Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Michael Davies-Venn

Michael Davies-Venn is a public-policy analyst and political-communications expert, based in Berlin, focused on issues of global governance, including climate change and human rights. He is a guest researcher in the Ethics of the Anthropocene Programme at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Michael Davies-Venn

Global environmental governance: reform urgent

Michael Davies-Venn 6th November 2022

As COP27 opens in Egypt while famine sweeps Somalia, an outcome-based approach to climate change must replace the appearance of action.

Europe’s solution to its energy dependence

Michael Davies-Venn 23rd March 2022

Europe could simply buy fewer fossil fuels from Russia, maybe more from elsewhere—but there is a more fundamental answer.

Transforming German society

Michael Davies-Venn 13th December 2021

More than profound changes to German citizenship laws will be needed to render a diverse society harmonious.

An unorthodox solution for Europe’s electricity crisis

Michael Davies-Venn 2nd November 2021

National schemes sparing consumers the worst impact of soaring prices are no substitute for the EU redefining electricity as a public good.

Ursula von der Leyen’s mission ‘to the moon’

Michael Davies-Venn 16th February 2021

The European Green Deal rests on the commitment of the 27 member states. The fate of the renewable-energy directive shows the scale of that challenge.

The “Klimakanzlerin” Takes A Bow And Leaves A Vacuum

Michael Davies-Venn 4th December 2018

COP 24 in Poland starts the exit of Chancellor Angela Merkel from international climate politics. And when she finally leaves in 2021, her exit from negotiations on global warming may create chaos with significant ramifications, if action to “save the planet” continues to lag as it has since the 2015 Paris Agreement and the vacuum […]

Searching For Germany’s Volkspartei

Michael Davies-Venn 13th November 2018

If the recent state elections in Bavaria and Hesse tell us anything at all, they simply provide three instructive lessons for Germany’s political elite. The electorate is tired with establishment politics. The political centre, which often balances extremes, is weak. Economic prosperity is no longer a measure for political success. Of course, the political landscape […]

Unhinge Europe From America!

Michael Davies-Venn 17th July 2018

After several months massaging Canadians, then US President Barack Obama announced his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline: “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” Following failure by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others, […]

Climate Finance: Waiting For The First EU $1 From Pledged $100 Billion

Michael Davies-Venn 1st December 2017

Listening to Europe speak in Bonn, Germany during the recent conference on how to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is possible to be get carried away thinking, nay believing, that the global response is well underway. But it isn’t. Talk of European progress and solidarity with developing countries is not enough. The […]

Merkel Promises To Listen To The Cold Wind From The East

Michael Davies-Venn 6th October 2017

A very important and instructive lesson that politicians and those in governments, the world over, should learn from the outcome of the latest German elections is that the seeds of nationalism and populism also flourish in the garden of wealth and economic prosperity. The election results question a common narrative theorists and analysts frequently use […]

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.


TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube