Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

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

Five Steps To Make Europe More Social

Angelica Schwall-Düren 16th November 2015

Angelica Schwall-Düren

Angelica Schwall-Düren

Europe has delivered considerable benefits to its citizens. Even so, rather than resting on our laurels, and at a time of insecurity and disillusion, we need to reboot the European idea: how better to do this than by strengthening the EU’s social dimension? One of the major tasks faced by the EU will be to systematically develop and adjust social targets (like full employment, fair working conditions, appropriate access to healthcare and a minimum of unemployment benefits) and fundamental rights. After all, the set of social values EU member states have committed to for decades are a unique selling point that Europe needs to defend – and, above all, expand.

The core idea cannot be to replace national systems with a European welfare state. The EU’s motto, ‘United in Diversity,’ applies also to welfare systems. At the same time, we must reconcile EU minimum standards with respect for Member States’ capacities in social policy (e.g. structure, administration and extent of social benefits).

Step By Step Towards A More Social Europe

Here are five bullet points illustrating how we could gradually make Europe more social by creating and/or improving uniform rules.

1. Harmonising taxation across the EU could help put a stop to the ruinous downward spiral towards the lowest taxes. Taxes should, what’s more, be levied where profits are earned. The introduction of a financial transaction tax would immediately deliver several positive effects. First of all, we would make high-frequency trading – a business model that is spreading like wildfire and serves the real economy in no discernible way, instead encouraging speculation and jeopardising the stability of financial markets – unattractive. Revenue generated by such a tax would add resources to local, regional and national governments to be spent on education and infrastructure, for the benefit of individuals and the community.

2.The economic crisis has led to a slump in investment across all of Europe. I welcome the fact that Member States have reached agreement with the European Parliament to launch an EU investment plan in order to back the urgently needed strategy for growth and jobs in crisis-hit countries in particular but also for the benefit of Europe as a whole. With the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) set up to mobilise private investment, market failures can be overcome, new jobs created and cohesion strengthened throughout the Union.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

3. In a pressing future, the EU will have to address youth unemployment truly effectively: it remains staggeringly high in the south of the Eurozone and constitutes a social and political time bomb. The Commission assists Member States in their efforts to combat youth unemployment. The €6bn Youth Guarantee ensures that all young people under the age of 25 receive a high-quality, concrete offer (a job, apprenticeship/traineeship, work experience or continued education) within 4 months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. Still, some problems require more than money to be solved. The private sector, too, is called upon to provide apprenticeships and traineeships, so that this generation – the best-educated ever – can take its rightful place in career and community.

4. The most pressing problem in Europe is how to deal with the current refugee crisis. It is time for more solidarity and shared responsibility. We need to resolve this issue in a sustainable manner, so that those who risk their lives to find safe shelter can indeed be given the protection they are so desperately seeking.

Whilst the Commission’s Agenda on Migration is a useful step forward, the Dublin Regulation is still in force and continues to stipulate that the Member State where a refugee first sets foot on EU territory must accept responsibility for this person and process their application for asylum. Relief to those countries that currently receive the bulk of refugees has so far been provided on a more or less voluntary basis. It is now time to act systematically and consequentially rather than just pay lip service. This requires the introduction of a permanent quota system, and politicians must stop hiding behind the failed Dublin principle. We need a genuine European asylum and migration policy. One of the ways to address this would be a European agency in charge of all asylum procedures, maintaining a number of EU reception centres and supervising Member States’ compliance with minimum standards: ensuring thereby that the burden is fairly distributed throughout the EU. This may sound like a radical proposal but it would be a suitable instrument for getting rid of the uneven qualities among Member State standards as well as the bottlenecks caused by the massing of thousands of refugees in only a few member states.


More on the Refugee Crisis

Stefan Wallaschek The Nansen Passport – A Solution To The Legal Statuses Of RefugeesStefan Wallaschek
Guy Verhofstadt The Turkey Refugee Deal: Europe Sells OutGuy Verhofstadt
Rene Cuperus Refugees: The Bright And Dark Sides Of Modern GermanyRene Cuperus
Sigmar Gabriel This Year Must Be The Year Of Integration If We Want To Solve The Refugee CrisisSigmar Gabriel
Michael Meyer The Coming Wave Of Oil RefugeesMichael Meyer

 

5. To close, let me briefly refer to the introduction of a European unemployment insurance scheme. Owing to many unresolved issues, this is unlikely to be realised in the very near future, but it is still well worth discussing. As recent years have taught us, we need a mechanism of automatic stabilisers for the European economy as a whole. A European unemployment insurance system could help in buffering asymmetric shocks, it would alleviate the burden on the budgets of crisis nations and help them to speedily re-establish growth. Simultaneously, such a system would guarantee a minimum of social security for Europeans in general to rely on in times of crisis. We could demonstrate that the EU is indeed about shared values, focussing on solidarity rather than just on saving banks, and improving people’s lives through active and discernible measures.

Conclusion

These few examples highlight the fact that we can, step by step, get closer to a socially just Europe if we work together. Our aim must be to get rid of the ruinous downward spiral mentioned earlier and put the focus on improving life for Europeans. I see no contradiction between social justice and economic success. They are two sides of the same coin. Europe can and must strive to reach both.

Angelica Schwall-Düren

Angelica Schwall-Düren is a former Minister for Federal Affairs, Europe and the Media of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

You are here: Home / Politics / Five Steps To Make Europe More Social

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

OECD,inflation,monetary The OECD and the Great Monetary RestrictionRonald Janssen
prostitution,Europe,abolition Prostitution is not a free choice for womenLina Gálvez Muñoz
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE 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