About Kate Holman

Kate Holman is a freelance journalist based in Brussels and a editor and writer at the ETUC.

One Small Town Against The Tide Of Italian Populism

by Kate Holman on 24th October 2018

Forgotten by time and abandoned by most of its younger generation, the old village of Riace in Calabria, clinging to the steep hillsides above the Ionian Sea, would be unknown to the outside world had it not become the reluctant embodiment of the political and social divisions tearing Italy apart. On Saturday 6 October, in […]

Will The Grass Be Greener For The Workers?

by Kate Holman on 27th July 2018

What are ‘green jobs’? According to the International Labour Organization, they are “decent jobs that contribute to preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.” Sounds great, but is it reality? The recent conference on ‘The […]

Trade Unions And A Completely Different World Of Work

by Kate Holman on 9th July 2018

Work is not what it used to be. Change is accelerating on all sides. And whether it is robots replacing people; digitalisation; freelance, short-term and zero-hours contracts or decarbonisation targeting traditional industries, few workers in Europe remain untouched. How do trade unions respond to all that? One message that emerged from a ‘big conference’ on […]

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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