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.
Brexit will achieve what several dark and diminutive characters from history have tried, and failed, to do: draw Great Britain into the throes of grim continental vassalage. With Brexit, the EU will (inadvertently) effect by negotiation what Spain, France, and Germany have all been unable to realise through conquest. Sovereignty will be stripped away, and […]
It is both ironic and depressing that the growing muddle and fudge around the UK’s strategy for a post-Brexit future should coincide with the release of the European Commission’s exciting proposals for the next phase of EU development, particularly for Erasmus and Horizon Europe (the research framework programme re-titled) for the period 2021-2027. By 2020 […]
According to many commentators, we are now in a crisis of democracy – or rather, ‘liberal democracy’ as Cas Mudde persuasively argues. The time has long since passed where the increasing vote share of populist parties could be regarded as a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for democracies. They are now running governments around the world. Given that populists are […]
Tensions over immigration continue to dominate European politics. In Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a populist firebrand, is monopolizing the public’s attention with almost daily outbursts against immigrants. Likewise, Salvini’s German counterpart, Horst Seehofer, created a crisis in the governing coalition in order to secure new measures against asylum seekers trying to enter Germany from […]
Many international economic institutions share the idea that collective bargaining should take place at the level of individual companies. For example, the OECD, as far back as its 1994 Jobs Strategy, pushed for more firm level bargaining by insisting that the instrument of administrative extension of collective agreements to all firms within a given sector […]
One trait that distinguishes Italy from her Western peers is the gravity and coexistence of corruption, tax evasion, and organised crime. One encouraging trait of the new governing coalition, among many concerning ones, is its pledge to fight those criminal phenomena. But one member of it, the League, was often involved in corruption scandals, has […]
After several months massaging Canadians, then US President Barack Obama announced his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline: “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” Following failure by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others, […]
After the recent developments, and especially the UK Government’s “Chequers Statement”, a new reality has dawned regarding the outcome of Brexit: there will either be a ‘cliff-edge’ scenario – UK crashing out in 2019 without any deal – or a “3rd country-regime-with-some-but-not-even-remotely-the-same-as-before-advantages”, which we might call ‘soft(er) Brexit’. Thus understood, ‘soft(er)’ Brexit has taken the […]
Recently there’s been a lot of talk about globalisation being pushed back. How would you characterise the situation? I think there was always a deal that permitted globalisation to go ahead. If you think about the 1950s and ‘60s, governments promised their citizens that they would open up the borders but they would protect their […]
When I graduated from high school, my career aspiration was listed on my diploma: Habermas wants to become a journalist, it said. Yet once I began working for the Gummersbach section of the Cologne daily Kölner Stadtanzeiger, and then again when I wrote under Adolf Frisé for the culture pages of the Handelsblatt, it was […]
Since the European Union’s migration crisis peaked in 2015, the number of illegal migrants arriving in the EU has fallen by 95%. Migration challenges remain, and reform of the EU’s methods for managing immigration is desperately needed, as the recent scandalous treatment of the Aquarius rescue vessel, which Italy and Malta turned away, made all too […]
It all felt like the end of a James Bond movie: a flotilla of motorboats sailing across a peaceful lake in a Balkan landscape. On the shores of Lake Prespa, the prime ministers of Greece and soon-to-be North Macedonia had just signed an agreement ending a 27-year dispute. These were historic moments. Protracted international conflicts […]
