Andrew Watt
Andrew Watt is senior researcher at the European Trade Union Institute, where he coordinates research on economic, employment and social policies. He edits the ETUI Policy Brief on economic and employment policy, coordinates the European Labour Network for Economic Policy, and writes a column for the Social Europe Journal. He has worked as a consultant/adviser to the European Commission, Eurofound, and the European Economic and Social Committee.
A Greek Tragedy or a European Farce? Time to Re-Write the Script
In the official account of the unfolding Greek tragedy the villain is readily identified, the plot is clear, and the dénouement inevitable, tragic, but ultimately both just and morally uplifting.
The villain of the piece is Greece itself: a bloated and inefficient public sector, rampant corruption, and decade-long fiscal incontinence partially shielded from public scrutiny by [...]
A Year is Good but a Strategy is Better
We have had just about everything since the first one in 1983: small and medium-sized enterprises, tourism, languages, equal opportunities, intercultural dialogue. I am talking about ‘European Years of…’. The last mentioned – the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (2008) in case you missed it – had Charles Aznavour as world intercultural dialogue ambassador. Whether [...]
Some not so unpleasant demographic arithmetic
At a recent presentation in Brussels a European Commission representative asserted that the costs of ageing implied huge problems of sustainability and a rising burden on the – smaller – working population in the future. Based on the analysis in a recent major report on the sustainability of public finances, he stated that, if policies [...]
New Answers to Old Questions
Social democrats need to move beyond neoliberalism to find new ways of promoting the well-being of ordinary citizens.
The crisis of neoliberal capitalism was widely supposed to be a huge opportunity for the mainstream left, in Europe and elsewhere. Having been largely sidelined politically and on the defensive intellectually for most of the period since the [...]
Timing is NOT everything – Exit Strategies must also be credible and above all just
The battle-lines are already drawn up over when to begin withdrawing the stimulus measures that appear, for the moment, to have averted the widely feared global economic meltdown: on the one hand the inflation and deficit hawks who cannot wait for monetary policy to return to normal, and for fiscal policy to reign in the [...]
Six Things that didn’t cause the Crisis – But really ought to have
Experts, soothsayers and pundits have been falling over themselves to list the factors that combined to produce the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. (My ha’penny’s worth is here). A partial consensus has emerged on some issues (excessive deregulation of the financial sector, current account imbalances) while debate continues to rage on others (such [...]