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.
I want to start with some advice from George Orwell. In 1940, during the Dunkirk crisis, as the British elite made one blunder after another, Orwell wrote in his diary that, for about 10 years, left wing intellectuals had been able to predict events better than the Cabinet. Orwell said: it was not about any power to […]
Uncoordinated decentralization in collective bargaining can allow companies to reach deals of their own with workers rather than being forced to comply with multi-employer industry-wide agreements negotiated by representative trade unions. What are the social effects and who stands to gain or lose most? Under Emmanuel Macron’s recent labour market reforms SMEs, (small and medium-sized […]
Hungarian voters disenchanted with the cronyism, pseudo-populism and creeping authoritarianism of the ruling Fidesz-KDNP government have a bewildering array of opposition parties to choose from. Indeed, that may be part of the problem. Apart from the MSZP or Hungarian Socialist Party, which evolved from the former Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, they include the Democratic Coalition […]
Observers of German politics are witnessing a rather puzzling drama. More than four months after the election there is still no new government and the last hope to form one hinges on a membership ballot of the Social Democratic party. If party members vote down the coalition agreement, new elections are unavoidable. They would take […]
The Italian parliamentary elections on March 4 are expected to yield no easy results, as no single party is likely to be able to form a government by itself. Who will take charge and what policies will the new government adopt? The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s 2017 Sustainable Governance Indicators on Italy clearly indicate that its most […]
The Polish government has provoked yet another international crisis, this time by adopting a law that is ostensibly meant to combat the phrase “Polish death camps.” The law targets a geographical shorthand, sometimes used abroad, for the extermination camps that the Nazis established on Polish territory during World War II. But there is more to […]
The once-dominant role and current crisis of social democracy in much of Europe in the last century can hardly be understood without analysing the shift from confrontation to compromise in the relationship between the trade union and labour movement and the employers/right-wing forces. This historical compromise between labour and capital was the result of comprehensive […]
The German economy is flourishing, with growth expanding throughout 2017. Unemployment, at under 4 per cent, has never been lower since German reunification in 1990 and equals one of the lowest rates in the EU. Businesses are competing to recruit staff. The employment rate is second only to Sweden’s, and productivity, too, is above the […]
In 2016, the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency created an impression that Eastern European-style populism was engulfing the West. In reality, the situation in Western Europe and the United States is starkly different. As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Goultchin of the Tony Blair Institute […]
Two and a half months before the Hungarian parliamentary elections, the majority of foreign observers have presumptively called the outcome: the ruling party Fidesz will win again, definitively putting an end to democracy. Certainly, there are those who see the Hungarian situation in a more subtle way (the fact that the migration policy of Prime […]
A new wave of rising populism has affected and troubled many industrialized countries in Europe as well as the US. It is not a new phenomenon on either continent. In Europe the most recent trend was triggered by mass arrivals of migrants, most attempting to escape economic misery and political abuse. New right-wing parties have […]
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberalism has been the “only game in town” across the whole of Europe. This is no longer the case. From Helsinki to Warsaw, Rome to Athens, liberals are losing votes to anti-liberal insurgents. The latter represent a very mixed bag, with numerous local variations. Yet they are doing […]
