Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221086172
B. Ebbinghaus, J. Weishaupt
The labour movement has long fought for the social protection of unemployed workers as a major social right in capitalist economies across Europe. Employers, on the other hand, have often been reluctant to accept such intervention in the labour market. Hence, scholars explaining differences in the evolution of unemployment benefit systems need to consider the power distribution of labour relations, the context of the welfare state and the variety of capitalism in which they are embedded. This article makes three contributions. First, it offers a heuristic that systematically identifies the analytical affinities between unemployment protection and its institutional context. Second, it offers a succinct overview with a focus on major crises and subsequent adaptations in labour market regimes, ranging from the oil shocks in the 1970s to the Great Recession and the current COVID-19 pandemic. And third, it discusses whether European economies have adjusted their unemployment protection to recent crises and assesses the effects on labour market regimes.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221106007
T. Berglund, Torsten Müller
One of the greatest risks affecting workers on today’s labour markets is unemployment. Losing one’s job usually entails not only the loss of one’s main source of income, but also psychological consequences resulting, for example, from the loss of colleagues and satisfying work tasks (Jahoda, 1982). While a short time in unemployment, with a swift return to new employment, is less disruptive to a worker’s life situation, the longer the unemployment persists the stronger the pressure to find new employment. As a consequence, the likelihood increases that workers will accept jobs that are worse in terms of wages, skill level and work environment than their previous job. From a trade union perspective, unemployment constitutes a challenge in several respects. On the one hand, a worker’s reservation wage – the lowest acceptable wage in a job offer – tends to decline with longer spells of unemployment as financial hardship tightens. Consequently, rising unemployment in combination with insufficient mitigating mechanisms (such as unemployment insurance) puts downward pressure on wages and weakens unions’ general bargaining power (Rothstein, 1990). Moreover, strikes become less efficient as a tool of collective action in situations of high unemployment, as a ‘reserve army’ of workers is willing to accept wages below union demands, and public support for industrial conflict is more difficult to organise. From this perspective, it is easy to understand Shapiro and Stiglitz’s (1984) rather cynical description of unemployment as ‘a worker discipline device’. As unemployment has been a living experience and threat for workers since wage labour became the dominant form in industrial societies, however, unions and their members have tried – in an act of solidarity – to mitigate its perils. As early as the 19th century, unions started unemployment funds based on members’ contributions as a sort of self-help to mitigate unemployment (Alber, 1981). These benefits also became an important tool for recruiting new members. Union unemployment funds spread over large parts of Europe, thereby creating the prerequisite for more generous unemployment insurance to come. The employer side was sceptical of and even hostile to unemployment benefits for a long time. From the employers’ perspective, such benefits potentially decrease workers’ dependence on paid work, foster idleness and strengthen the unions’ capacity for collective action. Compared with other forms of insurance that were regarded as essential for the welfare state, such as pensions, sickness and work-injury insurance, unemployment insurance was a late comer in welfare development (Alber, 1981). The first more general schemes in Europe were introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, building on the infrastructure of the union unemployment funds. The best-known example, which gave its name to a whole genre of unemployment insurance, originated in the city of Ghent in Belgium, which started to subsidise the
当今劳动力市场上影响工人的最大风险之一是失业。失去工作通常不仅意味着失去一个人的主要收入来源，而且还会产生心理后果，例如，失去同事和令人满意的工作任务(Jahoda, 1982)。虽然短暂的失业对工人的生活造成的破坏较小，但失业持续的时间越长，寻找新工作的压力就越大。因此，工人们更有可能接受工资、技能水平和工作环境都比之前工作差的工作。从工会的角度来看，失业在几个方面构成挑战。一方面，工人的保留工资——一份工作中可接受的最低工资——随着经济困难加剧，失业时间越长，工资就越低。因此，不断上升的失业率加上不充分的缓解机制(如失业保险)，给工资带来了下行压力，削弱了工会的一般议价能力(Rothstein, 1990)。此外，在高失业率的情况下，罢工作为集体行动的工具变得效率低下，因为工人的“后备军”愿意接受低于工会要求的工资，而公众对工业冲突的支持更难组织起来。从这个角度来看，很容易理解夏皮罗和斯蒂格利茨(1984)将失业描述为“工人纪律装置”的相当愤世嫉俗的描述。然而，自从雇佣劳动成为工业社会的主要形式以来，失业对工人来说一直是一种活生生的经历和威胁，工会及其成员一直试图——以团结一致的方式——减轻失业的危险。早在19世纪，工会就开始根据会员的捐款设立失业基金，作为缓解失业的一种自助措施(Alber, 1981)。这些福利也成为招募新成员的重要工具。工会失业基金遍布欧洲大部分地区，从而为未来更慷慨的失业保险创造了先决条件。长期以来，雇主方面对失业救济金持怀疑态度，甚至怀有敌意。从雇主的角度来看，这些福利可能会降低工人对有偿工作的依赖，助长懒惰，并加强工会集体行动的能力。与养老金、疾病保险和工伤保险等福利国家必不可少的其他形式的保险相比，失业保险是福利发展的后来者(Alber, 1981)。20世纪初，在工会失业基金的基础上，欧洲推出了第一批更普遍的计划。最著名的例子，它的名字给了整个类型的失业保险，起源于比利时的根特市，它开始补贴工会基金，使他们更加慷慨和持久(Vandaele, 2006)。在20世纪的前几十年，所谓的“根特制度”成为现代失业保险制度的典范，几个国家建立了全国性的根特式制度，包括法国(1905年)和荷兰(1916年)(Rasmussen and Pontusson, 2018)。与其他福利制度相比，根特体系的一个特点是，保险计划的成员是自愿的，尽管有国家补贴，但该体系由私人组织——工会——管理。由于根特体系的设计，国家甚至用补贴来支持工会成员。TRS0010.1177/10242589221106007TransferBerglund and m ller research-article2022
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221089808
Torsten Müller, T. Schulten, J. Drahokoupil
During the COVID-19 pandemic all the EU Member States established some kind of job retention scheme to cushion the employment effects of the economic crisis. While all job retention schemes share this general objective, they differ considerably as regards their institutional design and underlying functional logic. The aim of this article is to analyse the relevant institutional diversity across Europe, with a particular focus on the role of collective bargaining and employee representation structures in the design and implementation of job retention schemes. Based on an analysis of key institutional features of such schemes implemented during the pandemic, the second aim of the article is to identify a set of minimum standards for ‘good job retention schemes’ that ensure efficient and socially adequate use. These criteria include the following elements: ensuring inclusiveness; ensuring a minimum allowance to prevent workers from ending up below the subsistence level when on such a scheme; measures preventing misuse and deadweight losses; and making job retention schemes support conditional on the involvement of trade unions and employee representation structures.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221099810
L. Andor
The need for the European Union to get involved in unemployment insurance has frequently been debated in the past decade, starting from exploratory discussions and eventually becoming a political commitment by the European Commission President. This article looks back at the origins of the idea of an EU-level unemployment benefit scheme and explains the political dynamics of the concept’s evolution. Following the 2009 Great Recession and the subsequent eurozone debt crisis, a new movement for a reinforced social dimension has been pushing the EU beyond its previous red lines. The case for counter-cyclical social stabilisation at EU level is now a touchstone for a materially meaningful EU social dimension. The COVID-19 crisis triggered a giant leap to a greater EU budgetary capacity, including financial support for job-saving schemes. This article argues that these new instruments will not suffice without also creating an EU safety net for those whose jobs cannot be saved in a period of economic downturn.
