Social Europe

Accessibility can improve everyone’s lives

In a digitalised world, accessibility is ever more at a premium for the visually impaired—who should be involved in finding solutions.

Killing Twitter

Elon Musk claims he bought the platform to ‘help humanity’ by investing in a public good—the world’s digital town square. But it’s the people, not the pavement, that make the town square.

Injustice is fuelling Europe’s energy crisis

Europe needs to shift from a system locked into climate-wrecking fuels, extractivism and autocracies—towards ‘energy justice’.

Europe’s 2050 mission to a future-fit economy

Lydia Korinek and Jakob Hafele

The step up to a sustainable economy is steep, but it is achievable with political leadership and unshackled public investment.

European Child Guarantee: making it a reality

Bruno Ribeiro Barata, Ally Dunhill and Enrico Paolo Tormen

Portugal, whose national plan is launched today, offers a model for a transversal and localised approach.

Today’s far right and the echoes from history

Robert Misik argues today’s extreme right is sponsoring a brutalisation comparable to historical fascism.

Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—Hungary

Stephen Pogány

For the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the European Union is the enemy, not Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Progress and setbacks from COP27

Patrick ten Brink, Luke Haywood, Katy Wiese and 1 more

The European Union cannot rely on the United Nations process to deliver and must reinforce its own climate efforts.

Ukraine: sustaining inter-community ties

Kseniya Rubicondo

How have those Ukrainians on the ground committed to integration reacted to the invasion? Stories from its Intercultural Cities network offer inspiration.

Energy bills: direct payments needed, not fossil subsidies

Subsidising high energy costs might seem the obvious answer to the cost-of-living crisis—but it’s not.

World Cup clampdown on rainbow armbands

Sophie King-Hill

The international football governing body’s action in Qatar conflicts with its own guidance on human rights.

Pre-empting the coming world war

Despite Ukraine, Paul Mason writes, Europe is still not awake to the security threat it faces.

Europe’s winter of change: break-up or breakthrough?

This winter, the European Union is facing a multidimensional crisis which could exacerbate intra-EU divisions and power asymmetries.

The monetary tightening trap

The over-reliance on interest-rate increases will likely lead to economic disaster in low- and middle-income countries.

What Lula must do

Facing a deeply divided country and mounting global crises, Brazil’s president-elect has his work cut out.

Pay gaps between firms driving wage inequality

Inter-firm differences are not only widening wage gaps but also threaten wider social division among workers.

Setting human-rights due diligence back on track

A carve-out for the finance sector would water down the ambition of the EU’s human-rights due-diligence legislation.

Interest-rate rises versus the public interest

Andris Šuvajevs

In going along with rate rises, European governments are saving the European Central Bank—not their societies.

The most wonderful time of the year

The splurge of Christmas consumerism, especially in Britain, Kate Pickett writes, is partly driven by status anxiety.

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.

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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.

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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 will be exploring 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.

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FEPS Primers series

Discover the new FEPS Primers series. Designed with an educational purpose, they represent a prominent tool in the new FEPS training strategy. The EU and Gender Equality, by Agnès Hubert, explores the progress and hurdles in the fight for equality between women and men at the EU level. The Progressive Potential of the EU, by Richard Corbett, takes a comprehensive look at the history of the EU, its decision-making structures and the areas worthy of reform. The subsequent primers, by Arancha González Laya, on trade, and Stephen Minas, on climate, will be ready very soon. Stay tuned!

AVAILABLE HERE

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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