Category: Society - Page 35

EU-Mercosur free-trade pact risks irreversible destruction

With environment issues rising quickly up the EU agenda, it’s time to get trade and ecological policies into coherent alignment.

The row over the EU introducing vaccine export controls has occluded its rejection of a temporary waiver on intellectual property rights.

The European Year of Rail can support the Green Deal and sustainable recovery. Europe needs more international trains with easier booking.

The attack on the US Capitol revealed the dangers of Big Tech media platforms—but envisaged EU competition laws won’t fix them.

The pandemic has highlighted a longer-term failure adequately to address the working conditions of cultural professionals in Europe.

School closures during the pandemic have hit socially excluded students hard. The EU needs to ensure every child can reach their potential.

Having squandered past opportunities and shirked previous commitments, we now must start making up for lost time.

The language of the Brexit stand-off is of a ‘level playing-field’ versus ‘sovereignty’. But beneath that, it’s about divergent social models.

The coronavirus crisis has highlighted how the welfare state of the future must be built on an ethic of care rather than self-interest.

The pandemic has reinforced the case for egalitarianism to define the ethos of the welfare state.

With a Digital Services Act in the offing, regulation of platforms can make public-interest journalism sustainable again.

The irony of genuinely ‘free trade’ is only regulation enables it. Europe cannot lead the ecological transition without recognising this.

The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of social protection, especially in the developing world. A new global fund is needed—and it’s affordable.

The European Commission is caught between the needs of frontline states receiving refugees and those in the rear resisting responsibility-sharing.

Europe has the chance to revolutionise how people and goods move and help cap global warming, while creating jobs and improving health.