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.
A decade on from the financial crisis and Europe is finally on a stable path towards recovery, with growing economies and robust improvements in labour market participation in all Member States. However, the long-term implications of the crisis still weigh heavy on Europe’s most disadvantaged youth. The latest data from Eurostat reveals sustained growth in […]
Last week I saw a surprising statistic: the GDP of Russia is of the same order of magnitude as the combined GDP of Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2017 Russian GDP was 1,469 billion dollars (according to the International Monetary Fund). Belgium had a GDP of 491 billion dollars and the Netherlands 824 billion dollars; […]
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) was the strongest party in four elections since multiparty democracy was introduced in 1990. Since 2010, it has suffered three consecutive defeats and a recovery is neither imminent nor automatic. Results: from bad to worse MSZP lost badly in 2010 because of the impact of the 2008-9 global financial crisis, […]
All over the world, populist parties and movements are growing ever more strongly, and established parties appear to lack effective strategies to combat this. A newly-published report from Stockholm-based think tank Futurion confirms that this growing populism can be explained by people’s concerns about what is happening in the labour market. Politicians and many experts […]
The causes and consequences of what is often described as “the rise of populism” are matters of deep dispute. But if there is one thing everyone can agree on, it is that populism is primarily an attack on liberalism. As such, a number of avowed liberals have authored books in which they take a long, […]
There is a palpable sense of gloom and foreboding amongst liberals, moderate conservatives and those on the Left in Hungary following Fidesz’s unexpectedly decisive victory in the April 8 parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Orbán and the Fidesz-KDNP coalition swept to their third successive triumph at the ballot box, gaining two thirds of the seats in […]
Hungary’s Civic Alliance (Fidesz), led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his junior coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Peoples’ Party (KDNP), has decisively won a third super-majority in the country’s national election. Previous wins in 2010 and 2014 have enabled Orbán to radically change the Hungarian constitution. He rolled back democratic checks and balances […]
Along with rising income and wealth inequalities, the share of labour (particularly of unskilled labour) is declining both in rich and poor countries. The institutional factor behind this is, of course, the systematic weakening of labour organisations. Outside of the Nordic countries, union membership among workers is now often in dismal low percentages. In rich […]
The integration of migrants from outside the EU into society is one of the key challenges that the Union must address to maintain social cohesion and equality. This blog piece looks at how well migrants and their descendants have integrated into the labour markets of EU Member States. The classic theory on how migrants and […]
Until the terrorist attack at a market in southern France on March 23, French President Emmanuel Macron had been planning to launch a new European-level political campaign. Though the official rollout has now been postponed, Macron’s latest project remains central to his presidency and to his conception of power. Macron’s “La Grande Marche pour l’Europe” […]
Later this century, when economic historians compare the “Great Recession” that started in 2007 with the Great Depression that started in 1929, they will arrive at two basic conclusions. First, they will say the immediate response of the US Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury to the crisis in 2007 was first-rate, whereas […]
Virtually every month it seems, new controversies emerge swirling around Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and other Silicon Valley companies. The latest controversy, which involved allies of Donald Trump swiping personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users in the US presidential election, is yet another window into the nature of these companies. Before […]
