ETUI (2014) “Benchmarking Working Europe 2014“, European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) Report, 29 Απριλίου.
The year 2010 saw the launch of the Europe 2020 strategy. The new EU strategy had been devised for the purpose of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth that would help Europe recover from the crisis and re-emerge stronger and more prosperous on the other side. In June of the same year, the European Semester was put in place to ensure the implementation and progress of macro-economic policy developments and structural reforms contained in the Europe 2020 strategy.
Now, in 2014, nearly five years into the strategy, the mid-term review of Europe 2020 is scheduled to take place in order to assess the effectiveness and relevance of the strategy and the mode of its governance and implementation. At a superficial glance, this mid-term review might appear to be taking place at a point in time when claims are issuing from various quarters that Europe is edging itself out of crisis, that the current policy direction is taking effect, and that it is indeed giving Europe the requisite boost to move from economic downturn to recovery. A more careful assessment will reveal, however, that Europe is still experiencing a devastatingly high level of unemployment; that growth is at best fragile; and that, rather than a narrowing of the gap separating us from the targets set for Europe 2020, we are seeing widening divergence, signifying that the current approach is definitely not achieving what it was set up to do. The assessment of the extent to which the European Semester, and in particular Europe 2020, has – or has not – helped Europe get out of the crisis will, accordingly, be instrumental in determining how European-level policies and strategies are to be redirected in the future.
With the choice of focus on ‘half-way through a lost decade’, this year’s edition of Benchmarking Working Europe sets out to assess and analyse the state of working Europe using a multi-level and multi-dimensional set of indicators. This volume is thus intended as one contribution to the mid-term review of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Ballabriga, F. (2014) “Euro Zone Crisis: Diagnosis and Likely Solutions”, ESADEgeo POSITION PAPER 35, Φεβρουάριος.
- Warner, J. (2014) “The eurozone crisis is just getting started”, The Telegraph, 14 Φεβρουαρίου.
- Karanikolos, Μ., Mladovsky, P., Cylus, J., Thomson, S., Basu, S., Stuckler, D., Mackenbach, J. and McKee M. (2013) “Financial crisis, austerity, and health in Europe”, The Lancet, 381(9874): 1323-1331.