Tag archive for ‘France’
The French System of Collective Bargaining
Collective bargaining in France was generalised by law in 1950, which established the industry as the main level for bargaining. In 1971, collective bargaining at the ‘inter-professional’ (cross-industry) level was also established. Finally, the ‘Auroux laws’ of 1982 imposed an annual obligation to bargain about wages and working time at the workplace or company level [...]
The Spirit Level’s Political Wobble: The Inequality Debate Rages On
Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone is an admirable book and has generated a long-overdue debate about the high social costs of inequality. Inequality is not just about the poor staying poor; it is about the huge leap in income and wealth of the rich, or ‘super rich’ as [...]
The Plight of the Roma
The Roma have been persecuted across Europe for centuries. Now they face a form of discrimination unseen in Europe since World War II: group evictions and expulsions from several European democracies of men, women, and children on the grounds that they pose a threat to public order. Last week, France began to carry out plans [...]
The Case for Public Investment
The fiscal crises now besetting several OECD countries risk replaying the long agony of over-indebtedness in Africa. In Africa the process was directly overseen by the IMF. Its model of debt sustainability implicitly assumed that public investment was entirely unproductive: this was the implication of the absence from the model of any link between public [...]
A Year of Missed Opportunities for the EU
In politics it is August rather than January when people look back at the last year and take stock of what has or has not been achieved. Hence, as I have been soaking up the Spanish sun, my mind has been replaying events from the last twelve months. Last summer, I had great optimism for [...]
European Economic Governance Madness
Euractiv reported about a new Franco-German declaration to the task force charged with working up a mechanism of economic governance for the EU/Eurozone. Completely ignorant about the ongoing debates about how counterproductive early fiscal austerity could be the document states: Member States would be expected to enact national laws that formalise the public finance recovery [...]
Would you ban the Burka?
The Pew Global Attitudes Project has recently published a very interesting piece of research investigating attitudes towards the full Islamic veil. The results show a remarkable difference between Europeans and US citizens. Even though Damian Green, the UK immigration minister, says a ban of the Burka would be “un-British” the vast majority of Brits seem [...]
Method in our Budget Madness?
Why has the general public bought into the TINA (There Is No Alternative) deficit reduction story? And what about our political class? Cameron, Clegg and Cable have allegedly ‘seen the light’ and emerged convinced that Britain needs huge cuts to stave off disaster. Brown and Darling differed only with respect to the timing of deficit [...]
Europe’s Policymakers are rushing towards the Edge of the Cliff
Lemmings are cute, family-oriented, apparently well-adjusted creatures who, most of the time, live more or less happily in the tundra. Although it is an urban myth that they commit collective suicide to control population, they certainly experience periodic mass frenzies. Driven by some deeply rooted instinctive yearning, they swarm off in search of salvation, looking [...]
The End of Social Europe?
As a further round of economic crisis unfolds, many European social democrats seem frozen like a hare in a car’s headlights. They have nothing new to say about how to deal with fiscal deficits – except that the cuts must not occur all at once and that the most vulnerable must be shielded. Otherwise, economists [...]
Reforming Finance
Ten areas of financial reform are regarded as being essential to re-establish the two basic functions of the banking sector, namely, extending credit to households and the business sector, and connecting investors to entrepreneurs. Pure trading and speculating should, meanwhile, be discouraged to the maximum degree possible. The project of seriously re-regulating the financial sector [...]
Trade-offs in Climate Change Adaptation: The Issue of Flood Disaster Financing in Europe
The population in parts of southern and central Poland currently battles with the flood waters from the Vistula river. An early estimate of the economic damage from the flood amounts to about €2.5 billion. This tragedy is a timely reminder of the importance of adapting to climate change. Changing precipitation patterns as a result of [...]
