Collective bargaining and social dialogue: part of the solution
There is no real alternative to social dialogue, collective agreements and the voice of workers—even the OECD agrees.
Politics
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher driven by the core values of freedom, sustainability, and equality. These principles guide our exploration of society’s most pressing challenges. This archive page curates Social Europe articles focused on political issues, offering a rich resource for innovative thinking and informed debate.
Material concerns about posting of workers
Legal arguments over the EU posting of workers directive raise the issue of which is to prevail: workers’ rights or unregulated markets?
Germany’s Zeitenwende of 1989-90 and its contemporary European reverberations
Sepia images of the historical sweep via the fall of the Berlin wall to the reunification of Germany, and so of Europe, look much clearer than today’s turning point.
Europe and the tragedy of Israel/Palestine
Amid the intractable struggle in Israel/Palestine for the moral high ground of legitimate victimhood, Europe has a historic responsibility.
The ranks of the working poor
Despite rising employment in many western economies, poverty is not declining. What’s wrong with labour-market policies?
Corbyn’s electoral defeat: myths, causes and lessons
Why did Labour lose so heavily in the UK? Partly it was 'Brexit', partly Corbyn.
The green agenda—a social and geopolitical tool
The European green agenda is key to saving the planet—but it could also save an enlightenment-based multilateral order from nationalist irrationalism.
A fair Brexit
For the free-market Tory right, Brexit is a means towards a beggar-my-neighbour buccaneering adventure—not ‘future relations’ to which the EU27 can agree.
The neoliberal far right in Poland
Confederation, the new force on the far right in Poland which broke through in the parliamentary elections, is the party of (male) privilege, not precarity.
Interregnum or transformation?
Sheri Berman warns that, however self-evident the crisis of this neoliberal phase of capitalism may appear, it will not automatically collapse.
Why should just transition be an integral part of the European Green Deal?
In our series on ‘just transition’, Béla Galgóczi focuses on what it means for the key sectors of coal and cars.
A Just Transition Fund: one step on a long march
Continuing our series on a ‘just transition’, Ludovic Voet stresses that allocating European funding is no substitute for a strategy to achieve it.
Reimagining a just transition
Éloi Laurent opens a Social Europe series on the ‘just transition’ by framing it in the context of the social-ecological state.
Europe’s ‘soft-core’ future of differentiated integration
The best model for the EU is one of differentiated integration—but with a soft rather than a hard core of member states.
Orwell in Brussels and the future of social dialogue
The concept of social dialogue has become empty rhetoric, divorced from reality.
Calling time on violence against women in the workplace
On International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, over 50 female union leaders urge stronger action by the incoming European Commission.
Five lessons for journalism in the age of rage
For Karin Pettersson, journalism has never been more challenging—and never more important.