Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt

Susanne Wixforth is head of unit in the Europe and International Department of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). Lukas Hochscheidt is a research assistant there.

Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt

Minimum-wages directive: it’s legal

Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt 8th April 2021

Last October, the European Commission proposed a framework directive on minimum wages. Whether one likes it or not, the EU is competent to do so.

A solidaristic European strategy for public health

Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt 26th May 2020

After years of ‘public bad, private good’ ideology in healthcare, the shock of the coronavirus calls for a post-crisis European strategy to advance public health.

Exit of the avant-garde? The European social union at a crossroads

Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt 27th April 2020

Can the European Pillar of Social Rights underpin a social union—or must social rights end at national borders?

How the European Court of Justice could become the guardian of social rights

Susanne Wixforth and Lukas Hochscheidt 4th November 2019

The privileging of economic freedoms over social rights by the European Court of Justice could be reversed by a thorough harmonisation of European social law.

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.

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WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.

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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 Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.

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Minimum-wages directive: it’s legal

A solidaristic European strategy for public health

Exit of the avant-garde? The European social union at a crossroads

How the European Court of Justice could become the guardian of social rights

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