Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher driven by the core values of freedom, sustainability, and equality. These principles guide our exploration of society’s most pressing challenges. This archive page curates Social Europe articles focused on political issues, offering a rich resource for innovative thinking and informed debate.
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 […]
The International Monetary Fund has been caught, red handed, plotting to stage a “credit event” that forces Greece to the edge of bankruptcy, using the pretext of the Brexit referendum. No, this is not the plot of the next Bond movie. It is the transcript of a teleconference between the IMF’s chief negotiator, Poul Thomsen and Delia […]
All over the world today, there is a sense of the end of an era, a deep foreboding about the disintegration of previously stable societies. In the immortal lines of W.B. Yeats’s great poem, “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… The best lack all […]
During a recent visit to the United Kingdom, I was struck by the extent to which the question of whether the country should remain in the European Union is dominating the media, boardroom discussions, and dinner conversations. While slogans and sound bites capture most of the attention, deeper issues in play leave the outcome of […]
Something peculiar is happening. Up until recently, many central bankers were looking at robust collective bargaining and wage formation systems as a possible source for inflationary wage developments. Indeed, central banks, and the ECB in particular, have on numerous occasions called for more flexible and decentralised (read: weakened) wage bargaining systems so as to remove […]
For a great many voters, the side they will end up taking in the referendum will be a verdict on the kind of country we have become and how we got here. Voter stereotypes are often wrong. Forget Mondeo Man and Worcester Women: there was – is – nothing special about them. On most issues, […]
Shortly after his appointment, the new President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised to strengthen the social dimension of the European Union. The so-called ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ (EPSR) is a central element of his project. Recently, the Commission published a first draft version of how the EPSR could look. The EPSR has […]
When it comes to the rise in economic inequality since the 1970s in the United States and some other advanced economies, it doesn’t really matter which measure of income distribution we choose: They all show the increase. And, while many competing explanations have been proposed, we do not need to agree about causes to concur […]
In three months, British citizens will have to decide whether or not to remain in the European Union. But they are not the only ones who must consider their political future. The upcoming referendum also poses two important questions for the rest of Europe. The first question is which outcome Europeans would and should prefer. […]
Living in a post-modern city like New York has many advantages but some disadvantages too. Among the latter is the absence of bookstores. Practically the only bookstore that I go to in midtown Manhattan is owned by Kinokuniya, a Japanese company, and it carries some 90% Japanese books, whether in Japanese or in English, by […]
The Democratic Party establishment has recently found itself discomforted by Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign to return the party to its modern roots of New Deal social democracy. The establishment’s response has included a complex coupling of elite media and elite economics opinion aimed at promoting an image of Sanders as an unelectable extremist with unrealistic […]
Let me start by enquiring about the importance assumed by inequality in the public debate during these last years. As we know, inequality has been marginalised both in academia and in politics – also and especially on the left, which should have been the most sensitive to social issues. Then, all at once, with the […]
I used to enjoy researching European integration because the subject struck me as a rich laboratory for distilling evidence on the dark undersides of national governments. I have learned quite a bit about how the governments of my original and adopted countries (Turkey and the UK) defended the ‘national interest’ in Europe. My reading of […]
In February 1991, presidents of three nascent European democracies convened at a castle near Budapest to proclaim their common desire to return to Europe. The venue, called Visegrad, was steeped in history: in 1335, it hosted a peace congress of Bohemian, Hungarian and Polish kings. Today, twenty-five years after its birth at the presidential summit, […]
The UK’s referendum on EU membership will be keenly observed by Irish citizens, given the close ties between the two countries. Paul Gillespie writes that a Brexit could be highly disruptive for Ireland, and would likely have a particularly large impact in Northern Ireland, where the issue of Irish unity could be pushed on to the public […]
A new labour law, commonly referred to as the ‘El Khomri law’ after the French Minister of Labour, Myriam El Khomri, has generated significant attention in France over recent weeks. Bob Hancké assesses what the new law achieves, why it is here, and what it means for the country moving forward. The recent furore in France over […]
Reducing taxes on labour – personal income taxes and employers’ and employees’ social security contributions – is often seen as key to increasing employment levels. The latest crop of country-specific recommendations issued by the European Commission is a case in point. But the rationale for such a ‘tax shift’ is relatively weak. For most countries, it is likely to […]
Haven’t we all had enough of the doom-mongers predicting the end of the EU? Of comparisons to the last days of the Roman Empire or – worse still – the violent break-up of Yugoslavia? And yet it’s true that EU leaders are offering few ‘reasons to be cheerful’ these days. Throughout history, trade unions have […]
Statutory minimum wages are an important instrument for ensuring decent pay for work and avoiding a race to the bottom in living standards. Twenty-two EU Member states have a generally applicable statutory minimum wage. Recent discussions among social actors about exemptions from minimum wages for refugees so as to ensure faster labour market integration have […]
Perhaps the only surprising thing about the populist backlash that has overwhelmed the politics of many advanced democracies is that it has taken so long. Even two decades ago, it was easy to predict that mainstream politicians’ unwillingness to offer remedies for the insecurities and inequalities of our hyper-globalized age would create political space for demagogues with […]
At the beginning of 2016, the European Union agreed new rules for bank bail-ins. This new era in policies to combat financial market crises came after a long period characterized by bank “bail out” interventions. In 2008, less than two weeks after the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, Europe started facing a similar crisis to the US […]