Social Europe articles on politics

Will the period of postings be shortened from 24 months to 12 (with a potential 6-month extension) as proposed last week by the negotiators on behalf of the European Parliament, the Council and Commission? The current talks between European Parliament and EU Council on amendments to the Posted Workers Directive may well be concluded during the current […]

More EU citizens work than ever recorded. Twelve million moved into work in just the past four years. That is more than the total population of Belgium or Greece. That’s the exciting news. But what will it mean for Europe’s poor? At the latest count, some 119 million or 23.7 % of the EU population are still […]

Productivity is not everything, but many economic problems can be solved more easily when it grows at a healthy clip. It is the key determinant of a country’s present and future standard of living. But, as it happens, since the oil crisis of the early seventies its growth rates have declined decade after decade in […]

There is little disagreement among political philosophers, democratic theorists or empirical researchers that freedom and equality are the two core principles of liberal democracy. What is highly disputed, however, is the meaning of these two democratic principles and the proper relation between them that makes for a good political order. Here we focus on the […]

Last year was an ‘annus horribilis’ for the European left. In Austria, France, and the Czech Republic, the left lost its governing position, and the same might occur in Italy in a few weeks. Today, only Portugal, Greece, Sweden, Slovakia, and Malta are governed by the left. The 2017 collapse was precipitous. The Dutch Workers’ […]

Measures to promote gender pay transparency haven’t been delivered yet in half of Europe – making EU level legislative action to speed up implementation an option. Here’s what we know about the measures from countries that have been early adopters. The aim of overcoming differences in pay between men and women has been in the […]

What exactly is happening in Catalonia? The territory is one of the Comunidades Autónomas, a category of Spanish sub-state entities, and amongst all of them, Catalonia already enjoys a higher degree of autonomy and powers than most of its peers. But its political nature and future are being hotly debated. Anybody could be forgiven for […]

In the wake of the Brexit shock and the election of Donald Trump, commentators would be forgiven for fearing – perhaps even expecting – a collapse in 2017. On this, their fears were to prove unfounded. As is generally the case in ‘normal’ elections, the populists did not win. Instead, last year saw two distinct counter-populism […]