Social Europe articles on politics

When Franklin Roosevelt outlined his essential four freedoms in 1941 he was convinced democracy could only be defended and advanced beyond the remaining 11 democracies by replacing classical liberalism with a comprehensive concept based on freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom of want and freedom from fear. Real freedom cannot exist if one of these […]

Led by the IMF, the main body of mainstream economists is now aware of the danger that debt deflation is raising for several Euro Area member states. This awareness is surely a good thing. However, what is conspicuously absent in this discussion is the link with wages. It is as if ‘lowflation’ (as the IMF […]

The Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has recently been making headlines in the European and international press for his anti-austerity stance. ‘If Europe does not change course there will be no growth’, Renzi recently said in a speech to parliament, warning the ‘high priests and prophets of austerity’ that ‘there can be no stability if […]

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on how markets work inefficiently was once asked about his opinion on austerity measures. “It reminds me of medieval medicine,” he said. “It is like blood-letting, where you took blood out of a patient because the theory was that there were bad tumours. And very often, […]

The EU is slowly recovering from a long period of financial instability and economic sacrifice that has pushed up unemployment to record-high levels and also resulted in a dramatic rise of poverty in the more ‘peripheral’ EU countries and regions. Exiting the social crisis and making the European social model more resilient will remain a […]

Many of those interpreting the results of the European elections claim to discern a fundamental disenchantment with Europe among its citizens. On this basis the considerable success achieved by Euro-sceptic parties in some countries is only the harbinger of a broad repudiation of the EU and the excessive expansion of its competences. But is that […]

Germany’s first post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is usually held to be the origin of an often-quoted phrase „Was kümmert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?“. Roughly: why should I be concerned about the rubbish I talked yesterday? Whatever the rights and wrongs of this attribution, the phrase – used to draw attention to someone who places […]

Globalization makes international collaboration more urgent; but it also makes it less likely to happen. Marketization requires social policy, not only to combat the negative effects of markets, but also to support the market with things it cannot provide for itself; but marketization and social policy are usually seen as opposed projects. For Europeans, confronting […]

The recent European Parliament election results revealed a reality that is uncomfortable and challenging both politically and socioeconomically. At the political level, we are witnessing in practice the rise of euroscepticism, nationalism and anti-Europeanism. At the socio-economic level, inequalities among and within Member States are evident, demonstrable and rising. Considerable institutional deficiencies, high rates of […]

Economists at DG ECFIN are starting to notice something we have pointed out already some time ago: Despite an enormous cut in wage costs, Greek exports have firmly stayed put in recessionary territory and hopes for an export-led recovery have proven to be illusive. Troubled by this failure of Greek exports to lift off, DG ECFIN […]

Today Europe is boredom… it is submerged by numbers and without soul. As long as Europe cares more about fishing rights than human beings swimming in our sea’s Europe has no soul (Renzi 2014). The same Prime Minister of Italy states rightly “Europe is the answer, not the problem”. So what has to be done to […]

Italy’s new PM Matteo Renzi has pledged to slash the country’s record unemployment with his American-branded ‘Jobs Act’. But his labour reforms, which will see short term job contracts extended for up to 3 years, are more of the same medicine applied since the turn of the 1990s that have been such bad news for […]