Peter Davis

Peter Davis is chair of the Helen Clark Foundation, an independent public policy think-tank, and an elected member of the Auckland District Health Board. He is emeritus professor of population health and social science at the University of Auckland.

Peter Davis

The virus antidote: political leadership, progressive government, public services

Peter Davis 21st December 2021

With still fewer than 50 fatalities, there is much to learn from how New Zealand’s Labour government has handled the pandemic.

Discover the new issue of the Progressive Post!

The EU finds itself increasingly compressed between intensifying global rivalries and global issues urging collective responses. Global topics and the EU's approach to them are the core of the latest issue of the Progressive Post.

‘Strategic autonomy: challenges and pitfalls’ is the special coverage of this issue, while one of the dossiers highlights the EU's relations to its most important ally: ‘EU-US: love no more’. 'Cheerleading exercise', on COP26, and 'Eastern discomfort', about the gloomy situation of progressive parties in central and eastern Europe, are also part of this edition.

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WSI policy brief: the formula for a social Europe

The strengthening of the social dimension of the EU is back on the agenda of European politics. The European Pillar of Social Rights, the revision of the Posted Workers Directive and the initiative for a European minimum wage are interpreted by some as a turning point. However, the road to a more social Europe is still very long. Against that background, this paper formulates a social Europe thus: social minimum standards plus a reconfiguration of the internal market and economic and monetary union in a manner compatible with the pillars of the European social model.

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Reshaping the Work–Life Balance Directive with Covid‑19 lessons in mind

The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women, threatening to reverse progress towards gender equality. It has made the need to address longstanding structural disadvantages affecting women even more evident and pressing, including the fact that women continue to perform a greater share of unpaid care work. This paper argues that the Work–Life Balance Directive 2019—the key EU legal instrument that seeks to address the labour-market disadvantages of those with caring responsibilities, the majority of whom are women—should be revisited in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The directive provides for certain entitlements to leave and flexible working arrangements. The paper proposes how various aspects of the framework could be strengthened in order to promote its gender-equality objectives in a more effective and transformative way, and to confer recognition on the social and economic value of unpaid care work. It also points to other key measures that must complement the directive to ensure a cultural shift towards equal distribution of care work between men and women.

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Living, working and Covid-19 (update April 2021): mental health and trust decline across EU as pandemic enters another year

The third round of Eurofound's Living, working and Covid-19 e-survey, fielded in February and March 2021, sheds light on the social and economic situation of people across Europe following nearly a full year of living with restrictions. The report analyses the main findings and tracks developments and trends across the 27 EU member states since the survey was first launched in April 2020. It pinpoints issues that have surfaced over the course of the pandemic, such as increased job insecurity due to the threat of job loss, decline in mental wellbeing, erosion of recent gains in gender equality, fall in trust vis-à-vis institutions, deterioration of work–life balance and growth of vaccine hesitancy. The results of the survey highlight the need for a holistic approach to support all the groups hit hard by the crisis, to prevent them from falling further behind.

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The virus antidote: political leadership, progressive government, public services

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