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.
Recent discussions about the “advent of robots” have some rather unusual features. The threat of robots replacing humans is seen as something truly novel, possibly changing our civilization and way of life. But in reality this is nothing new. Introduction of machinery to replace repetitive (or even more creative) labor has been applied on a […]
Many of us remember the 1970s for its music and fashion, but we should also take a lesson from its mistaken beliefs. Without easy access to data or analyses of social trends, some ideas about the workings of nature and society were completely backward. Today, we know things that were simply unknowable back then. If […]
For the past several centuries, the world has experienced a sequence of intellectual revolutions against oppression of one sort or another. These revolutions operate in the minds of humans and are spread – eventually to most of the world – not by war (which tends to involve multiple causes), but by language and communications technology. […]
Whilst Europe is fiddling and dallying on the Syrian front, sub-Saharan Africa is burning and Europe seems to be totally unable to do anything about it. By ignoring the long-term consequences of the growing poverty across most of the continent, we are ignoring the fact that across the Mediterranean we have not just a few million […]
For several weeks, streets in Budapest, as elsewhere in Hungary, have been awash with government-funded placards representing an overt incitement to racial and religious hatred. Far from portraying those fleeing to Europe from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries as genuine asylum seekers, escaping brutal and apparently intractable civil conflicts, the posters characterise them as […]
As the UN Refugee Summit draws near, within Europe the notion of international protection is being honoured in the breach. New reports of refused asylum seekers being sent from Greece to Turkey, in the absence of legal assistance or oversight, came after Human Rights Watch published a report last week in which it condemned the […]
Will Brexit turn out to be, all things considered, a good thing? I very much doubt it. Essentially because what it amounts to is that a big chunk of the European population is opting out, for an indefinite future, of a major process of civilization. Civilization? Yes, civilization, that is progress from violence to negotiation […]
Democracy is built on the values of citizenship and the equal freedom of each and every individual. The rights and duties of each citizen entail recognition of the equal standing of every member of the political community in the democratic process. Recognition of the other is built into the fabric of democratic societies even though […]
Last month, 50 former national security officials who had served at high levels in Republican administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush published a letter saying they would not vote for their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump. In their words, “a President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation.” Simply […]
Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one […]
There are limits to the effectiveness of Member States’ pension reforms… Europe, it’s often said, is experiencing a worsening ageing crisis. European governments grappling with this and the related unsustainability of many pension schemes have taken measures to keep older workers longer in employment. But reforms such as raising the pension age and discouraging early […]
As the weather cools and Europeans get back to work after the summer break, the temperature of the EU trade policy row is hotting up. With the date set for the signing of the controversial EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in October drawing nearer, positions are hardening. On 17 September, Germans and Austrians […]
