About Colin Hines

Colin Hines is convenor of the Green New Deal Group and former co-ordinator of Greenpeace International’s economics unit, having worked for the organisation for ten years.

A novel European Green New Deal to tackle climate change

by Colin Hines on 8th October 2019

Support has been surging on both sides of the Atlantic for the idea of a Green New Deal. Time to turn it into action, and jobs, on the ground.

A Social and Green New Deal to reverse the populist tide

by Colin Hines on 23rd April 2019

The setback to the immediate plans of those seeking the UK’s exit from the European Union provides a window of opportunity to go on the offensive for an anti-populist, continent-wide alternative. The UK now has around six months to sort out the Brexit debacle. Yet out of this could emerge a Europe-wide programme to turn […]

Prevent Another Economic Meltdown With A European Green New Deal

by Colin Hines on 4th October 2018

In the acres of recent coverage about the causes of the Lehman Brothers collapse and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again, there was much emphasis on changing the EU’s economic imperatives away from austerity policies that contributed to Brexit, the rise of the extreme right, increasing opposition to immigration and sluggish economic activity, particularly […]

Seeing Off Extreme Right Populism With ‘Progressive Protectionism’

by Colin Hines on 20th March 2018

The first step to an effective response by progressives to the rising tide of right-wing populism in Italy and elsewhere is to realise that ever more open borders are the problem. It was predominantly opposition to inadequately controlled immigration that brought the Italian election result, the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election. The other contributing […]

What makes capital cities the best places to live?

Eurofound’s new analysis of the latest European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) compares quality of life and well-being, quality of society, and quality of public services in Europe’s capitals and major cities with respective national averages. The study not only gives an indication of what perceptions of quality of life is like for the 48 million people that live in capital cities in the EU, but also other major European cities such as Istanbul and Belgrade.

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Social Europe Volume Two

This book brings to you some of the best contributions published on Social Europe over the second half of 2019 in easily accessible ebook and paperback formats. The collection is newly edited with a thematic focus on the rise of populism and also includes in text-form previously unpublished material from Social Europe Podcast. This second volume brings together contributions by Cas Mudde, Dani Rodrik, Peter Verovsek, Branko Milanovic, Sheri Berman, Paul Mason, Bela Galgoczi, Mariana Mazzucato and Ngaire Woods.

Zygmunt Bauman was a towering intellectual who saw and analysed – right up to his death in early 2017 – the great socio-political changes, often convulsive, in modern western society long before his peers. Here we highlight his prescient insights into what he dubbed ‘liquid modernity’ with 24 chapters on topics ranging from online loneliness via precarity/poverty/inequality to migration, fear of the ‘Other’ and the decline of the nation state. Chronicle of Crisis, 2011-16, written by one of the great chroniclers of our times, will be read and re-read for decades and more to come.

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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The European minimum wage on the doorstep

The European Commission published a consultation document with a view to take legislative action to establish fair minimum wages in Europe. In this policy brief, the researchers argue for a pragmatic approach of taking the ‘in-work-poverty-wage’ threshold of 60 per cent of the national full-time gross median wage as the reference to assess the adequacy of minimum wages. In countries in which a high proportion of workers earn very low wages, the whole wage structure, and therefore the median wage, is very low; therefore, a minimum wage of 60 per cent of the national median wage may still not be enough to ensure a decent living standard.

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