Anna Diamantopoulou

Anna Diamantopoulou is President of DIKTYO Network for Reform in Greece and Europe (www.todiktio.eu), a former EU Commissioner and former Greek Minister.

Anna Diamantopoulou

Populism And Social Democracy’s Distress

Anna Diamantopoulou 1st September 2016

The EU’s political landscape is being transformed as the economic and the refugee crises intertwine with terror. Populism is becoming consistently a rising force across Europe. Manifested in left- or right-wing varieties, populism either “defends” the poor against the elites and neoliberalism, or alternatively, the country’s national identity against Islamists and foreigners by thriving on […]

Growth, Not Grexit

Anna Diamantopoulou 13th February 2015

The message from the Greek election must not be misunderstood. The fact that more than 36% of the country’s voters cast their ballots for Syriza, a far-left political party, does not mean that Greece has suddenly become communist. Rather, the electorate was expressing its indignation, despair, and wounded national pride. Greece’s European partners need to understand […]

A Binding Social Agenda For The European Union

Anna Diamantopoulou 3rd July 2014

The recent European Parliament election results revealed a reality that is uncomfortable and challenging both politically and socioeconomically. At the political level, we are witnessing in practice the rise of euroscepticism, nationalism and anti-Europeanism. At the socio-economic level, inequalities among and within Member States are evident, demonstrable and rising. Considerable institutional deficiencies, high rates of […]

The Mediterranean Gods Cannot Do It Alone

Anna Diamantopoulou 17th March 2014

The ancient’s world geopolitical center, the cradle of civilization, the Mediterranean Basin; a unique location with some of the world’s most important geostrategic corners. Life has not been boring in the Basin and continues to be so. This region has been witnessing wars, revolutions, regime upheavals, political instability, religious conflicts, ethnic conflicts over democracy and […]

Recovery from Covid-19: the changing structure of employment in the EU

Eurofound’s new publication Recovery from COVID-19: The Changing Structure of Employment in the EU shows that European labour markets recovered strongly from the pandemic, before the onset of the disruptions from Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and related cost-of-living increases. The report summarises labour-market developments in 2020 and 2021 using quarterly data from the EU Labour Force Survey, presenting information from a structural perspective, with a focus on sector-level and occupation-level data, and key demographic variables: gender and age.

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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!

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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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Minimum income across all ages: a focus on elderly people

The risk of poverty is a key issue for European countries. Irrespective of the uneven evolution of that risk—a sharp increase in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008 followed by an overall decrease in the past few years—people at risk of poverty represent a key target of social-protection and social-assistance schemes across the European Union member states and a persistent challenge for policy-makers. This paper explores some of the many dimensions of old-age poverty and considers the possibility of addressing at least some of them by means of a guaranteed minimum income for retired persons, including one that could be introduced or co-ordinated at EU level.

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