Mental Illness and Intellectual Disability

[Excerpt] Both, people with intellectual disability and people with mental illness, suffer from prejudices, negative attitudes, degrading treatment, abuse and discrimination in society. They are often discriminated against by employers, social and health services, or housing societies and in the access to goods or to financial services. They experience painful emotions, being out of control, or loosing all they have

Achieving Quality: Consumer Involvement in Quality Evaluation of Services

[Excerpt] The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the fact that changes in the approach towards the “clients” or “consumers” of services for people with intellectual disability do have an important impact on the way the quality evaluation systems of these services should be designed and organised

The European Union Against Social Exclusion

[Excerpt] Social inclusion means that people who are poor or have other problems take part in the life of society. Social inclusion is the opposite of social exclusion

Discrimination Hurts Deep Down Inside! : Fighting Discrimination in Europe

[Excerpt] Everybody has the right to be protected from discriminatio

Whither growth in central and eastern Europe? Policy lessons for an integrated Europe

In this Blueprint, Bruegel Resident Fellows Zsolt Darvas, Jean Pisani-Ferry, André Sapir and their co-authors Torbjörn Becker, Daniel Daianu, Vladimir Gligorov, Michael A Landesmann, Pavle Petrovic, Dariusz K. Rosati and Beatrice Weder di Mauro argue that in view of the depth of integration in Europe, the development model of the central, eastern and south-eastern Europe (CESEE) region, despite its shortcomings, should be preserved. But it should be reformed, with major implications for policymaking both at national and EU levels. If so, what are the required changes? Bruegel and The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) cooperated to form this expert group of economists from various European countries to research these issues.

Welcome to Europe

Bruegel Fellow Jakob von Weizsäcker argues that Europe needs more high-skilled migration and the debate on low-skilled migration should not be an excuse to slow this process down. Rather, the EU should use a couple of tools to encourage high-skilled migration: a skill-based points system with a â??Blue Card" granting access to its entire labour market and a â??Blue Diploma" for students graduating with a Masters degree (or equivalent) from selected universities to allow them access to the entire EU labour market. In order to manage migration from the new member states he recommends an â??External Minimum Wage".

The need for ‘Diamond Engagement’ around open access to high quality research output

This paper advocates for a co-ordinated cultural shift in their engagement with access to resources in order to make peer-reviewed articles available to a wider audience. This Paper addresses two audiences: scientists, especially those who have been traditionally more resistant to the OA approach, and policy makers. The Scientific Committee is well aware of the difficulties that some research communities face in engaging with the OA approach and would like to offer a way forward to address the current status quo. Social scientists in particular have been struggling with the discussion on OA, given the length of time that the current quality standards and good practice for publication took to set up. The community of researchers perceives that these standards are now guarded by the peer-reviewed ranked journals which do not offer OA for either articles or books, a situation that is certain to persist for some time.   The other important aspect is that payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) to journals for OA publication is often unaffordable given the limited resources available to the social sciences disciplines. In this context, this paper illustrates how the deposition of articles in public repositories can be beneficial to the research community. At the same time, this Paper encourages policy makers to better invest in the harmonisation of research information metadata standards across Europe using existing public infrastructures, and to ensure good quality of records, interoperability and discoverability. It also links the discussion of OA with an issue that is crucial in both research and policy agendas: demonstration of the impact of publicly-funded research

Global governance: an agenda for Europe

Governance of the global economy is becoming a pressing matter and the situation is compounded by the growing number and diversity of players in the global economy. The authors argue that Europe is now in a position to take a leading role. Not only is it in Europeâ??s interest to reform the global governance system, but it also has the experience necessary to do so. The vacuum created by the seeming reluctance of the US to drive the agenda forward could be filled by the European Union.

Beyond the crisis: prospects for emerging Europe

This working paper by Zsolt Darvas assesses the impact of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis on the medium-term growth prospects of CEES countries, the Caucasus and Central Asia, which starting their economic transition about twenty years ago. Evidence shows that the crisis has had a major impact on the within-sample fit of the models used and that the positive impact of EU enlargement on growth is smaller than previous research has shown. The crisis has also altered the future growth prospects of the countries studied, even in the optimistic but unrealistic case of a return to pre-crisis capital inflows and credit booms. A version of this publication was also released as an article for Comparative Economic Studies (2011) 53, 261â??290; published online 28 April 2011

Flexible workforces and low profit margins: electronics assembly between Europe and China

This book investigates restructuring in the electronics industry and in particular the impact of a \u2018Chinese\u2019 labour regime on work and employ - ment practices in electronics assembly in Europe.1 Electronics is an extremely dynamic sector, characterized by an ever-changing organi - zational structure, as well as cut-throat competition, particularly in manufacturing. Located primarily in East Asia, electronics assembly has become notorious for poor working conditions, low unionisation and authoritarian labour relations. However, hostile labour relations and topdown HR policies are not unique to East Asia. They have become associated with the way the sector is governed more broadly, with a number of Western companies also coming to rely on such practices