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Will this be the last European Gas Conference?Ecology

Will this be the last European Gas Conference?

Pascoe Sabido

The IPCC says the world is in the last-chance saloon. Yet fossil-gas executives eye deals next week in Vienna.

Confronting the global water crisisEcology

Confronting the global water crisis

Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Johan Rockström and 1 more

To safeguard this most fundamental natural resource, we urgently need a global strategy for water as a common good.

Hungary’s ‘propaganda machine’ attacks womenPolitics

Hungary’s ‘propaganda machine’ attacks women

Lucy Martirosyan

Report highlights gendered disinformation online and calls for women-centred reform of ‘social media’ platforms.

Environmental stewardship yes, ‘carbon farming’ noEcology

Environmental stewardship yes, ‘carbon farming’ no

Wijnand Stoefs

Preserving nature, restoring soils and safeguarding biodiversity is essential—but calling it carbon removal is harmful.

Checking the populist tide—for nowPolitics

Checking the populist tide—for now

Vít Dostál

Can the Czech Republic keep bucking the populist trend in central Europe affecting Poland, Slovakia and Hungary?

The IRA and European industrial policyEconomy

The IRA and European industrial policy

Paul Sweeney

With the US turning interventionist, the EU will look foolish still backing ‘free markets’. Time for an enterprise policy.

The shakeup the World Bank needsEconomy

The shakeup the World Bank needs

Ana Palacio

If Ajay Banga is confirmed as World Bank president he will have to meet the demands of a global south eager for change.

Moldova first domino in a Russian plan for escalation?Politics

Moldova first domino in a Russian plan for escalation?

Stefan Wolff

Events in Georgia represent a setback for Russia’s meddling in the post-Soviet neighbourhood. But they are no sign it will end.

Separate and unequal: gender segregation at workEconomy

Separate and unequal: gender segregation at work

Mary McCaughey

Gender segregation in sectors, occupations and roles still sees women persistently losing out.

Will tech layoffs silence or galvanise tech workers?Economy

Will tech layoffs silence or galvanise tech workers?

Tom Cassauwers

Mass layoffs have hit large technology companies. Previously well-paid workers suddenly became the target of brutal firings.

Disaster in Greece: when politics goes off the railsPolitics

Disaster in Greece: when politics goes off the rails

Ifigenia Moumtzi

The government’s efforts to deflect responsibility for the train disaster have failed to contain public outrage.

How to promote green industry beyond subsidiesEcology

How to promote green industry beyond subsidies

Patrick ten Brink and Luke Haywood

The EU has more to offer green industry—a stronger regulatory framework and credible carbon pricing.

The myth of meritocracy and the populist threatSociety

The myth of meritocracy and the populist threat

Lisa Pelling

Social democrats, Lisa Pelling writes, should abandon the idea of meritocracy if they are to reconnect with les classes populaires.

Germany trapped in an unavoidable changePolitics

Germany trapped in an unavoidable change

William Desmonts

Germany has made significant strides to transcend ordoliberal nostra. But huge obstacles still stand in the way of progress.

Impartiality and public-service mediaSociety

Impartiality and public-service media

Robin Wilson

The media storm in Britain around a television personality speaks volumes about why the UK has become a dysfunctional state.

Corporate greenwashing—misusing ‘net zero’ pledgesEcology

Corporate greenwashing—misusing ‘net zero’ pledges

Lindsay Otis

Companies are making ‘carbon neutral’ claims based on dubious emissions offsetting and ‘insetting’—rather than actual cuts.

Invisible women—creators, carers and mental healthSociety

Invisible women—creators, carers and mental health

Estrella Durá Ferrandis and Cristina Lago Godefroid

The European mental-health strategy should recognise the burdens women face—and the role of culture in lightening them.

How to strengthen women’s resilience to disastersSociety

How to strengthen women’s resilience to disasters

Magdalena Sepúlveda

Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, whose consequences compound it.

A conjured-up polarisation endangers democracyPolitics

A conjured-up polarisation endangers democracy

Johanna Lutz

European societies are less polarised than in the United States—and than we are led to believe.

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 four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

#AskTheExpert webinar—Key ingredients for the future of work: job quality and gender equality

Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


WATCH HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Let’s end involuntary unemployment!

What is the best way to fight unemployment? We want to know your opinion, to understand better the potential of an EU-wide permanent programme for direct and guaranteed public-service employment.

In collaboration with Our Global Moment, Fondazione Pietro Nenni and other progressive organisations across Europe, we launched an EU-wide survey on the perception of unemployment and publicly funded jobs, exploring ways to bring innovation in public sector-led job creation.


TAKE THE SURVEY 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.


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