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.
Forgotten by time and abandoned by most of its younger generation, the old village of Riace in Calabria, clinging to the steep hillsides above the Ionian Sea, would be unknown to the outside world had it not become the reluctant embodiment of the political and social divisions tearing Italy apart. On Saturday 6 October, in […]
In a recent article Jean Pisani-Ferry called for the emergence of new EU political groupings that go beyond the traditional left-right competition and offer voters clear choices on issues like economic openness, Europe and immigration. A close associate of Emmanuel Macron, Pisani-Ferry is arguing explicitly for the transposition of the strategy of the French president, […]
Reversing the backlash against globalization requires active politics in two opposite directions: the strengthening of democracy beyond the level of the nation state; and strenuous efforts at local economic development. In The Globalization Paradox Dani Rodrik argued that we have a choice among democracy, national sovereignty and hyper-globalization, a trilemma, and that we could have […]
Italian politics: the current state of play In late September, the Italian Parliament approved the DEF (Documento di Economia e Finanza), with a deficit/GDP of 2.4 percent for 2019, considered excessive and dangerous by the EU. It was a critical moment. During recent months, prominent Italian politicians from M5S, the Partito Democratico and Lega had all weighed in on what […]
I am invited to talk about New Perspectives on Europe, but new ones fail me, and the Trumpian decay afflicting even the core of Europe makes me seriously question my old perspectives. Certainly, the risks associated with a significantly changed state of the world have penetrated public awareness and have altered perspectives on Europe. They […]
The success of the xenophobic far right party, Sweden Democrats (SD), has brought international attention to Sweden’s latest general election. As The Guardian noted: “far right gains threaten Europe’s most stable political order”. Sweden is, what’s more, one of Europe’s most stable economies. Unemployment is below the EU average, GDP growth has outpaced almost all […]
Manual jobs in European manufacturing are being transformed as blue-collar workers take on more intellectual tasks. This is a consequence of the increasing use of digital tools and the growing importance of quality control in production. The severe losses of medium-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector during the economic crisis raised concerns about its future […]
No people, no problem (Нет людей, никаких проблем) is the quote often attributed to Joseph Stalin. Yet, if there is a lesson from Latvia’s October 6, 2018 national election, the problem was not the oft-repeated histrionics about its electoral takeover by ethnic Russians. The problem was demographics (‘No people, big problem’) and waning enthusiasm for […]
Experts and pundits have long discussed how to fill the perceived gap between ordinary citizens and the workings of the European institutions. EU institutions have been suffering for a long time from a knowledge deficit, even more so than a democratic one, given that there is a popularly elected Parliament endowed with full legislative powers […]
With movies such as Inside Job and Thank you for Smoking or TV series like House of Cards, the US model of influencing decisions and policies of legislators, also known as “pressure and purchase”, has become famous worldwide as enshrining the activity of lobbyists or, more formally, public affairs managers. Millions of US dollars are […]
With the onset of the economic crisis since 2008, a new term, the working poor, has emerged at European level. This new “class” features a portion of the population that, although working, is paid below the relative poverty line. The working poor is closer to the European poverty indicator, the relative poverty which is assessed […]
Political scientists love the Nordics. They seem to have everything right. Their model is often held up as the pinnacle of good governance, economics, and social policy. Adoption of Scandinavian institutions and ways of doing things by other countries is wistfully advocated by disaffected citizens in other parts of Europe. But is the Nordic model […]
