About Carlos Vacas-Soriano

Carlos Vacas-Soriano is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. He works on topics related to wage and income inequalities, minimum wages, low pay, temporary employment and segmentation.

The new Spanish minimum wage

by Carlos Vacas-Soriano on 16th July 2019

Raising wage floors is one way to reduce inequality and stimulate recovery in Europe. A big uplift in the Spanish minimum wage this year provides a test bed.

Germany’s Minimum Wage Has Reduced Wage Inequality

by Carlos Vacas-Soriano on 22nd June 2018

Wages grew and wage inequality fell in most EU countries in 2015. Germany is not one of the countries where wages rose most but it did have the largest reduction in wage inequality. Our analysis shows that the German minimum wage policy introduced in 2015 significantly lifted the wages of the lowest-paid employees, particularly the […]

The Blocked Completion of the European Monetary Union

The reform of the euro zone is stuck. Against the background of political blockades, this report examines from a combined economic and political science perspective how the Euro can be prepared for the next crisis. The report first identifies general requirements for the stabilization of economic and monetary union. Next, the report reconstructs the political logic of the euro crisis and shows that the prospects for realizing far-reaching reform proposals aiming at a fiscal union are poor. Subsequently, the report develops a proposal of how, under the given circumstances, the room for maneuver within the existing framework of economic and monetary union can be extended in a pragmatic way in order to strengthen national fiscal policy as an instrument of macroeconomic stabilization.

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NECE Conference “Confronting Inequalities! The Role of Citizenship Education”, 24 – 27 October 2019, Glasgow, UK

The NECE Conference 2019 will take place from 24-27 October 2019 in Glasgow and will be opened by British bestseller author Darren McGarvey (“Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of the British Underclass”). More than 20 workshops, presentations, discussions, excursions, a project market and two open spaces will tackle the challenges of growing inequality and social political transformation at different levels.

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At the beginning of the new EU legislative cycle, this occasional paper by Udo Bullmann (MEP and S&D Group coordinator in the European Parliament’s Development Committee) makes the case for an EU development policy that puts the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a concern for human well-being front and centre. The paper argues that EU development policy must serve to fight inequalities in partner countries to enable successful transformations in the spirit of the SDGs. Weaving a concern for achieving greater equality into the process of EU development policy-making, including through ex-ante assessment tools, is key in this regard.

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Platform work: Maximising the potential while safeguarding standards?

The rise of platform work across the European Union can facilitate better access to the labour market for disadvantaged groups, encourage participation among those with other responsibilities and foster self-employment and entrepreneurship. However, there are growing concerns relating to platform workers’ social protection, working time and health and safety standards, with the work itself often characterised by low income, low-skilled work, and individual small-scale tasks. Eurofound’s new policy brief highlights the main opportunities and challenges of specific types of platform work and illustrates some of the first attempts at addressing them in the EU.

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The new Spanish minimum wage

Germany’s Minimum Wage Has Reduced Wage Inequality

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