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.
In a recent article in Social Europe, Andrew Watt and Steven Hill contend that the EU “should not fear” secession. The authors argue that Catalonia’s secession from Spain and other potential cases of secession could actually “enhance the European continent’s richness and diversity”, provided the EU can establish criteria “for a rational and forward-looking foundation […]
What would you say is the historic position of the Parti Socialiste in the French political system, and where does it stand after the recent presidential elections? Well, the Socialist Party in France has always been a very specific, atypical type or brand of social democracy. For a very long time, political scientists would even […]
In most conversations and interviews on what’s broadly called populism, “Trump” and “Brexit” are bracketed. These events in the two largest Anglophone countries are taken, without the need for further discussion, to signal a turn to the nationalist right, to take their place with the German Alternative für Deutschland, the French Front National and the […]
What is the historic position of the Australian Labor Party within the country’s political system and where does it currently stand? Australia’s got an interesting story on social democratic politics because it had the first national Labor government in the world, if I remember rightly from my days as a prime minister’s speechwriter. I think […]
José Ortega y Gasset, one of Spain’s pre-eminent intellectuals of the 20th century, wrote in his 1922 seminal work “Invertebrate Spain” that what underpins the existence of nations is not a common history but rather a “compelling project for tomorrow”. For Ortega it was not a shared past that brought and kept diverse peoples together […]
The risk of Romania becoming a new Poland, concerning issues related to the rule of law, is extremely slight. This might seem an optimistic statement while reading the latest communication from the State Department. But, unlike in other countries in the region, the European Union and the United States have an undefeatable ally – Romanian […]
What would you say is the historic position of the Labour Party in the UK political system and where does it currently stand? Certainly, since the Second World War it has been the second or main party in the country – that remains the situation today. It, and the Conservative Party, used to dominate the […]
‘A world-class place to live and work.’ That is how President Juncker described Europe at the summit to formally proclaim the EU Pillar of Social Rights in Gothenburg last month. And he added: ‘Europe is more than just a single market, more than money … It is about our values and the way we want […]
Inequality is the biggest challenge of our time. It undermines social confidence and reduces support for democratic institutions. It lurks behind the new toxic relationship that western societies have established with their future and explains much of recent resentment-driven electoral phenomena and the surge of identity politics with its disruptive backlash. As for the economic […]
COP23 in Bonn sought to maintain the global momentum for ‘green growth’ – to decouple output from greenhouse gas emissions. But the crucial topics of consumption, inequality and unrestrained growth were entirely absent. My recent book seeks to place these issues centre-stage. Consumption. The widening disparity between countries’ territorial and consumption-based emissions is rarely mentioned […]
On 17 November in Gothenburg the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven reiterated the well-known position of many Scandinavian political actors in the European arena, namely that they would oppose any kind of European minimum wage legislation. I thought for many years that Scandinavians sooner or later would take the lead and bring us closer to […]
Why is inequality such a big issue? Why is it so corrosive to societies? I think it became a big issue, because essentially of the crisis. What the crisis did was make people realise that when, for example, their houses were repossessed, or they couldn’t repay the mortgage and so on, actually, they had to […]
