The climate transition and its social dimension demand more powerful instruments than the European Commission proposes.
Is Europe socially fit for the ‘Fit for 55’ package?
The centrality of market mechanisms to the European Commission’s climate package poses big questions as to its effectiveness and distributional impact.
Why should just transition be an integral part of the European Green Deal?
In our series on ‘just transition’, Béla Galgóczi focuses on what it means for the key sectors of coal and cars.
2008: The Year East-West Wage Convergence Came To A Standstill
The crisis has put an end to wage convergence of the poorer Central and Eastern European new EU member states (EU-11, being: Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), Bulgaria, Romania (2007) and Croatia (2013)) towards wage levels in the West. Figure 1 below shows their share of wages (nominal compensation) in percentage […]
After COP 21: The EU Needs To Revise Its Climate Policy Targets
The 2015 COP21 summit in Paris was presented as a last chance to reach a global agreement to control climate change caused by human activity. The fact that 187 countries made commitments with the aim of limiting the global temperature increase by the end of the century to ‘well below’ 2°C (and possibly 1.5°C) can […]
Europe’s Fading Climate Policy Ambitions
Europe is losing momentum in greening its economy, and its former leadership in this area is eroding rapidly. Indeed, after a 60% drop in clean energy investment in 2013 compared to the 2011 peak, Europe has become the global laggard in this regard. Alongside this collapse in clean energy investment, due mostly to austerity and […]