Social Europe articles on politics

Several people and organizations have recently called for a “New Deal for Europe”: the German Trade Union Confederation DGB with its “Marshall Plan for Europe”; the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) with its “New Path for Europe”; many a contributor to the book Shaping a Different Europe, and others. Underlying all such proposals is the […]

The ‘Eastern enlargement’ in May 2004 opened the EU’s doors to ten countries. Of these, the four Visegrád states, the three Baltic countries and a former Yugoslav state had at that time completed their 15-year transition towards a market economy. In the first half of the 1990s these countries’ income, measured in terms of GDP, […]

In September the Scots will vote on secession. For decades, the key slogan of the Scottish Nationalist Party has been ‘Its Scotland’s oil’. Yet this claim has never been subject to serious scrutiny. I will argue that it is spurious: ethically, legally, and practically. The philosopher of justice, John Rawls, grounded justice in those social […]

On May 1st 2004 ten countries joined the EU in the biggest enlargement of the Union to date. Moreover it was a step heavy with symbolism. Eight of the ten – the exceptions being the two Mediterranean island economies Cyprus and Malta – had until just over a decade earlier been part of the Warsaw […]

While the world watches nervously the developments in Ukraine, one cannot but ask oneself what would have happened if the EU (and/or NATO for that matter) had incorporated this country following the events of 2004, the Orange Revolution. Then as now Brussels refused to consider the country a viable candidate for membership. In fact the […]

Sitting in nice wine bars or cosy restaurants in superbly gentrified inner city areas, the chattering liberal middle class expresses its disgust about the xenophobic under-classes turning against migrants and voting for right-wing populist parties. Being a member of the chattering class myself I fully share these feelings. The populist migrant bashing makes me furious. […]

Concerns about state capture are nothing new. Special interests hold undue sway over official decision-makers in many countries, and regulators are always prone to see the world through the eyes of the people whose activities they are supposed to oversee. But the rise of finance in industrialized countries has cast these issues in a new, […]

Gently, slowly one can sense the terms of intellectual trade changing. The long era of individual accumulation with the massive transfer of power from the wage-earning collective to the capital funds and bankers that have caused so much damage is coming to an end. More and more the intellectual argument is shifting ground. The Nobel […]

Unlike the simple anti-EU rhetoric of populist parties, those parties who take a more moderate stance towards the EU face a difficult task in the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament. How to convince the electorate that the good that the EU has brought outweighs the bads, while being critical towards current EU policies in order […]

After four years of college, my son is about to graduate with a degree in Environmental Politics. We are both aware that he is entering the job market at a time when more and more young people cannot find work. While putting together his résumé, he recently asked me what kind of skills today’s employers […]

The issue of privacy and the surveillance of digital communications has been a key topic of concern across Europe, particularly in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s disclosures on the surveillance activities conducted by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA). In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Ulrich Beck discusses his view of digital risk, and […]