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Aleks Szczerbiak

Ales Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex.

Aleks Szczerbiak

What Prospects For The Polish Left?

Aleks Szczerbiak 4th May 2018

For most of the post-1989 period, the most powerful political and electoral force on the Polish left was the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which governed the country from 1993-97 and 2001-5. However, the Alliance has been in the doldrums since its support collapsed in the 2005 parliamentary election following a series of spectacular […]

How Is The European Migration Crisis Affecting Polish Politics?

Aleks Szczerbiak 14th July 2017

The migration crisis has rumbled on for the last two years since it developed as a major issue in Polish politics dividing the main parties in the run up to the most recent October 2015 parliamentary election. Along with the three other Central European ‘Visegrad’ countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia – the […]

Poland And Brexit

Aleks Szczerbiak 9th March 2017

Brexit means that Poland is losing a key EU ally. Both countries shared a similar vision of an expanded single market combined with a reluctance to allow the EU more economic policy powers, especially on taxation. They are strongly Atlanticist and viewed the development of EU security and defence policies as complementary, rather than an […]

How Will The EU’s ‘Rule Of Law’ Investigation Affect Polish Politics?

Aleks Szczerbiak 15th February 2016

The European Commission is currently conducting an inquiry into judicial and media reforms introduced by the Law and Justice government in Poland. Aleks Szczerbiak analyses the way in which this investigation is going to affect the political dynamics within the country, and argues that the offensive against the ruling party’s policies may well prove to be a […]

What Are The Prospects For Poland’s Opposition?

Aleks Szczerbiak 18th January 2016

Civic Platform, the former ruling party in Poland, suffered a clear defeat in the country’s parliamentary elections in October. However, as Aleks Szczerbiak writes, the polarisation of politics during the first few weeks of the new Law and Justice administration have integrated the opposition and allowed it to mobilise support around the claim that the government is undermining […]

How Will Poland’s Law And Justice Party Govern?

Aleks Szczerbiak 7th December 2015

Poland’s new right-wing government has prioritised implementation of the expensive social spending pledges that were critical to its election victory. However, its determination to radically reform the Polish state has drawn accusations of authoritarianism from the opposition while the new prime minister has yet to stamp her authority on the administration. Aleks Szczerbiak assesses all of the main […]

Why Poland’s New Government Is A Problem For Migrants To The EU

Aleks Szczerbiak 24th November 2015

The new Polish prime minister, Beata Szydło, had a firm message for her EU allies in her inauguration speech – they shouldn’t burden the Poles with their migrant problems. As she put it: The issue of refugees is making us aware that the question of solidarity must be defined clearly. One cannot call attempts to export problems, […]

Eurofound advertisement

#AskTheExpert webinar—Key ingredients for the future of work: job quality and gender equality

Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


WATCH HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Let’s end involuntary unemployment!

What is the best way to fight unemployment? We want to know your opinion, to understand better the potential of an EU-wide permanent programme for direct and guaranteed public-service employment.

In collaboration with Our Global Moment, Fondazione Pietro Nenni and other progressive organisations across Europe, we launched an EU-wide survey on the perception of unemployment and publicly funded jobs, exploring ways to bring innovation in public sector-led job creation.


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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 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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