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Ten years after the launch of the Europe 2020 strategy, we can observe that poverty has not been substantially reduced, but on the other hand, inequality has been on the rise in many EU Member States. The lack of adequate minimum wage increases, or coverage, is part of the problem....
The highly intoxicated political discourse around migration of the last few years and the mostly security-oriented measures that have been adopted to tackle (or rather curtail) migration flows to Europe have led to neglect of the question of the integration of migrants into the host countries. Yet integration remains crucial...
The fabrication of a new European citizenry comes about through the responsiveness to and inclusiveness of diversity. This demands a more comprehensive effort to empower the entire social fabric to foster a strong intercultural awareness and responsiveness to the issues arising from the co-existence of citizens and non-citizens in modern societies. European...
Working time has always been a key battleground for working people and their trade unions. Now, as technology and the platform economy increasingly eat into workers’ personal time, a shorter working week is again necessary. A four-day week, without loss of pay, is one of our ambitions! The demand for...
A shorter working week has always been central to the labour movement. With the rapidly approaching tipping point towards climate breakdown and the automation of many work processes, steered by new technologies like AI, the issue is back to the forefront of progressive politics! The eight-hour day and the two-day...
The draft law to amend the Polish Penal Code aimed to introduce a ban on the “demoralisation and sexuality of children”, and de factoa ban on reliable sexual education, are the cuckoo’s egg of the electoral campaign. Extremist ultra-Catholic circles pushed it to the conservative and national Law and Justice party...
While many European countries are liberalising their restrictive laws on sexual and reproductive health, Poland is moving in the ultraconservative direction. Far-right politicians from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) want to criminalise sexuality education through its newly proposed draft law. Anyone who provides sexuality education or even discusses it...
It is somewhat ironic that a European Commission headed by a former Social Affairs minister (Ursula von der Leyen) was almost inaugurated without the word ‘social’ appearing in the title of either commissioner. This would have been a great shame, especially at a time when the progressive family is represented...
For almost two decades EU institutions have paid lip-service to capacitating welfare provision. With the new legislature, it’s time to ratchet up domestic social investment. A ‘golden rule’ of exempting certain types of social spending from the Eurozone fiscal rule book for about a decade would allow to invest in...
The crisis and the paradoxical response of austerity, imposed on the most affected countries, has interrupted a process of economic and social convergence that had barely begun to overcome strong asymmetries. In Europe, the gap has widened between the so-called “virtuous” countries, which despite the crisis still have room for...