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.
Most advocates of basic income only answer the arguments of the right – mainly concerning the willingness to work – and never imagine there can be valid arguments for the left to resist their proposals. In that sense we have to be grateful to Philippe van Parijs that he addresses social democracy specifically in his […]
A key priority for EU policy makers is to combat high levels of youth unemployment. Supporting young people to start a new business is increasingly regarded as a way to achieve this goal. And yet the understanding of what drives the success and failure of youth entrepreneurship policies remains incomplete. In a rush to deliver […]
From the rubble of two world wars, European countries came together to launch what would become the world’s largest experiment in unification and cooperative, shared sovereignty. But, despite its impressive achievements over the decades, the European project now risks disintegration. An unresolved financial crisis, a refugee crisis, a deteriorating security environment, and a stalled integration […]
The asylum policy that emerged from the European Union’s negotiations last month with Turkey became effective on April 4, when 202 asylum-seekers were deported from Greece. The policy has four fundamental flaws. It was negotiated with Turkey and imposed on the EU by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is severely under-funded. It is not voluntary, […]
National borders are a reality – and for most people, they are something that is taken for granted and indeed necessary. But are they really the normal state of affairs? A critical and historical approach suggests this is in fact a very recent development. By recognising this, we can start to open our minds to […]
Claims and counter-claims about how much it costs the UK to belong to the European Union abound. Unsurprisingly, both sides of the debate cherry-pick the statistics that support their side of the argument, but both are also prone to misrepresent the facts and to neglect data that tell a different story. Part of the explanation […]
John Quiggin starts a recent post on Crooked Timber (more below) with the warning ‘Amateur political analysis ahead’, and that applies even more to what follows. I start with the UK, but then broaden the discussion out. A recent piece by Steve Richards for The Independent has some similarities to a recent post of mine trying to explain the […]
The paradox of the EU referendum campaign is that all of Mr Cameron’s political foes want him to win and many of his political comrades want him to lose and hand over to an isolationist Prime Minister. So far the campaign has been a civil war in the Conservative Party rather like the legendary Irish […]
When voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls on June 23 to decide whether their country should leave the European Union, the issues they will have to reckon with will include the impact of their decision on unemployment, trade flows, and the stability of financial markets. But there are other less quantifiable considerations […]
As the crisis around changes implemented to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal continues, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has opened up a new conflict through an attack on the reproductive rights of women. This is significant as it would not only mean making abortion completely illegal in Poland, but also shows how the country is […]
2016 was supposed to have been the year of Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton: the year when the established Bush dynasty confronted the upstart rival Clinton Dynasty. But the year of the insider has turned into the year of the outsider. On both sides, voters have unexpectedly given vent to thirty years of accumulated anger […]
France has not been short of controversial discussions in the past few months, in a context dominated by the terrorist threat. A few days ago, President Hollande closed a painful chapter by dropping the project of constitutional revision that would have made it possible to strip convicted terrorists of French citizenship. Since then, however, the […]
