politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher that publishes content examining issues in politics, economy, society and ecology. This archive brings together Social Europe articles on the economy.
The first research papers showing that health was worse and violence more common in societies with large income differences were published in the 1970s. Since then a large body of evidence has accumulated on the damaging effects of inequality. Countries with bigger income differences between rich and poor tend to suffer from a heavier burden of a […]
Those who wish to leave – so a German saying – you should not seek to dissuade from so doing. To few people is the phrase more applicable than to Wolfgang Schäuble who is resigning the post of German finance minister and, with it, that of de facto head of the Euro Group. He held […]
From 2000 to 2007 European banks’ overseas assets almost quadrupled, making them the most globalized in the world, while from 2007 to 2015 they shrank by 45%. The repercussions of the 2008 crisis can be guessed: Dutch, French and German banks, for example, were waist deep in the Spanish real estate bubble, while Austrian banks […]
The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has officially launched a project to issue a new national currency complementary to the euro as the ace to win the upcoming political elections. With his proposed New Lira, Berlusconi aims to strengthen the right-wing alliance between his Forza Italia, the anti-immigration and anti-EU Northern League led by […]
Recently, Liberal-Democrat leader Vince Cable joined the long list of politicians who have warned of the dangers of excessive inequality. But strong as the speech was on the problem, it was much weaker on solutions. If we are serious about creating a less unequal society, we need a much more focussed strategy on wealth. The […]
The Brexit debate has been distorted by several myths. One of the most persistently and widely quoted, including during the 2016 referendum campaign and subsequently as in here, is that the UK’s economic performance improved after joining the EU in 1973. Performance is usually measured as GDP per head, and on this measure the UK […]
Worried by the populist backlash against globalisation, a big crowd of ministers, politicians and economists participated last June in the annual OECD week in Paris to discuss how to make globalisation work for everyone. While a multitude of panels and presentations stressed the benefits of economic openness and trade, the papers and publications which the […]
The latest data from Eurostat shows that the Greek economy is steadily entering a growth phase, after many years of recession. Investments are increasing and exports are back on track with a surge of 18% – the highest rate since 2001. Unemployment has fallen to 21.2% compared to 27% in 2014, and for two consecutive […]
With Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the French presidential election, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls ahead of Germany’s general election on September 24, a window has opened for eurozone reform. The euro has always been a Franco-German project. With a dynamic new leader in one country and a […]
It has been Conservative policy in Britain since Mrs Thatcher to reduce the size of the state in pursuit of some golden age where private ownership and management would dominate (see Meek). The scale of the dismantling of the state and the destruction of what Meek calls ‘universal networks’ (the social and technological system deemed […]
The great majority of the economic forecasts have concluded that Brexit will damage the UK economy. In the case of ‘no deal’ between the UK and the EU, the majority view is that the loss of GDP could be severe. The UK Treasury, the OECD and the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Policy […]
Since a revolving door was installed at the entrance to the West Wing of the White House, it has been difficult to keep track of the comings and goings in America’s corridors of power. Anything written about the Trump administration’s personnel and policies may be invalid before it is published. At least for the time […]
