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.
Listening to Europe speak in Bonn, Germany during the recent conference on how to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is possible to be get carried away thinking, nay believing, that the global response is well underway. But it isn’t. Talk of European progress and solidarity with developing countries is not enough. The […]
In electoral terms, 2017 has been a tough year for the centre-left. A suite of elections has taken place across Western Europe and other advanced industrial nations. In most cases, the main social democratic parties lost out. In the Netherlands, Germany, and France, the centre-left has been languishing. Whilst Corbyn-led British Labour has revived the […]
While Germany has been positioned as a global leader in climate legislation, conflict over climate change policy in COP23’s host country left the Bonn conference’s outcomes in a state of uncertainty. Last Friday marked the end of the 23rd annual UN Climate Change Conference, this year in Bonn, Germany. COP23 was a crucial opportunity for […]
What would you say is the current situation of Pasok, the Greek social democratic party? What is the historic position of social democracy in the Greek political system? Given the recent Greek crisis, where does the party now stand? I’ve been working for some 30 years now around the socialist parties. Not only in Greece […]
Sociology, anthropology, and history have been making large inroads into the debate on immigration. It seems that Homo economicus, who lives for bread alone, has given way to someone for whom a sense of belonging is at least as important as eating. This makes one doubt that hostility to mass immigration is simply a protest […]
The failure of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to form a government after the elections a month ago came as a shock for many observers. What has happened to the “leader of the Western World”? Is German power on its “way out”? This perception is wrong. Merkel has never been as strong and successful as […]
It is not always easy to be a small state in a global world. Many small states seek shelter, some by building alliances with larger states, others by joining international organizations such as the European Union. A shelter can be political, military as well as economic. The Nordic and the Baltic States have all sought […]
On 17 November, the European Parliament, Council and Commission proclaimed a European Pillar of Social Rights in Gothenburg. The launch of the Pillar signals a cautious but steady paradigm shift, away from austerity, at least at the level of the Commission. But will it lead to tangible results? In essence, this paradigm shift is a […]
Amid all the crises and upheavals that have battered the European Union over the past decade, one fixed point has been the stolid, stable government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But, following the collapse of talks to form a new coalition, Merkel suddenly seems mortal. While Merkel’s departure may not be imminent, her power is […]
Contrary to widespread belief, Viktor Orbán is not in power in Hungary because he is popular. He enjoys the support of no more than one in four voters. Back in 2006, some 2.6 million voters out of some 8m eligible voters had voted for his party and its allies, and he lost the election. The […]
Over the last few weeks, media around the world have been saturated with stories about how technology is destroying politics. In autocracies like China, the fear is of ultra-empowered Big Brother states, like that in George Orwell’s 1984. In democracies like the United States, the concern is that tech companies will continue to exacerbate political […]
As even its harshest critics concede, neoliberalism is hard to pin down. In broad terms, it denotes a preference for markets over government, economic incentives over social or cultural norms, and private entrepreneurship over collective or community action. It has been used to describe a wide range of phenomena—from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher and […]
