It is the ECB’s job to close spreads
Spreads in a single market with a single currency distort trade flows and competitiveness. The European Central Bank should close them.
Economy
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher driven by the core values of freedom, sustainability, and equality. These principles guide our exploration of society’s most pressing challenges. This archive page curates Social Europe articles focused on economic issues, offering a rich resource for innovative thinking and informed debate.
The problem with the Covid convergence
A surprising global trend in the pandemic is reduced inequality across countries—but the convergence reflects losses at the top, not gains at the bottom.
Supplying critical goods: lessons from the pandemic
Security of supply for medical and pharmaceutical goods must become a high political priority—with industrial policies promoting reshoring.
An end to wage-dumping in the German meat industry?
The German meat industry is being pushed off its low road of migrant-labour exploitation towards regulation and potential collective agreement.
Time to put an end to union-busting
Trade union rights are human rights and must be protected in EU law.
Europe’s ‘long-Covid’ economic frailty
Last year’s agreement on an EU recovery package was widely celebrated. This year its inadequacy will sink in.
Spain: more stable employment contracts
The Supreme Court has modified its jurisprudence on subcontracting, limiting the scope for abuse of temporary contracts.
MEPs need to listen to more voices on artificial intelligence
The European Parliament’s committee exploring AI needs to give the floor to civil society. Big Tech has had enough influence.
Protecting European migrants’ rights
National and EU-level action are needed to make seasonal labour migration in the single market a ‘win-win’ for the member states involved.
Germany bows to Keynes, again
Say it quietly, but Germany has learnt the lessons of Keynes. Would that others had done so too.
The seven secrets of 2020
National governments had been choosing not to exercise enormous powers so those globalisation had enriched could exercise their own.
Capital and ideology: interview with Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty tells Robin Wilson how wealth and power can be transferred from capital to workers and citizens.
Eurozone reform—it’s not just the fiscal rules
At least as important is the reform of the procedure for preventing and correcting macroeconomic imbalances.
New forms of employment in Europe—how new is new?
Standard employment is not simply being replaced by non-standard work. But work is becoming more diverse and policy must accordingly become more tailored.
The many worlds of work in the 4.0 era
The transformation of work is not simply from jobs to automation. Its complex, variable character demands a matching policy portfolio.
Easing the EU fiscal straitjacket
Without major reform of the EU fiscal framework, Peter Bofinger argues, public investment will be insufficient in the wake of the pandemic.
Covid-19: more action needed to secure workers’ safety
The pandemic has highlighted how public health and workers’ safety are closely intertwined.