Social Europe articles on politics

The prolonged economic crisis since 2008 has drastically reduced incomes and employment levels and the promised recovery will not reabsorb unemployment, particularly in Europe. Nevertheless, economic policy in Europe is sticking to past recipes based on two mainstays: fiscal austerity and labour flexibility. This strategy does increase the short-run cost competitiveness of European firms overseas […]

Jean-Claude Juncker received approval for his long-awaited investment plan at the European Council meeting on 18 December 2014, giving more details and clarifying some of the open questions on 13 January 2015. Forecasting at least €315bn additional investment over the three years 2015-2017, it was billed as the central plank in his determined effort to spend […]

He came from Algeria seeking a better life, anticipating an escape from poverty, oppression, and hopelessness. In Paris, he found a low-skill job and had children and grandchildren. As French citizens, they had the right to an education and health care. But they grew up in the ghettos that ring France’s major cities, surrounded by […]

It’s that Davos time of the year, when a bunch of powerful men gather in a luxurious Swiss ski resort to re-assure the 99% that the global economy is in good hands. But is it? According to IMF head Christine Lagarde “The answer is most likely ‘No’.” A spectre of a nightmarish deflationary spiral of […]

In 2012, the Four Presidents Report mentioned a European unemployment insurance as a possible mechanism to achieve greater fiscal stability at the EU-level. What do you think about that?  In his political guidelines, President Juncker stated that he wants a deeper and fairer Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The Commission’s Blueprint for a Deep and Genuine Economic and […]

It is impossible to meaningfully address Europe’s social challenges for the present, medium and longer term without addressing the central challenge of economic growth. We are now in a situation where adverse longer-term trends are nested in a highly unfavourable current and medium-term economic environment. What are the longer-term dynamics? Over the next few decades, economic […]

The objectives of the planned structural reform of EU banking are ambitious: to prevent systemic risk, avoid misallocation of resources, and facilitate an orderly resolution and recovery. The original idea of the reform is to split the deposit taking and lending business of a bank from its investment banking business. However, the proposal contains many […]

A specter is haunting the world economy – the specter of job-killing technology. How this challenge is met will determine the fate of the world’s market economies and democratic polities, in much the same way that Europe’s response to the rise of the socialist movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the […]

There has been much wishful thinking in Europe that populism will vanish once growth rates pick up. Those who have believed in this unlikely miracle tended to assume that the populist upsurge is a natural reaction to economic misery brought about by the crisis. In this, they are only partly right. Populism is as much […]

You went through the tragedies of the 20th century – two wars, Shoah, Stalinism. What’s the specificity of the islamic extremist threat we’re facing today, in your view? Political assassination is as old as humanity and the chances that it will be dead before humanity dies are dim. Violence is an un-detachable companion of inter-human antagonisms […]

Inequality is back at the centre of the public discourse. Is this good or bad news for the European Union? Most contributions to this Social Europe 2019 series suggest the latter; namely, the observed rise of inequalities in Europe is driven by EU policies to a large extent. Some blame the EU for embracing the […]