Analyses

Analyses

Analyses

Analyses

The Analyses section provides brief research notes relating to four main streams: social media, political visions, public opinion and policy focus.

Analyses
8 July 2022

“Double dualisation” and the COVID-19 pandemic. Widening socio-economic inequalities in Europe and the potential for Next Generation EU to stem them

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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing divides and socio-economic risks. This is particularly worrisome in Europe, where the Great Recession and the sovereign debt crisis had already led scholars to speak of a ‘double dualisation’ (Heidenreich 2016). Did the COVID-19 pandemic also worsen income inequalities between insiders and outsiders and between core and peripheral countries?

Analyses
30 May 2022

Angela Merkel’s discursive shift from the Eurozone crisis to COVID-19

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The euro crisis and the pandemic have put the integrity of the European Union at risk. In the absence of a truly political union, the economic and monetary union between countries as different as EU member states has fuelled inter-state conflicts. However, in contrast to what happened during the euro crisis, over the course of the pandemic, the member states managed to reach an agreement over a recovery plan in a constructive way.

Analyses
23 April 2022

EU economic governance between crises: broken taboos in search of political institutionalization

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The pandemic represented a turning point of the debate on the European economic governance. All in all, the combination of existential (public health) crisis and experiential learning from the errors of the Great Recession led EU policymakers, along with the Commission and the ECB at the helm and with strong support from the European Parliament, to adopt a more solidaristic approach to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. In such a context, four taboos were temporarily broken, thus opening the room for a debate on the future of economic governance for the EU.

Analyses
2 April 2022

Walking the road together? Resolving inter-state conflicts in the path towards the NGEU plan

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The dramatic socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic reawakened the tensions between Northern and Southern member states that had already shaken the EU during the 2010s. Contrary to what happened during the euro crisis, in the COVID crisis the member states managed to reach an agreement in only about five months. How did EU leaders move past the deadlock of the euro crisis years?

Analyses
5 March 2022

Transnationalism fosters more engagement in European politics

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How often do you discuss European Union (EU) political matters with others? Do you feel that your voice counts in the way the EU conducts its business? Did you vote in the latest elections for the European Parliament (EP)?
In a newly published article, we explain that the way people answer these questions depends, in part, on the extent to which they live their lives “across” the national borders of EU member states. Transnational citizens are more likely to engage in such forms of political behaviour.

Analyses
18 February 2022

Youth guarantee: A policy mechanism promoting European convergence? The case of Italy and Greece

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Over the last decade, the European Union has faced two major crises simultaneously: the debt crisis and more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, which has eaten away the dreams and hopes of the youngest population. In this context, the European Union implemented the Youth Guarantee Programme (YG) in 2014, as a contribution to three of the Europe 2020 strategy targets aimed at integrating the most disadvantaged young people into the labour market.

Analyses
22 April 2021

Beyond wage devaluation in Spain?

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One of the most vibrant debates taking place concerns the limitations and possibilities that exist in the EU for going beyond austerity-based social and economic policies. In this post we ask to what extent the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social policy responses it has been triggering, has altered this course, by focusing on the social and labour market policies adopted in reaction to the pandemic by a left-wing Southern European government, that of Spain.

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«The salience of member state solidarity in citizens’ understanding of Social Europe implies that public opinion towards it is crucial for the democratic legitimacy of Social Europe as a political project.»