politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher. We use the values of freedom, sustainability and equality as the foundation on which we examine society’s most pressing challenges. We are committed to publishing cutting-edge thinking and new ideas from the most thought-provoking people. This archive page brings together Social Europe articles on political issues.
A Greek government forced to bow to the impossible, a referendum brushed aside, the Franco-German partnership damaged, European compromise diplomacy replaced by ultimatums, the euro in limbo, large parts of Europe swept by anti-German fear and resentment and another €83bn sunk into a doomed “rescue package”. Not quite how successful policies are supposed to play […]
During the long night of negotiations over Greece on July 12-13, something fundamental to the European Union cracked. Since then, Europeans have been living in a different kind of EU. What changed that night was the Germany that Europeans have known since the end of World War II. On the surface, the negotiations were about […]
The following is a transcript of a Social Europe podcast in which Social Europe Editor-in-Chief Henning Meyer discusses the impact of the Digital Revolution on the nature of work and inequality with Michael A. Osborne, Associate Professor in Machine Learning and Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment at the University of Oxford. Okay […]
In 2015 the Greek people voted against austerity twice, in a general election and in a referendum. Opinion polls also consistently suggested that an overwhelming majority of Greek people wanted their country to remain in the eurozone and the EU. Are these demands contradictory? Is continued membership of the monetary union incompatible with opposition to […]
European Monetary Union was never a good idea. I remember my surprise when, as a young assistant professor, I realized that I was opposed to the Maastricht Treaty. I believed then – and still do – that European integration is a very good thing. But the textbook economics I was teaching showed how damaging EMU […]
Daniel Munevar is a 30-year-old post-Keynesian economist from Bogotá, Colombia. From March to July 2015 he worked as a close aide to former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, advising him on issues of fiscal policy and debt sustainability. He was previously fiscal advisor to the Ministry of Finance of Colombia and special advisor on Foreign […]
Some people receive benefits they are not entitled to. However, the opposite problem seems much more common: many people in Europe do not receive the benefits they are entitled to under national laws. Public debate has focused on the first issue, while the second has been largely ignored. Eurofound’s research on ‘access to benefits’ addresses […]
I have been helping countries to overcome financial crises for 30 years, and have studied the economic crises of the twentieth century as background to my advisory work. In all crises, there is an inherent imbalance of power between creditor and debtor. Successful crisis management therefore depends on the creditor’s wisdom. In this regard, I […]
We can all recall an enthusiastic Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Shortly before negotiations with Greece broke off at the end of June he supposedly promised Alexis Tsipras an investment package worth €35bn. At first glance this sounded pretty generous, particularly for a country in which, since 2010, the stock of capital has shrunk because Greeks […]
Where there’s a will there’s a way, Chancellor Merkel reminds us. Now that the IMF has revisited the numbers and (again) come up with the unsurprising conclusion that Greek debt is hugely unsustainable, it’s time to revisit the proposal for a Greek asset fund. Like the debt sustainability figures based on growth and budget projections […]
When I was a correspondent in Germany two decades ago, in the run-up to unification and thereafter, interviews with Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other senior politicians – such as Wolfgang Schäuble, who negotiated the two Germanys into one – would always end with the mantra: “We want a European Germany, not a German Europe.” […]
A few years ago, I heard an after-dinner speech from a European statesman, a person who has played a leading role not only in the political life of his own country but in the councils of the EU. The speaker that evening lauded, to general agreement, Europe’s values — its culture, its solidarity — and […]
The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum summed up her study of ways to overcome the politics of fear (The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, 2013) as follows: Our time is genuinely dangerous. As we have seen, many fears are rational, and appeals to fear have a role to play […]
Part of the world is still awash with conflict and poverty. Europe is a haven of peace and prosperity. Unsurprisingly, many people whose home is in the former wish to live in the latter. European policy towards these desires is catastrophically muddled. Yet solutions are not difficult. I will focus on displaced Syrians who comprise […]
The agreement reached in Brussels yesterday between EU governments and Greece came only with a huge loss of mutual trust. It remains to be seen whether the deal in these circumstances will win majority political support. Economically, it would at least offer a small opportunity for a recovery in the Greek economy. But this would […]
Fifteen years ago, in an official European Commission (EC) publication, Klaus-Dieter Borchardt (at that time Chief Administrator at the Commission’s Legal Service) drew attention to the European Union’s striking character as a twofold legal construct: simultaneously a creation of law and a community governed by law, the EU’s most innovative feature, he asserted, is that it seeks […]
Whatever one thinks about the tactics of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government in negotiations with the country’s creditors, the Greek people deserve better than what they are being offered. Germany wants Greece to choose between economic collapse and leaving the eurozone. Both options would mean economic disaster; the first, if not both, would be […]
The latest economic crisis has shown that the claims of the early 2000s that the EU’s common monetary policy would act as a stabilising force for the overall economic cycle has proved unrealistic. Meanwhile, national welfare systems have been tremendously weakened. The recession has thus unveiled the “original sin” of the Economic and Monetary Union […]
Time presses. Given the acute emergency in Greece, the threat of the banking sector’s collapse and the Greek government’s request for a new aid programme, rapid and sustainable economic policy decisions are vital. So the key thing is to concentrate on the core of the matter. A defining perspective is the extremely urgent time sequence. […]
NG/FH: In some sense the diagnosis of a »crisis of democracy« has been in the air for a long time. But in recent years the issue has become more urgent, to the point where people are asking whether even the core countries of the OECD still have »genuine« democracies. Those concerns culminate in the observation […]
Numerous Europeans view Europe as a one-way street: they appreciate its advantages but are little inclined to accept common rules. An increasing number throughout the Union are handing their vote to populist parties – Front National, Syriza, Podemos – that surf on this Eurosceptic wave and rise up against “foreign”- imported constraints. Embroiled with the […]
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