Debates

The European Commission plans to set up a European Labour Authority (ELA) to ensure and control social standards for those who work in another Member State. Jan Cremers, however, says it lacks teeth. The ELA’s main ...

After the SPD's historically low result in the November 2017 federal elections, the German Social Democrats entrusted the analysis of the defeat to a commission of 5 experts, who presented their more than 100 pages strong ...

In the early 20th century, many thought leaders of Social Democracy were convinced that "new social risks" - such as demographic change - would shape the social conflict of the future. Instead of the conflict between ...

Polish women are literally fighting for their lives. The present women’s movement in Poland, illustrated by the Black Protests, represents a challenge to the right-wing government and anti-gender groups who mobilise against policies of equality, women’s ...

On 25 May 2018, when Irish voters flocked to support the repeal of the 8th Amendment to the constitution, the women of Ireland won reproductive rights that had been taken from them three decades prior. They ...

While Europe was baking in this summer’s heatwave - a consequence of climate change that no-one talks about, but which should be on everyone’s mind - Belgian physicist and climatologist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele is not impressed ...

Progressives have long had mixed feelings about globalisation. The reasons for this are understandable: progressives support the equality of opportunities and they fight excessive inequality. International trade and market openings do not necessarily lead to inequality, ...

In the middle of 2016, something unprecedented happened on the US political scene. All three leading candidates for the presidency – Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and (until his concession in July) Bernie Sanders – were critics ...

Following the G7 fiasco in Canada, the US has followed up on its threats to put tariffs on many Chinese exports. The EU faces a complex challenge to come up with a coherent trade strategy in ...

While social democratic parties are being weakened by a new populist mobilisation in Europe, André Krouwel, founder of the the Dutch voting advice website 'Kieskompas' and political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, urges Social ...

  During the last summer, the Hungarian government proposed to ban gender studies at universities. The position and role of conservative and far-right parties in the anti-gender mobilizations in Europe is not anymore a surprise. But ...

The latest World Health Organization’s (WHO) data on air pollution around the globe paints a grim picture for air quality and is bad news for all of us having to breathe: 91% of the world’s population ...