politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher that publishes content examining issues in politics, economy and employment & labour. This archive brings together Social Europe articles on political issues.
The popularity of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has slumped—but then inside Macron the populist is Macron the elitist. Emanuel Macron is not a happy man. The popularity of the French president has dropped so low as to make his US counterpart, Donald Trump, look like a rock star in comparison. One manifestation of Macron’s […]
The US president, Donald Trump, remains in a standoff with Congress over finance for his much-vaunted Mexico barrier. Europe has learned that border walls are neither a humane nor an effective response to human flow. President Trump has long called migration a security crisis, but in recent weeks he has also referred to the situation […]
The European Parliament elections may well be dominated by the issue of migration. But should anti-immigrant parties enjoy democratic legitimacy? In May this year we will have elections for the European Parliament. We can agree that the parliament is the most democratic body in the European Union. We also can agree that the election process […]
Efforts to give impetus to EU enlargement in the western Balkans took place in 2018 but without results. Major challenges remain as the EU seeks to balance its aspirations for influence against concerns over what enlargement might mean. Last year was supposed to demonstrate a significant revival of EU interest in the western Balkans, with […]
The concept of the social-ecological state can inspire a new social policy to tackle the twin crises of inequality and environment. The revolt of the gilets jaunes is the first social-ecological crisis of contemporary France and one of the first in Europe. It was triggered by the major issue—too long eluded in the country of […]
An unemployment reinsurance scheme benefiting countries hit by asymmetric shocks attracts what to some will be surprising support across the EU. Experts argue that European Monetary Union (EMU) has to be completed by ‘automatic fiscal stabilisers’. Welfare states have built-in stabilisers which cushion economic shocks—unemployment benefits, for instance, support the purchasing power of people who […]
There has been a growing climate of xenophobia towards migrant workers in the UK in recent years. Unfortunately, parts of the labour movement have been complicit in it. The UK Labour Party leadership has been receiving a lot of criticism for its handling of Brexit. In its defence, a significant number of people in constituencies […]
The regime of Viktor Orbán in Hungary had looked impregnable. But protests against the ‘slave-labour law’ encapsulated growing social alienation, with a wider European resonance. Hungarian politics entered a new stage in December 2018, rather unexpectedly. Following the April general elections, which produced the third consecutive constitutional majority for Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, […]
Italy’s populist government has been keen to blame Brussels for its fiscal-policy constraint. But its own choice of crowd-pleasing spending over public investment and reform should be scrutinised. Italy’s stand-off with Brussels over its 2019 budget deficit ended a few days before Christmas, after two months of intense negotiations, forcing the Italian Parliament hastily to […]
While the European Parliament elections near, politics in Poland is at such a crux that the later parliamentary polls there will have wide reverberations. This month, the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini of the Lega, travelled in search of possible partners for a ‘European spring’ alliance —‘a new plan for Europe’—comprising similar right-wing, populist, Eurosceptic […]
Those on modest incomes used to compare themselves only with those around them, muting their anger. Globalisation has raised awareness of the inequality it has fostered but has weakened the unions best placed to fight it—with inchoate rage the result. Sixty years ago, the sociologist WG Runciman published an influential study of attitudes to ’relative […]
Much discussion of the future of work suggests it can only be a dystopian, robotic world. But the report of an ILO commission shows how humans, not algorithms, can be in charge. When the International Labour Organization (ILO) was founded 100 years ago in the aftermath of the first world war, governments, employers and workers […]
