‘Recovery and resilience’—how that looks from the east
EU funding of bricks-and-mortar projects in central and eastern Europe hasn’t addressed its human-resources crisis. Could the Recovery and Resilience Facility be a turning point?
Economy
Analysis and debate on the European economy: growth and investment, fiscal and monetary policy, trade, industry and inequality.
Another win for workers: Uber drivers are employees
As the platforms lose case after case over the designation of ‘contractors’ as workers, they are lobbying at European level to win back control.
Global inequality and the pandemic: exaggerated hopes and fears?
The pandemic has barely increased global income inequality—but it has made other inequalities worse.
Minimum-wage directive: the case for a ‘social partners option’
Adding a ‘social partners option’ to the minimum-wage directive could unblock negotiations while protecting well-functioning collective bargaining systems.
Platforms put a spoke in the wheels of Spain’s ‘riders’ law’
The Ley de Riders, recognising delivery riders as employees, is now a reality. But is it a game-changer?
Wellbeing at work—it’s time to up the ante
The new EU health-and-safety strategy risks being a missed opportunity to address workplace mental health and wellbeing.
Dedramatising debt
Post-pandemic recovery and the green transition—and Europe’s competitiveness—depend on investment financed by joint borrowing.
Europe gets back to the work … of getting people to work
The notion that active-labour-market policies are the solution to unemployment has long been an act of faith. That’s the problem.
ECB strategy review: the mountain has given birth to a mouse
Peter Bofinger argues that the ECB strategy review represents a missed opportunity.
Recruiting irregular migrants to … fight irregular migration
Magdalena Ulceluse and Felix Bender
The EU directive sanctioning employers for utilising irregular migrants is putting migrant workers who might complain in a Kafkaesque scenario.
The courage to change
Europe’s trade union and Christian business leaders appeal jointly for a new economic and social order after the pandemic.
Corporate tax cuts do not boost growth
Philipp Heimberger and Sebastian Gechert
Implicit in the global ‘race to the bottom’ on corporation tax in recent decades has been that this favours growth. Yet does it?
Minimum wages rise, but more slowly
Carlos Vacas-Soriano and Christine Aumayr-Pintar
Convergence of central and eastern-European EU members towards older ones with high minimum wages is much stronger than in the Mediterranean countries.
A minimum-wage directive could undermine the Nordic model
German Bender and Anders Kjellberg
Several negative effects need to be addressed in the current negotiations on the directive, in the Swedish trade union view.
Climate crisis offers way out of monetary orthodoxy
The ECB’s strategy review, Adam Tooze writes, says more by its silences than its statements.
Covid-19, women and the economy—it’s not all about care
There has been a macroeconomic blindspot in feminist narratives of the pandemic which unwittingly limits the scope of critique.