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 June 2017, the Eurogroup of 19 EU finance ministers agreed to pay out the third tranche of €8.5 billion from the Greek bailout package. In total, Greece has received about €300bn from the rescue package until now. But did this incredibly high amount of money reach the Greek population? Did its living conditions improve? […]
A quarter of a century ago the economic policies of Sweden’s Social Democrats faced harsh criticism from political opponents as well as from academics. The party had governed the country continuously from 1932 to 1976, mostly in minority government, and then again 1982-1991 (and yet again 1994-2006 and from 2014 to date). Some critics thought […]
For years Poland was depicted as a success story in the great transformation of Central and Eastern Europe. A democratic system was built swiftly, with stable institutions. At the international level, Poland aspired to be a bridge between East and West. Economic growth continued despite the financial crisis, resulting in improved social conditions and living […]
The aftershocks of the Great Recession are still being felt. The trail of suffering in the shape of unemployment and destruction of wealth has transformed the map-making of the western world, ending up by provoking a real geopolitical recession with an Anglo-American epicentre aka the cradle of global capitalism. Likewise, the coordinates of the political […]
The European Union is characterized by different national social polices (although they are less clearly demarcated than in the past). The Nordic countries present high levels of social expenditure (around 30% of GDP in Denmark, Finland and Sweden), while the continental ones (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg) have an intermediate level of expenditure (on […]
An interesting disagreement occurred this week between Martin Sandbu and the Economist, which prompted a subsequent letter from Philippe Legrain (see also Martin again here). The key issue is whether the German current account surplus, which has steadily risen from a small deficit in 2000 to a large surplus of over 8% of GDP, is […]
Donald Trump came, he saw, he conned. The US president’s trip to Poland, a stop on his way to the G20 summit in Hamburg, was arranged at the last minute: Trump’s administration, fearing the reception he would receive in the United Kingdom, decided that Europe’s most pro-American country was a much safer destination. And, indeed, […]
In George Orwell’s bleakly prophetic novel, 1984, Oceania’s totalitarian regime strives to mobilise popular support by holding up the figure of Emmanuel Goldstein as a mortal threat to the state and its citizens: He was the primal traitor…all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was […]
The last French presidential election and the recent legislative elections confirmed a seemingly unstoppable declining trend in the electoral support of social democratic parties. For the second time in the last fifteen years, the official candidate of the French Socialist Party (PS) was excluded from the second round; in both cases, the “outsider” was represented […]
The migration crisis has rumbled on for the last two years since it developed as a major issue in Polish politics dividing the main parties in the run up to the most recent October 2015 parliamentary election. Along with the three other Central European ‘Visegrad’ countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia – the […]
Politics brings out strong emotions in everyone. Even the British, despite their reputation for pursuing their interests in a cool and calm fashion, apparently are not immune. Perhaps that reputation is merely a holdover from the long-gone British Empire. It surely does not apply to the United Kingdom of 2017. Consider the political decisions Britons […]
Free trade agreements (FTAs) are growing in number and the inclusion in them of labour provisions seeking to improve working conditions are also increasing. A recent study by the ILO found that over 80 per cent of preferential trade agreements that have come into force since 2013 have included such provisions. The European Union (EU), […]