{"title":"European unemployment insurance. From undercurrent to paradigm shift","authors":"L. Andor","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099810","url":null,"abstract":"The need for the European Union to get involved in unemployment insurance has frequently been debated in the past decade, starting from exploratory discussions and eventually becoming a political commitment by the European Commission President. This article looks back at the origins of the idea of an EU-level unemployment benefit scheme and explains the political dynamics of the concept’s evolution. Following the 2009 Great Recession and the subsequent eurozone debt crisis, a new movement for a reinforced social dimension has been pushing the EU beyond its previous red lines. The case for counter-cyclical social stabilisation at EU level is now a touchstone for a materially meaningful EU social dimension. The COVID-19 crisis triggered a giant leap to a greater EU budgetary capacity, including financial support for job-saving schemes. This article argues that these new instruments will not suffice without also creating an EU safety net for those whose jobs cannot be saved in a period of economic downturn.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91208194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221078710
Paul T. de Beer, M. Keune
One of the striking features of the COVID crisis is the enormous expenditure that various EU governments have been pumping into their economies to keep troubled companies and the selfemployed afloat, to safeguard jobs and to invest in recovery programmes. This massive public spending stands in stark contrast to the years of austerity preceding the pandemic. There are some parallels with the previous economic crisis – the financial crisis – which started in 2008. At that time, governments saved the financial sector with unprecedented monetary injections, contradicting the austerity approach prevailing in the years running up to the crisis. There were widespread expectations that the financial crisis would lead to the demise of the neoliberal-monetarist paradigm in which austerity played a core part. But these expectations were not realised. The financial crisis was soon redefined as a ‘public debt crisis’ and to a considerable extent the public sector was called upon to foot the bill, in the form of further rounds of severe austerity. Will this time be different? Will the public sector pay the price again in the coming years for the debts governments are currently incurring? It is generally acknowledged that the public sector plays an essential role in combating and getting us through the COVID crisis, although assessments of the extent to which public sectors have managed this vary across countries. This applies first of all to public health care, but other public services, too – ranging from education to rubbish collection – that are considered vital or essential for getting through or overcoming the COVID crisis. Will this crisis usher in a new era in which the public sector will be valued just as much as the private sector or even assume priority? Or will the old mantra that the public sector is a ‘burden’ on the economy take precedence again when the health crisis is over, ushering in a new period of harsh austerity measures aimed at the public sector and its workers? In this contribution we first briefly look back at the consequences of the previous crisis for the public sector and then we put forward three arguments why this time it might – or should – indeed be different.
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Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221099980
S. Bach
This study was prepared and published at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its themes have become all too familiar over the past 18 months. Elderly care and its workforce have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Workers in the sector have faced terrible circumstances and many elderly people and their carers have lost their lives prematurely. The pandemic has confirmed the fragility and structural problems in the provision of long-term care around the world and exacerbated the recruitment and retention challenges that are the focus of this study. At the same time, the pandemic has focused more public attention on those who provide care, bringing a previously invisible low status workforce into the limelight. This has generated an EU commitment to a new European Care Strategy and prompted many reports looking at the employment and working conditions in long-term care. Nevertheless, the challenges facing the sector remain acute (European Commission, 2021; Kessler et al., 2020). The study looks at the evidence base and considers best practices for stemming the crisis in long-term care. It draws on survey responses and interviews with country delegates, supplemented by national data, EU Labour Force Survey data and additional literature. It considers the situation of long-term carers for the elderly who provide their services to recipients at home or in institutions. These carers comprise two main occupations, nurses and personal care workers. In OECD countries over 70 per cent of long-term care workers are personal carers. In a context of rising demand for care and the shift of care from hospital to community settings, care demand is outstripping the supply of long-term care workers, and workforce shortages will worsen without urgent action. In the aggregate, OECD countries need to more than double the current number of longterm care workers to maintain existing ratios of caregivers to the elderly. These structural challenges stem from insufficient recruitment and retention, connected to low status, poor pay and working conditions, inadequate training and limited attention to skill acquisition and deployment. Staff shortages have a severe impact on quality of care, including unmet care needs and unnecessary hospital admissions. The study details the main characteristics of the workforce, which comprises predominantly middle-aged women, with a high share of foreign-born workers. Foreign-born workers make a vital contribution and represent over 20 per cent of the OECD countries’ long-term care workforce. They are overrepresented in the care sector and are susceptible to exploitation, for many reasons. These include their employment and immigration status, for example, as undeclared workers hired privately by households and because compliance with employment regulations, such as minimum wage provisions, is uneven. Part-time working, often on an involuntary basis, is also significant. 109998010999801099980 TRS0010.1177/1024258922109998
这项研究是在COVID-19大流行开始时编写和发表的，其主题在过去18个月里变得再熟悉不过了。老年人护理及其工作人员受到大流行的影响尤为严重。该部门的工人面临着可怕的环境，许多老年人和他们的照顾者过早地失去了生命。大流行证实了世界各地长期护理服务的脆弱性和结构性问题，并加剧了作为本研究重点的招聘和留住挑战。与此同时，大流行使公众更加关注提供护理的人员，使以前不可见的低地位劳动力成为人们关注的焦点。这促成了欧盟对一项新的欧洲护理战略的承诺，并促使许多报告着眼于长期护理的就业和工作条件。然而，该行业面临的挑战仍然严峻(欧盟委员会，2021年;Kessler et al.， 2020)。这项研究着眼于证据基础，并考虑了遏制长期护理危机的最佳做法。它借鉴了调查答复和对国家代表的访谈，并辅以国家数据、欧盟劳动力调查数据和其他文献。它考虑到在家中或机构为接受服务的老人提供服务的长期照顾者的情况。这些护理人员包括两个主要职业，护士和个人护理工作者。在经合发组织国家，70%以上的长期护理工作者是个人护理人员。在护理需求不断增加和护理从医院向社区转移的背景下，护理需求超过了长期护理工作者的供应，如果不采取紧急行动，劳动力短缺将会恶化。总的来说，经合组织国家需要将目前的长期护理人员数量增加一倍以上，以维持护理人员与老年人的现有比例。这些结构性挑战源于招聘和保留不足，与低地位、低薪酬和工作条件、培训不足以及对技能获取和部署的关注有限有关。工作人员短缺严重影响到护理质量，包括未满足的护理需求和不必要的住院。该研究详细介绍了劳动力的主要特征，其中主要由中年妇女组成，外国出生的工人占很大比例。外国出生的工人做出了至关重要的贡献，占经合组织国家长期护理劳动力的20%以上。由于许多原因，她们在护理部门的人数过多，容易受到剥削。这些问题包括他们的就业和移民身份，例如，作为家庭私人雇用的未申报工人，以及因为遵守就业条例，如最低工资规定，是不平衡的。非自愿的兼职工作也很重要。trs0010.1177 / 10242589221099980transferbookreviews bookreview2022
{"title":"Book Review: Who Cares? Attracting and Retaining Care Workers for the Elderly","authors":"S. Bach","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099980","url":null,"abstract":"This study was prepared and published at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and its themes have become all too familiar over the past 18 months. Elderly care and its workforce have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Workers in the sector have faced terrible circumstances and many elderly people and their carers have lost their lives prematurely. The pandemic has confirmed the fragility and structural problems in the provision of long-term care around the world and exacerbated the recruitment and retention challenges that are the focus of this study. At the same time, the pandemic has focused more public attention on those who provide care, bringing a previously invisible low status workforce into the limelight. This has generated an EU commitment to a new European Care Strategy and prompted many reports looking at the employment and working conditions in long-term care. Nevertheless, the challenges facing the sector remain acute (European Commission, 2021; Kessler et al., 2020). The study looks at the evidence base and considers best practices for stemming the crisis in long-term care. It draws on survey responses and interviews with country delegates, supplemented by national data, EU Labour Force Survey data and additional literature. It considers the situation of long-term carers for the elderly who provide their services to recipients at home or in institutions. These carers comprise two main occupations, nurses and personal care workers. In OECD countries over 70 per cent of long-term care workers are personal carers. In a context of rising demand for care and the shift of care from hospital to community settings, care demand is outstripping the supply of long-term care workers, and workforce shortages will worsen without urgent action. In the aggregate, OECD countries need to more than double the current number of longterm care workers to maintain existing ratios of caregivers to the elderly. These structural challenges stem from insufficient recruitment and retention, connected to low status, poor pay and working conditions, inadequate training and limited attention to skill acquisition and deployment. Staff shortages have a severe impact on quality of care, including unmet care needs and unnecessary hospital admissions. The study details the main characteristics of the workforce, which comprises predominantly middle-aged women, with a high share of foreign-born workers. Foreign-born workers make a vital contribution and represent over 20 per cent of the OECD countries’ long-term care workforce. They are overrepresented in the care sector and are susceptible to exploitation, for many reasons. These include their employment and immigration status, for example, as undeclared workers hired privately by households and because compliance with employment regulations, such as minimum wage provisions, is uneven. Part-time working, often on an involuntary basis, is also significant. 109998010999801099980 TRS0010.1177/1024258922109998","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83148657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221084582
P. Pochet
The article examines the evolution of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the aftermath of COVID-19 and compares the current crisis with the previous one (the financial crisis of 2008–2013). It does so by looking at the way interests, ideas and institutions have evolved over the last decade. It looks at the possible changes in European economic governance in the light of three different models of European integration. The goal is not only to describe the differences between the two periods of crisis but also to understand the amplitude of those changes. In the actor-centred ‘institutionalism’ approach of this article, particular attention is paid to conflicts and tensions including inside the EU institutions. This allow for the elements of continuity and rupture to be highlighted and for speculation on the possibility of a new paradigm emerging.
