Social Europe articles on politics

I was in a gathering of academics the other day, and we were discussing minimum wages. The debate moved on to increasing inequality, and the difficulty of doing anything about it. I said why not have a maximum wage? To say that the idea was greeted with incredulity would be an understatement. So you want […]

The European Commission has once again issued a legislative proposal which jeopardises workers’ rights. The proposal for a “single-member private limited liability company” (SUP in European jargon) would create a 29th regime in company law. It goes down the same road as those previous company law proposals (like the European Private Company) which bypass rules […]

Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has captured the world’s attention, putting the relationship between capital accumulation and inequality at the center of economic debate. What makes Piketty’s argument so special is his insistence on a fundamental trend stemming from the very nature of capitalist growth. It is an argument much in the tradition of […]

While the rest of the world recovers from the Great Recession of 2008-2009, Europe is stagnating. Eurozone growth is expected to be 1.7% next year. What can be done about it? One solution is a weaker euro. Earlier this month, the chief executive of Airbus called for drastic action to reduce the value of the euro against the dollar […]

Europe is heaven on earth, the promised land, as soon as you look at it from the outside. […] Europe appears in a different light, but always as paradise, as a dream of mankind, as a stronghold of peace, prosperity and civilisation. Here, Wim Wenders impressively describes Europe’s promise of hope. He is right, and […]

Obama is Leaving Economic Inequality for his Successors to Fix President Obama is emulating former President James Buchanan. His economic agenda is to kick the can down the road, leaving his successors an America of widening economic inequality without prospect of remediation. The Obama Presidency is facing the most toxic, polarized environment since the antebellum […]

For generations, Europe was a project of hope. To my parents’ generation, after a time of war and hostility, Europe represented the hope of achieving economic progress together in an atmosphere of peace and friendship. To my generation, Europe symbolised a place of hope and freedom following the Cold War. We criss-crossed fading borders and […]

The very rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “are different from you and me.” Their wealth makes them “cynical where we are trustful,” and makes them think “they are better than we are.” If these words ring true today, perhaps it is because when they were written, in 1926, inequality in the United States had reached heights comparable […]

The new European Parliament has to turn its attention to numerous pressing issues. I shall refer here to three of them: the socio-ecological transition, growing inequality, and EMU. The socio-ecological transition will require policy action geared simultaneously to the short, the medium and the long term. This means devising an appropriate policy mix deriving from […]

The European welfare state and the European Union (EU) find themselves caught up in a double bind in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. On the one hand, domestically, EU members are politically bound by widely cherished national social contracts on welfare provision, which in hard economic times are especially difficult to renege upon. […]

In 1914, as he was leading his men at the Battle of the Marne General Foch, the best of all the French fighting generals told his chiefs in Paris: ‘My centre is giving way. My right is retreating. The situation is excellent. I am attacking.’ And indeed in one of the greatest manoeuvres ever seen […]

After the European elections, the World Cup became the new hot topic. Only insiders were interested enough to follow closely the selection process of the new Commission President. Nevertheless, there were some quite interesting developments which are worth noting: the European elections were the most European in the history of the directly elected European Parliament […]