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The Iberian energy exception

Last March, Spain and Portugal reached a historic agreement: for the first time ever, two European countries could set a price cap on gas for power generation, for a period of twelve months. A period to seek agreements was opened in both countries, which ended on 9 June, when the European Commission gave the final approval to the mechanism. This undoubtedly proves that the current European Union is very different to the European Union we were living in during the financial crisis of the last decade.

Progressives and a new social contract – arduous pathways from the semi-periphery

More than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, many hopes, aspirations, and expectations of the people in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe are unfulfilled despite full membership of their countries in the European Union. A new generation of leaders, based on broad, inclusive, and progressive social alliances, is necessary to achieve advanced […]

Fighting precarity: a paradigm shift from equality-in-prosperity to solidarity-in-wellbeing

We stand at a pivotal point in history – one that contains the opportunity to replace the equality-in-prosperity formula of progressive politics with a new one: solidarity-in-wellbeing. For the past 100 years, the critique of capitalism has centred on unfair distributive outcomes (economic inequality), as well as the damage that consumerism and the commitment to […]

Reforming the financial structure of ‘small-buffers’ capitalism

We live in an advanced form of what the US economist Hyman Minsky had termed ‘money manager capitalism’ 25 years ago. Today, the dominant role played by the captains of industry in the area of industrial capitalism falls to the money managers in charge of hedge funds and pension funds. By identifying this new incarnation […]

The lights from Porto: a small step towards a Social Union?

Some social federalists are disappointed: the Social Summit in Porto was downgraded to little more than a series of workshops, Angela Merkel only appeared online, the final declaration was tepid and the full endorsement of the European Commission’s Action Plan has been delayed to the June session of the European Council. However, there are reasons […]

Can you hear me now?

Resentment and realisation can take many forms. Have the different generations learnt anything from the pandemic? Will we change the way we look at life and our relationships after Covid-19? It is the first year of university for my nineteen-year-old son. No face-to-face tuition, freshers’ week, parties, or club meetings. Hard to meet new people […]

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