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David Gow

David Gow is former editor of Social Europe, editor of sceptical.scot and former German correspondent and European business editor of the Guardian.

David Gow

Europe: tear down those walls!

David Gow 9th November 2019

It may be three decades since the Berlin wall came down but too many others have recently proliferated.

2016: Europe’s Year Of Living On The Edge

David Gow 19th January 2016

This new year of 2016 has begun badly. ISIS attacks in Istanbul and Jakarta. Stock market jitters. Violence, including rape, upon women in Germany, Sweden and Zurich – apparently by asylum-seekers in some cases. Deflation. Breaches of the separation of powers/rule of law in Poland. The unexpected death of David Bowie, who incorporated the changing […]

Marine Le Pen’s Tide Is Far From Ebbing

David Gow 14th December 2015

Well, that’s OK then. The second round of France’s regional elections has seen the clear winner of the first, Marine Le Pen and her Front National, leave empty-handed. The FN, top in six of the 13 regions on December 6, won none. It came third in the overall poll on 27.4% compared with 40% for […]

Europe At A Murderous Crossroads

David Gow 16th November 2015

Our Facebook portraits are draped in the tricolore, special twibbons adorn our Twitter profiles, public buildings are splashed blue, white and red, we “pray for Paris,” we sing the Marseillaise, Nous sommes tous des parisiens: the aftermath of Friday evening’s pitiless slaughter of scores of mainly young friends enjoying themselves has seen an outpouring of […]

Germany Undoes 70 Years Of European Policy

David Gow 17th July 2015

When I was a correspondent in Germany two decades ago, in the run-up to unification and thereafter, interviews with Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other senior politicians – such as Wolfgang Schäuble, who negotiated the two Germanys into one – would always end with the mantra: “We want a European Germany, not a German Europe.” […]

A Franco-German Social Democrat Plan for Reviving the EU

David Gow 10th June 2015

They are a political odd couple, Emmanuel Macron and Sigmar Gabriel, yet they have together put out a radical proposal for reforming the EU/EZ that might just help revive the tired and troubled social democratic project in Europe. The ideas they present are certainly different from the ultra-cautious petits pas recently proposed by the current […]

Seismic Change In The UK And EU Political Landscape

David Gow 8th May 2015

On the 70th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day the United Kingdom awoke to stark evidence it is in reality the Disunited Kingdom as never before. The political landscape thrown into relief by the general election of May 7 is in the throes of seismic change. There is a serious prospect that Scotland, propelled […]

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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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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