{"title":"From one crisis to another: changes in the governance of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)","authors":"P. Pochet","doi":"10.1177/10242589221084582","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221084582","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines the evolution of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the aftermath of COVID-19 and compares the current crisis with the previous one (the financial crisis of 2008–2013). It does so by looking at the way interests, ideas and institutions have evolved over the last decade. It looks at the possible changes in European economic governance in the light of three different models of European integration. The goal is not only to describe the differences between the two periods of crisis but also to understand the amplitude of those changes. In the actor-centred ‘institutionalism’ approach of this article, particular attention is paid to conflicts and tensions including inside the EU institutions. This allow for the elements of continuity and rupture to be highlighted and for speculation on the possibility of a new paradigm emerging.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76711431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221099980a
D. Adam
tightening. The example is cited of a pay equity claim in New Zealand that resulted in a new pay structure, raising hourly wages by 15–50 per cent. The state’s failure to fund implementation, however, led to reduced hours, increased workloads and jeopardised care quality. The study also has little to say about the restructuring of care and concentration of ownership in the industry, with the rise of large private-equity for-profit operators. These structural changes not only point to the need for transnational action and campaigns to improve working conditions, but also signal that different strategies may be required to improve pay and working conditions: the balance between political lobbying, legislation and achieving collective agreements should be varied in accordance with the ownership and regulatory structures of elder care. This report provides a very welcome and wide-ranging systematic review of the deep-seated challenges facing long-term care. The urgent task facing policy-makers and providers is to move from analysis to policy implementation, framing solutions that will reboot elder care to provide dignity for ageing populations and fair care work for those providing this essential public service.
{"title":"Book review: The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation: Immigrants and Trade Unions in the European Context","authors":"D. Adam","doi":"10.1177/10242589221099980a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221099980a","url":null,"abstract":"tightening. The example is cited of a pay equity claim in New Zealand that resulted in a new pay structure, raising hourly wages by 15–50 per cent. The state’s failure to fund implementation, however, led to reduced hours, increased workloads and jeopardised care quality. The study also has little to say about the restructuring of care and concentration of ownership in the industry, with the rise of large private-equity for-profit operators. These structural changes not only point to the need for transnational action and campaigns to improve working conditions, but also signal that different strategies may be required to improve pay and working conditions: the balance between political lobbying, legislation and achieving collective agreements should be varied in accordance with the ownership and regulatory structures of elder care. This report provides a very welcome and wide-ranging systematic review of the deep-seated challenges facing long-term care. The urgent task facing policy-makers and providers is to move from analysis to policy implementation, framing solutions that will reboot elder care to provide dignity for ageing populations and fair care work for those providing this essential public service.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78528147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221094237
I. Szabó
Over the next seven years, €724bn are being made available to Member States from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) as part of the Next Generation EU budget instrument. Despite being touted as a revolutionary shift in EU economic policies, the RRF in many respects builds on the logic of previous EU budget rounds. Most importantly, it follows a developmental logic aiming to facilitate territorial cohesion by allocating more funds to less developed EU countries and regions. One of the main purposes of EU budgets has long been to strengthen EU cohesion by reducing territorial inequalities. At the time of their accession in 2004 and 2007, the relative underdevelopment of Central and Eastern European (CEE) Member States qualified them for a larger share of the cohesion and regional funds. Over time, the importance of EU funds in these economies has further increased, in parallel with the shrinking of their fiscal space, in itself partly due to enhanced budgetary surveillance by the EU’s New Economic Governance regime (Bohle and Greskovits, 2019; Erne, 2018). The RRF has brought a slight readjustment to the distribution of funds across EU peripheries, with southern Member States gaining greater funding as they now have higher unemployment than eastern Member States and were more severely hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Even so, Central and Eastern Europe will receive large amounts of EU RRF funds. Given the continued importance of EU funds for the CEE region and the fact that it has been the main net recipient of past EU budgets, this article explores the impact of previous EU budgets on the region and whether the Recovery and Resilience Facility represents a break with earlier spending priorities. In particular, it focuses on the question of whether the balance of EU funding remains tilted towards infrastructure spending rather than spending on people (human resources). To start with, CEE countries have been successful in absorbing EU funds, meaning they have the capacity to spend a very high share of the available funds. Despite worries before their accession, the absorption capacity of the eastern EU newcomers ramped up very quickly (Medve-Bálint, 2018). This was partly a result of their upgraded bureaucratic apparatus during the accession process and of a re-orientation of their domestic budgetary priorities, as most EU projects require co-financing. While they were successful in spending this money, which areas were targeted? What did these countries spend the money on? One thing is almost certain: the influx of EU money since 1094237 TRS0010.1177/10242589221094237TransferSzabó research-article2022
