Legal challenges by NGOs, citizens key to climate battleEcology

Legal challenges by NGOs, citizens key to climate battle

Frederik Hafen and Romain Didi

Strong climate governance means holding governments to account. The EU institutions have shied away from doing so.

Biodiversity: the EU and the race against timeEcology

Biodiversity: the EU and the race against time

Laura Hildt and Ioannis Agapakis

The EU’s Nature Restoration Law must implement key COP15 outcomes on biodiversity—in very short order.

The final countdown: the EU, Poland and the rule of lawPolitics

The final countdown: the EU, Poland and the rule of law

Piotr Buras

Faced with financial and political pressures at home, Poland is inching closer to rule-of-law reforms.

Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierPolitics

Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tier

Magdalena Ulceluse

The vetoing of Romania and Bulgaria joining the Schengen zone sent bad signals to the south-eastern EU member states.

Tackling the cost-of-living crisisEconomy

Tackling the cost-of-living crisis

Robin Wilson

Inflation is a number. But addressing it is not just a technical issue, best left to (usually male) economists.

The digital euro: a flawed concept doomed to flopEconomy

The digital euro: a flawed concept doomed to flop

Peter Bofinger

Peter Bofinger argues that on the ‘digital euro’ the European Central Bank has dug itself into a hole it would do best to vacate.

ECB lobbies for banks, instead of supervising themEconomy

ECB lobbies for banks, instead of supervising them

David Hollanders

The ECB has taken upon itself to challenge the Spanish government over a temporary tax on the profits of commercial banks.

After ‘Qatargate’: how to protect democracy in the EUPolitics

After ‘Qatargate’: how to protect democracy in the EU

Lola Avril, Emilia Korkea-aho and Antoine Vauchez

The Gulf state’s pursuit of influence shines a light on a systemic problem for the EU—and it’s not a good look.

Social-ecological public procurementEconomy

Social-ecological public procurement

Susanne Wixforth and Christian Berger

The vast sums disbursed in procurement and subsidies by public institutions must lever good work amid the green transition.

Defending women’s rights in a broken justice systemSociety

Defending women’s rights in a broken justice system

Irene Donadio

The right to a fair trial is no longer guaranteed in Poland, say the activists protesting against strict abortion laws.

Avoiding ‘carbon leakage’—adjustments neededEcology

Avoiding ‘carbon leakage’—adjustments needed

Werner Raza, Bernhard Tröster, Verena Madner and 2 more

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is ecologically justified but difficult to implement.

Europe-wide inequality during the pandemicSociety

Europe-wide inequality during the pandemic

Michael Dauderstädt

The pandemic increased inequality between member states but Europe-wide inequality has continued to decline, if more slowly.

Citizens need clarity on Europe’s challengesSociety

Citizens need clarity on Europe’s challenges

Mary McCaughey

A cocktail of insecurity, misinformation and mistrust imperil Europe’s future. Reliable, accessible data are at a premium.

EU-Africa relations need a new strategyPolitics

EU-Africa relations need a new strategy

Nicoletta Pirozzi

Deeper and more systemic relations between the European Union and Africa, Nicoletta Pirozzi writes, would benefit both continents.

Health and care workers have had enoughSociety

Health and care workers have had enough

Tuscany Bell and Jan Willem Goudriaan

Workers from across Europe descended on Brussels to demand adequate investment in health and social care.

Taxing super-profits to beat inflation, defend rightsEconomy

Taxing super-profits to beat inflation, defend rights

Magdalena Sepúlveda

Pandemics, wars and recessions do not exempt states from human-rights commitments. They must tax multinationals and the richest more to protect the most vulnerable. 

Political leaders sabotaging corporate sustainability Economy

Political leaders sabotaging corporate sustainability 

Sylvia Obregon Quiroz

EU member-state governments have flinched at the challenge of enforcing responsible business conduct.

Exclusion of women could end up costing our planet Ecology

Exclusion of women could end up costing our planet 

Camilla Barungi

COP27 in Egypt was massively dominated by male leaders. Yet African women are key agents in battling climate change.

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.


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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.


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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.


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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!


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