Montserrat Mir Roca

Montserrat Mir Roca is Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. Previously, she was a member of the national executive of the CC.OO trade union in Spain.

Montserrat Mir Roca

COP 24 Must Be The Turning Point Towards ‘Just Transition’

Montserrat Mir Roca 29th November 2018

The next round of global climate negotiations, COP 24, takes place in December. It will need to make rapid progress on implementing the Paris Agreement so as to close the gap between what science requires and what countries are doing. European trade unions believe it must also be a milestone on the journey towards a […]

EU Needs Fair Work-life Balance

Montserrat Mir Roca 24th April 2017

When the nuts and bolts of the long-awaited European Pillar of Social Rights are unveiled at the end of April, the European Commission will at the same time set out plans to achieve a better balance between work and private life. This issue affects the lives of millions of Europeans, and has a direct bearing […]

Trade Unions Take A Stand To End Violence Against Women

Montserrat Mir Roca 25th November 2016

The picture is alarming. The latest report by London’s local authority (GLA) finds that domestic violence against women rose by 57% over the last four years. In Brussels, new figures show 30% of women have been the victim of violence of some form, and 60% have suffered sexual intimidation. Just two cities – and the […]

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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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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