{"title":"The wages of reconstruction – the EU’s new budget and the public service staff shortage crisis on the EU’s eastern periphery","authors":"I. Szabó","doi":"10.1177/10242589221094237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221094237","url":null,"abstract":"Over the next seven years, €724bn are being made available to Member States from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) as part of the Next Generation EU budget instrument. Despite being touted as a revolutionary shift in EU economic policies, the RRF in many respects builds on the logic of previous EU budget rounds. Most importantly, it follows a developmental logic aiming to facilitate territorial cohesion by allocating more funds to less developed EU countries and regions. One of the main purposes of EU budgets has long been to strengthen EU cohesion by reducing territorial inequalities. At the time of their accession in 2004 and 2007, the relative underdevelopment of Central and Eastern European (CEE) Member States qualified them for a larger share of the cohesion and regional funds. Over time, the importance of EU funds in these economies has further increased, in parallel with the shrinking of their fiscal space, in itself partly due to enhanced budgetary surveillance by the EU’s New Economic Governance regime (Bohle and Greskovits, 2019; Erne, 2018). The RRF has brought a slight readjustment to the distribution of funds across EU peripheries, with southern Member States gaining greater funding as they now have higher unemployment than eastern Member States and were more severely hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic. Even so, Central and Eastern Europe will receive large amounts of EU RRF funds. Given the continued importance of EU funds for the CEE region and the fact that it has been the main net recipient of past EU budgets, this article explores the impact of previous EU budgets on the region and whether the Recovery and Resilience Facility represents a break with earlier spending priorities. In particular, it focuses on the question of whether the balance of EU funding remains tilted towards infrastructure spending rather than spending on people (human resources). To start with, CEE countries have been successful in absorbing EU funds, meaning they have the capacity to spend a very high share of the available funds. Despite worries before their accession, the absorption capacity of the eastern EU newcomers ramped up very quickly (Medve-Bálint, 2018). This was partly a result of their upgraded bureaucratic apparatus during the accession process and of a re-orientation of their domestic budgetary priorities, as most EU projects require co-financing. While they were successful in spending this money, which areas were targeted? What did these countries spend the money on? One thing is almost certain: the influx of EU money since 1094237 TRS0010.1177/10242589221094237TransferSzabó research-article2022","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83465358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1177/10242589221078125
C. Crouch
The COVID pandemic has demonstrated the weakness of neoliberalism by showing the importance of public services, workers’ need for security, and a heightened awareness of collective interdependence. Economic theory recognises the deficiencies of depending on market forces by accepting certain grounds for public intervention, including public and collective goods and negative externalities. Acceptance of the human contribution to climate change has massively increased their importance. The pandemic has had similar effects. The very rich may be able to escape to safe places, but the great mass of us are dependent on the support of each other, often through a mobilisation of resources that only states can organise. While much of the community that was rediscovered during the pandemic was highly local, damage to the climate and the spread of disease cannot be contained within national boundaries; cooperation has to be cross-national. It is therefore incompatible with an obsession with national sovereignty. For Europeans the institutions of the EU are central.
{"title":"Reflections on the COVID moment and life beyond neoliberalism","authors":"C. Crouch","doi":"10.1177/10242589221078125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221078125","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID pandemic has demonstrated the weakness of neoliberalism by showing the importance of public services, workers’ need for security, and a heightened awareness of collective interdependence. Economic theory recognises the deficiencies of depending on market forces by accepting certain grounds for public intervention, including public and collective goods and negative externalities. Acceptance of the human contribution to climate change has massively increased their importance. The pandemic has had similar effects. The very rich may be able to escape to safe places, but the great mass of us are dependent on the support of each other, often through a mobilisation of resources that only states can organise. While much of the community that was rediscovered during the pandemic was highly local, damage to the climate and the spread of disease cannot be contained within national boundaries; cooperation has to be cross-national. It is therefore incompatible with an obsession with national sovereignty. For Europeans the institutions of the EU are central.","PeriodicalId":23253,"journal":{"name":"Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73034046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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