Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Europe’s Economic Recovery Continues In Times Of Political Instability

Juan Menéndez-Valdés 26th June 2018

Juan Menéndez-Valdés

Juan Menéndez-Valdés

Europe is showing visible signs of progress; in most countries, labour markets are healthier than they have been in a decade, with more people active and in work than ever before, while social exclusion is declining. However, it is also a continent in transition, where an imbalance in opportunities for prosperity and quality of life – depending on where you live or which particular social group you belong to – directly determines to what extent you have felt this recovery.

2017 was a good year for a number of European economies: more people than ever were either employed or looking for work – with the EU activity rate at a record high of 73.5% in 2017. Unemployment continued to drop steadily overall in the EU, falling to 7.3%, and even the perennially problematic issue of youth unemployment showed signs of improvement.

The recovery in growth and jobs contributed to an increase in disposable income for many people, resulting in a decline in feelings of social exclusion and an increase in living standards. Eurofound’s fourth European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) showed overall progress in most dimensions of quality of life, quality of society, and accessibility and quality of most public services, many of which returned to pre-crisis levels.

While these are undeniable achievements, other dimensions of the employment narrative are cause for concern, such as the fact that there are still not enough jobs for those in search of full-time work; that a relatively large group of people have become detached from the labour market, remaining economically inactive despite wanting to work; and that a substantial number of workers still struggle with relative poverty.

In some southern European Member States, economic growth has still not resulted in a full rebound from the 2008 financial crisis. Employment has shifted from south to north as a result of the crisis, with Germany and the UK accounting for most of the new jobs created in the EU between 2008 and 2016. Greece is far from having returned to a sustainable recovery, and jobs lost in Italy and Spain have not been fully regained despite recent growth. Somehow the EU engine for convergence, which historically helped narrow the gap between Member States, seems to be stuck in first gear for some countries – in the case of Greece, it could be argued that it has stalled almost entirely.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The crisis has also left a legacy of workers increasingly distant from the labour market: almost half of the EU unemployed are long-term unemployed, the majority of them for more than 18 months. Nearly half of long-term unemployed young people have been jobless for more than two years.

Beyond unemployment, many workers want to work more hours. In 2017, 10 million people were working part time involuntarily. This phenomenon is concentrated in the lower-paid, lower-skilled end of economic activity. In the years following the financial crisis, 29% of involuntary part-time workers were considered ‘working poor’. That was also the situation for 25% of self-employed workers without employees.

Are people really more optimistic?

Respondents to the most recent EQLS reported higher levels of optimism than respondents to the previous survey, conducted in 2011. However, as the figure below illustrates, optimism was much lower when they considered their children’s future.

valdes graph01

People in many EU Member States are less optimistic about their children’s and grandchildren´s future than their own – this trend is often more pronounced in Europe’s most advanced economies.

Despite the overall improvements, disparities in quality of life are apparent among different social groups, varying according to gender, age, employment status and income. Differences are also widespread across Member States: countries that scored high on most indicators in previous waves also did well in 2016, while countries that scored poorly continue to do so.

While tensions between most groups in society have eased, there is a growing perception of tensions between religious groups and ethnic groups. In 2016, 38% of people responding to the EQLS perceived a lot of tension between religious groups, an increase of 10 percentage points in five years. Likewise, 41% of EQLS respondents reported a lot of tension between ethnic groups, 4 percentage points more than in the previous survey.

There is a lack of clarity regarding immigration in Europe, and at times a disconnect between evidence and public perception. A special Eurobarometer report published in April this year found that a minority (37%) of Europeans think that they are well informed about immigration and integration-related matters, and that respondents tend to grossly overestimate the number of non-EU immigrants in Europe. What is clear is that the integration of migrants and refugees is an issue of increasing importance in European politics and society.

As quality of life and society has improved in several dimensions, so has trust in national institutions in many Member States. Trust in national governments recovered to pre-crisis levels in most countries, but trust in the EU – traditionally higher than trust in national governments – has remained stagnant. Beyond the predictable lower trust in the EU reported by citizens in the UK and Greece, other countries such as Italy and France, traditionally amongst the more Europhile, also reported worryingly low levels.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

It all seems that, even if the EU advances as a whole, lower optimism in the longer term, imbalances between countries and societal groups, and concerns about security, among other factors, have sewn the seeds of doubt about the EU’s capacity to secure a better future. Given the shrinking weight of Europe in the world and its declining proportion of the world’s population, it is clear that multinational cooperation is the sensible way forward, but history has shown that periods of integration are often followed by periods of geo-political disaggregation. If the EU does not succeed in convincing the public of its ability to deliver for all, bridging divides between countries and citizens, many may turn towards populist and nationalist promises, ignoring the lessons from the past.

Back to social Europe

2017 marked 60 years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome. Over half a century later, the EU has managed to secure peace and freedom in Europe – a remarkable achievement that we too often take for granted. As the prospect of war and conflict, as well as challenges to democracy, in Europe have gradually receded from the consciousness of Europeans, people now want and expect more. The objectives are tangible prosperity and greater equality between countries and between citizens, values much associated with the so-called European Social Model.

The EU has understood this and has formally put Social Europe back at the top of the agenda. The European Pillar of Social Rights – proclaimed at the Gothenburg Social Summit in November 2017 – is clear evidence of this. Its goal is to rebalance the social and economic priorities of the EU to ensure the promised ‘social triple A’ across the Union.

Effective implementation is now the priority for the EU, the Member States, the social partners and all political actors. Sound evidence on which to base priorities and design better policies that reach all countries and all societal groups is necessary. The objective of these policies should be not only to further improve the lives of people living and working in Europe, but to promote balanced progress that does not leave particular countries or individual groups behind, and to reassure the most vulnerable that prosperous and secure lives can be also expected in the long run for their children and grandchildren.

For more detail of this analysis, see the report Living and working in Europe 2017

This column is sponsored by Eurofound.
Juan Menéndez-Valdés

Juan Menéndez-Valdés is the director of Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Prior to assuming the position in 2010, he was the head of employment, immigration, education and training policies at the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisation (CEOE) and programme manager for guidance and training at the Spanish National Institute for Employment (INEM).

You are here: Home / Economy / Europe’s Economic Recovery Continues In Times Of Political Instability

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube