Social Europe: The rule of law: a simple phrase with exacting demands

 How is it then that two EU governments venture to prolong the anguish of some half a billion Europeans, harming their own populations, by refusing to subject themselves to rule-of-law requirements? This cannot be dismissed as the position of two unhinged autocrats, since their veto has significant popular support in these countries, including 57 per cent approval in Poland. [...]

This has been evident in several instances—from lack of concern with the Silvio Berlusconi media monopoly in Italy to France’s semi-permanent state of emergency, Malta’s and Slovakia’s complacency with political murder and the Spanish government’s response to the 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia. Often, the EU is content with narrowly reducing the remit of the rule of law to a simple matter of legality—ignoring routine violations of core values, such as the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech or even the right to liberty and life itself.

Has the EU not thereby set itself up for the current crisis, supplying the ammunition for autocrats to try to absolve themselves from compliance with the rule of law? In turning a blind eye, the European Commission has harmed the union’s very normative foundation, endorsing the blatant abuse of power by the leaders of several of its member states.

read the article

Social Europe: Tax havens: patience is running out

 That’s no surprise. The OECD had certainly sought to legitimise its claim to speak for all by creating an ‘inclusive framework’ involving developing countries. However, of the 137 nations sitting around the negotiating table, only the G7—those home to the major multinationals and their lobbying teams—had a voice. As a result, the solutions advocated by the OECD would hardly limit financial flows to tax havens and the scarce resources recovered would mainly benefit rich countries. [...]

Estimating the loss of resources caused by corporate and individual tax abuse country by country, and the consequences for healthcare spending, this research is chilling. Globally, these diversions correspond to 9.2 per cent of health budgets, equivalent to the salaries of 34 million nurses. The impact is even more devastating in developing countries, where the shortfall represents 52.4 per cent of health spending. [...]

Of course, there is strong opposition within the EU itself, for one simple reason: if we readily point the finger at the small islands of the Caribbean, it is to make people forget that Europe has its own tax havens. The departing UK, together with its network of Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies—often referred to as its ‘spider’s web’—is responsible for 29 per cent of the $245 billion the world loses to corporate tax abuse every year, according to The State of Tax Justice. And we have further examples inside the EU. Every year, for example, the Netherlands steals the equivalent of $10 billion from its EU neighbours. And it is not alone: Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta do the same.

read the article

Social Europe: An effective corporation-tax system for the EU

The European social contract is broken. The largest companies are no longer contributing adequately to the provision of the public services and infrastructure they use. If the European project and single market are to survive and thrive, there has to be an effective EU taxation system. The small amounts paid in tax by some of the most profitable companies in the world are undermining citizens’ belief in government, in politicians and in Europe. [...]

The European Union has made feasible tax-reform proposals and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has developed corporate-tax reforms for the world, through its ‘base-erosion and profit-shifting’ process. Both are making progress but this is far too slow in terms of agreement among states. Europe needs fair taxation of companies now, when revenue is so urgently needed. [...]

It is not the rate of tax which is the issue but the actual tax paid. The EU should move from seeking ‘harmonised’ tax rates to co-ordinated rates within bands—say between 15 and 25 per cent. This would allow peripheral and poorer countries to set lower nominal rates if they wished. What is needed is to close gaps between nominal and effective rates and eliminate tax breaks. [...]

Europe should establish a well-funded European tax agency, ‘Eurotax’, with wide powers of investigation into tax evasion and avoidance by wealthy individuals, companies and criminals. Eurotax would implement tax policy, including the co-ordination of tax assessments and collection. With a single market, the EU needs one tax body to oversee taxation in this globalised world.

read the article

Social Europe: Minimum-wage directive: yes, but …

 On October 28th, the European Commission published its proposal for a directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union. It’s a watershed in the history of European social and economic integration: for the first time, the commission is initiating legislative action not only to ensure fair minimum wages but also to strengthen collective bargaining in Europe. [...]

Without a clear and common definition of wage adequacy at EU level, there is a clear danger that some member states will apply a very restrictive definition, which will fail to foster real improvement of minimum-wage levels. In its impact-assessment report, the commission has calculated that an increase of national minimum wages according to the double decency threshold—60 per cent of the median and 50 per cent of the average wage—would improve the wages of around 25 million workers in Europe. This estimate should be the decisive benchmark to measure whether or not the directive is a success: either it will genuinely contribute to the improvement of wages or it will remain a political symbol with no discernible impact. The inclusion of a more precise definition of adequate minimum wages in the legal provisions of the directive will thus be a core issue in the debates on its adoption. [...]

The proposed directive certainly has the potential to improve the wages of millions of Europe’s low-wage workers and strengthen their collective-bargaining position. To ensure its effectiveness however requires recognising there is much room for improvement, especially on more precise and binding criteria for adequate minimum wages and more practical tools for the promotion of collective bargaining.

read the article

TLDR News: How Will the EU Vaccinate 446 Million People? Europe's COVID Vaccination Plans Explained

 COVID is clearly one of the greatest challenges any country has faced in decades, so it's unsurprising many are praying for a Coronavirus vaccine. The problem is that even when a vaccine's ready it takes a whole lot of work to actually get people vaccinated, especially 446 million people in 27 member states. So in this video we explain the EU's vaccination strategy, who will get vaccines first and what it means for Europe.

Social Europe: Covid-19 and a new social Europe

 Initially, there was a prudent consent towards stronger government involvement in policy responses to the rapid spread of the virus, albeit with reticence from the social partners, whose participation depends on the different traditions of social dialogue across Europe. But lockdown exit strategies have been marked by the absence of involvement by social partners and the wider civil society. [...]

The European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker attempted to rekindle Social Europe with the European Pillar of Social Rights agreed in 2017. These latter included, for example, fair working conditions and prevention of atypical and non-permanent work relationships. [...]

In the current ‘rebuilding’ dash, however, the commission has taken on a role of ‘funding entrepreneur’, implementing instruments such as Next Generation EU rather than acting as the guardian of common social and employment standards. This shift risks relegating the promising pillar of rights to a non-vital, dependent component of a larger economic-recovery project, led by market forces.

read the article

Social Europe: Intersectionality: time for a rethink

 The term intersectionality was first used by the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. But the intersectional approach is rooted in the social movements of the US in the 70s and 80s, as a critique of feminist and anti-racist struggles. The general experience of black women was that in feminist activism the interests of white women were at the forefront, whereas in anti-racist struggles men predominated.[...]

First, the current practice of the intersectional idea presumes that those who experience the most oppressions will understand best the nature of the oppressive system and pursue the least particularistic politics. But one cannot simply add (or multiply) such positions in the manner of an oppression Olympics—who has more points in the oppression race, in how many dimensions one is standing on the losing side of the Excel sheet. [...]

If the main issue becomes recognition of individual uniqueness or an identity mix, then not only is it an ad absurdum extension of the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’—to only the personal is political. This also renders particular identities inscrutable—which means that groups so constituted can neither show solidarity with each other nor formulate a common goal. They can then fit in with the individualistic neoliberal spirit of the era, which delegitimises all systemic critique, for instance concerning its categories of class and gender. [...]

The focus should not be on ahistorical intersections of differences and repressed groups of identities, but on examining how distinctions and hierarchies are established between them. Identities should not be interpreted as some kind of inner, intimate, unquestionable substance, but as a personal experience of a relative position in a system of social relations.

read the article

Social Europe: The European minimum wage will come—but how?

The commission’s objective is to develop common European standards on all these points. In view of the great differences across Europe, however, the commission is explicitly not seeking to introduce a single European minimum wage, nor to harmonise existing minimum-wage regimes. [...]

Accordingly, a minimum wage is considered adequate when it is at least 60 per cent of the national median. By analogy with poverty research, a minimum wage of 60 per cent of the median wage is the wage that enables a single full-time worker to avoid a life in poverty, regardless of living and household circumstances, without relying on state transfers. [...]

The European standard for the adequacy of minimum wages would then become surpassing both thresholds—60 per cent of the median wage and 50 per cent of the average. Figure 2 shows by how much the minimum wage in various countries would have to rise to reach the respective floors. Application of the double, 60-50 threshold would lead to an increase—sometimes considerable—in the minimum wage in all EU countries with a statutory minimum, except Slovenia and France. In 12 countries the median threshold and in six the mean would have the greater impact; in four the outcome would be the same. The double 60-50 threshold would thus contribute to a general upward convergence of minimum wages across Europe.

read the article

Social Europe: An economic, as well as a monetary, union?

The significance of the five-day European Council is not simply the sheer size of the €1.2 trillion stimulus to be given the EU economy but the unprecedented scale of the collective borrowing the union will undertake on world financial markets, to finance that recovery strategy. Of the €750 billion to be invested in post-pandemic economic recovery, an unprecedented €390 billion will be in grants, not repayable loans. [...]

To pay for the collective-borrowing programme, the summit also agreed—in principle—to new common taxes. These include levies on plastics and polluting imports and a digital tax. Although details remain to be agreed, this is a radical step towards an EU fiscal policy. [...]

The logic of what was agreed may, though, demand still further and more radical changes in future. The union will also have to decide whether the wind of change must sweep through the forthcoming Convention on the Future of Europe—and lead to major reforms of the EU constitution itself.

read the article

EU south hails step towards federalism, north sees handout

Almost half of this, 32 billion euros ($36bn), comes from NextGenerationEU, with some 19 billion euros ($21bn) in the form of grants and more than 12 billion euros ($13bn) in the form of loans. Over a five-year period, the grants alone amount to a boost of about 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year. [...]

The pandemic is set to claim 8.3 percent of the EU economy, but other countries in the European south stand to lose even more than Greece. Spain, Italy and France are expected to see recessions to the tune of 11 percent. [...]

NextGenerationEU marks the first time all 27 EU members are selling debt together, and it is the first time the Commission is to be given powers to levy taxes and raise resources of its own to service that debt. [...]

"Conte is probably the last thing separating Italy from sliding to a new wave of anti-Europeanism that could be fatal, not just for Italy's participation in the euro, but for the entire European integration project and the single market," he said.

read the article

Rule of Law in Poland: The European Commission intervenes on “LGBT-free” zones in Poland

The addressees of the European Commission’s letter are the marshals (wojewodowie) of five provinces (voivodships, województwa) that have adopted anti-LGBT resolutions or their equivalent, i.e. the homophobic ‘Local Government Charter on the Rights of the Family’ drawn up by an NGO Ordo Iuris. These are the Lublin, Łódź, Malopolskie, Podkarpackie and Świętokrzyskie provinces. [...]

The obligation to combat discrimination based on sex, race or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation is also included in art. 7 of the Regulation on EU funds dating from 2013. Moreover, the preventive actions to which the beneficiaries of EU funds are obliged are explicitly included in the partnership agreement, and include both investments and programmes run by local authorities, as well as soft activities accompanying them, such as ‘communication’. [...]

Anna Błaszczak-Banasiak, a lawyer of the Commissioner for Human Rights’ Office says the EC’s position confirms that the anti-LGBT resolutions, regardless of their form, directly affect the lives of citizens. [...]

The Commission’s letter coincides with the position adopted by the European Parliament, which in December 2019 called on the Polish authorities to repeal homophobic resolutions by administrative means, i.e. via the provincial governor (wojewoda) or the administrative courts. The Parliament also urged the EC to verify whether the local governments that adopted anti-LGBT resolutions and still collect money from the EU are using it for purposes that violate human rights and the principle of equal treatment.

read the article

EURACTIV: In political U-turn, Czechs back EU’s green recovery plan

If confirmed, the move would mark a U-turn from previous government positions. In March, as the coronavirus pandemic started spreading across the continent, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš urged Europe to “forget about the Green Deal now and focus on the coronavirus instead”. [...]

The European Commission has promised to raise the EU’s emissions reduction target to 50-55% by 2030, up from 40% currently. The proposal is due to be released later this year, after the EU executive completes a detailed cost-benefit analysis.[...]

In addition, Czechs seem broadly supportive of climate action. According to a survey published in March, 84% of Czech people think that climate change caused by human activities threatens their future. And 79% believe the Czech Republic should aim to achieve net-zero emissions, the survey found.

read the article

Social Europe: The nascent paradigm shift in the EU

The commission is building up a stockpile of medical equipment, which would be distributed where it is most needed through the EU’s RescEU civil protection mechanism. The ‘Brussels bureaucracy’, much derided for its infamous red tape and cumbersome decision-making, is providing the competent, cool and nimble leadership so invaluable in a crisis. [...]

In a yet more uncharacteristic move, the commission has introduced an unemployment reinsurance scheme—Support to Mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE)—which is to be financed through bonds issued by the EU itself. The scheme is to supply aid to areas that have been hit hardest, by providing reinsurance to state-financed income-support programmes for workers affected by the crisis.

These developments are uncharacteristic as they go against the reputation that the core EU bodies have acquired as being in thrall to neoliberal globalisation—a reputation developed in the course of at least two decades of ‘structural adjustment’ policies of labour-market deregulation and pressures to cut public expenditure. Such policies had been adopted for the sake of increasing the union’s ‘competitiveness’ in the global economy, since member states vouched, in the Lisbon strategy of 2000 (and its subsequent iterations), to make Europe ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’. [...]

This not only goes beyond the idea of ensuring a level playing-field among the member states, which has long been the raison d’être of the EU governing institutions. It also surpasses the minimalist idea of social justice as a matter of wealth distribution from the wealthy to the poor. It is signalling a move towards something more ambitious—building a robust public sector at the heart of a revived welfare state. This time, a trans-European one.

read the article

Social Europe: Only a ‘New Deal’ can rescue the European project (7th April 2020)

The combined sanitary and economic crisis that the new coronavirus brings upon us may in the short term seem one that affects some European Union member states more than others. But it will soon become a systemic crisis for the EU as a whole and not just for the eurozone. [...]

This is not the time to reopen a discussion on the responsibilities of the member states, or for a beauty contest among the more or less virtuous. Comparisons with the 2008 financial crisis are inherently misleading. This is an exogenous shock, and it hits all member states. Some of them might be able to put on their own recovery plan, with national budgets. But this will not save them. If some countries face, in the coming months, a structural crisis of their public health services and a deep and long-lasting recession, all member states will, at some point, be affected. [...]

The European Union must seize this opportunity to overcome its divisions and mobilise the necessary resources both to help the Member States and to develop its own European action. Issuing a specific kind of European bonds to complement the gigantic effort already made by member states to strengthen their health systems and their economies is the smartest and cheapest way to prevent a violent destruction of human lives and of millions of jobs.

read the article

Social Europe: Not (yet) up to the task: how eurozone members are gambling away post-Covid economic recovery

Action at the European level is key to rein in the economic shockwave following the Covid-19 outbreak. As the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, recently affirmed, economic recovery will be easier the more public treasuries step in and relieve the private losses of workers and firms. The goal is to ‘keep the lights on’— to prevent the production system sinking under the accumulating burden of debt and losses until workers can get back to work and consumers can buy again under safer conditions. [...]

While these measures allow public and private debt to increase, the Eurogroup was supposed to provide a final safety net for public finances as the linchpin of the package. Such a safety net would have to meet two bottom-line requirements. [...]

Stagnation and further macroeconomic divergence will be the most likely outcome. Besides the predictable upsurge of political discontent and populist temptations, financially weaker members will likely be subject to speculative attacks, and therefore be even more dependent on long-term ECB support than before.

read the article

Social Europe: Europe’s failure to address Covid-19 shows the need for a European ‘health citizenship’

The way the world is organised has proven to be catastrophic for the management of this epidemic. In Europe, each country has reacted in a different way, perhaps revealing the distinct characters of national elites. Germany has managed to keep death rates low with heavy testing, but other European countries have been far slower to react, while some governments appear to have been less open about the situation they were facing and only reacted when the virus was at their doorstep.

Some countries, such as Austria and Poland, have demonstrated nationalist instincts in their responses by closing down their borders. Meanwhile in Spain, the approach has included the centralisation of healthcare responsibilities following the declaration of a state of emergency, even though the relevant expertise is located at the regional level, and some Spanish regions which advocated for a lock down have remained open.

In contrast, In Italy, the regions of Veneto and Lombardy were early movers in setting up a quarantine and urging locals to stay home. In Lombardy, local health authorities established strong containment measures in the initial cluster by quarantining several towns in an attempt to slow transmission of the virus. In Germany, states have taken the lead in fighting the virus, while in the UK Wales and Scotland have acted first by announcing policy measures such as school closures which were then followed by the whole country. [...]

Today, European citizenship is defined by a common European health card as much as a European passport. However, the European role in managing health crises has remained modest. The Covid-19 crisis highlights that public health (the management of global public risks) is an area where the EU should be more proactive. Given the nationalistic and even selfish policies implemented by various member states, the creation of a European wide public-health authority must now be viewed as an urgent matter to consider as part of wider reforms. Being European should entail having a European health citizenship.

read the article

Social Europe: How the new EU gender strategy fails east-central European women

The premise of the strategy is that gender equality is ‘an essential condition for an innovative, competitive and thriving European economy’, which ‘brings more jobs and higher productivity’. This is in line with what has historically driven the EU to legislate on equality between the sexes—the desire not to eradicate inequalities but to optimise the performance of the labour market by ensuring a steady supply of workers. Indeed, one of the key indicators through which the progress towards gender equality in EU member states is measured is the (increasing) proportion of women in the labour market. What this refuses to consider however, are the labour conditions which women are encouraged to enter.

As we have seen in east-central Europe, this experience has been far from emancipatory for many women, as a large proportion of the jobs created in the past three decades have been of poor quality: underpaid, low-skilled, socially undervalued and performed on zero-hours contracts. Kováts and Gregor showed in their research on Hungarian women that broad segments feel so exploited in the labour market that, rather than think how to escape home to do meaningful work and secure financial independence, their main concern is how to escape employment to be with their loved ones. This exposes the hollowness of the commission’s equation of gender equality with more women on the labour market, as at best out of touch and at worst wilfully class-blind. [...]

The narrow neoliberal framework through which the strategy challenges gender inequalities in the supply of care work is also evident in its focus on solving growing demand by encouraging (individual) men to take it up, as well as establishing institutions relieving women of these responsibilities. While both are certainly necessary, they are woefully inadequate to address the deeper underlying tension within capitalist societies—the need for reproductive labour to sustain productive labour, with the associated lack of valorisation and remuneration. Unless we fundamentally restructure ‘worker’ and ‘carer’ roles deemed separate and mutually exclusive, we cannot hope to eradicate this tension, no matter what work-life balance efforts we apply.

read the article

Engadget: EU plans to introduce sweeping 'right to repair' legislation for electronics

If the European Parliament were to pass legislation, it would extend its eco-design law to cover phones, tablets and computers, and likely force tech companies to completely rethink the designs of their products. The legislation would also require those same companies to provide easy to access information related to the repairability and durability of their products. At the moment, most consumers have to turn to websites like iFixit to find information on how to fix their devices. "Single-use will be restricted, premature obsolescence tackled and the destruction of unsold durable goods banned," the Commission said. [...]

The plan is one part of the European Green Deal, a policy initiative the EU announced last year. Like the Green New Deal advocated by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the goal of the European Green Deal is to transform the continent's economy in light of the climate crisis. [...]

The plan is the latest attempt by the EU to tackle electronic waste. In January, European Union lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation to push to device manufacturers to adopt a shared charging cable standard. The new legislation is likely to face stiff resistance from manufacturers. Ahead of the charger vote, Apple said any regulation would "stifle innovation" and ultimately hurt consumers more than it would help them.

read the article

EURACTIV: Six EU countries join call for 100% renewable energy scenario

But none of the eight options, which range from business-as-usual to net-zero emission cuts, included a scenario based on 100% renewable energies. And only two of them achieve climate neutrality, which in the meantime was chosen by EU heads of states and government as the preferred option. [...]

Last week, the Commission tabled a landmark Climate Law, aiming to make the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality objective “irreversible” by turning it into a legally-binding obligation on all 27 member states. [...]

The detailed impact assessment was requested by EU member states as a prerequisite for raising the EU’s 2030 target to 50-55% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, up from 40% currently. [...]

Researchers from Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) recently unveiled their own model of a 100% system, which would involve 20 independent European regions or “islands” connected together through a “super grid”.

read the article

euobserver: German ex-commissioner Oettinger lands Orban job

According to the commission's rules, former commissioners have to notify the EU executive with "a minimum of two months' notice of their intention to engage in a professional activity during a period of two years after they have ceased to hold office". [...]

Oettinger has informed the commission that the Hungarian government had discussed with him a possible function in the Hungarian National Science Policy Council, a commission official said when asked by EUobserver on the matter. [...]

In 2016, Oettinger used a private plane for a travel to Budapest offered by a German businessman with strong Kremlin ties, Klaus Mangold, which possibly broke EU ethics rules - even though the commission at the time considered it to fall outside of its transparency and ethics rules.

read the article