Issues in South African Social Security

This paper, originally written at the time of the political transition, provides an overview of social security issues at that time. A sustained improvement in the living standards of the poor requires economic growth and investment in human capital to allow the poor to benefit from that growth, but a social safety net is also necessary for those who do not yet share in those benefits and to safeguard those who do against contingencies such as unemployment, old age and illness. In South African, too little attention was paid by social scientists to social security issues before the political transition, with regard to both social assistance and social (occupational) insurance and the link between them.social security, South Africa

Beyond Disability Civil Rights

[Excerpt] This Article argues that to be effective, both domestic and international disability rights must adopt a disability human rights paradigm. Such a framework combines the type of civil and political rights provided by antidiscrimination legislation (also called negative or first-generation rights) with the full spectrum of social, cultural, and economic measures (also called positive or second-generation rights) bestowed by many human rights treaties.16 By acting holistically, this agenda accounts for factors normally exogenous to civil rights laws and ensures that individuals can flourish and participate in their societies. Accordingly, our intention is to share some thoughts on how to best provide disabled citizens with equal opportunity rather than “merely” equal treatment. Internationally, States and civil society organizations have been developing innovative and effective equality measures. We draw on their experiences in providing examples of how disability legislation and policy can be developed to implement a more holistic human rights approach. These lessons are also pertinent for invigorating the ADA

Building a Common Policy on Labour Immigration: Towards a Comprehensive and Global Approach in the EU? CEPS Working Document, No. 256, 7 February 2007

This paper addresses the building of a common EU policy on labour immigration. It reviews the latest policy developments concerning the harmonisation of the rules for admission and residence of third-country workers in the EU. In November 2006, the European Commission published a Communication entitled “Global Approach to Migration one year on: Towards a Comprehensive European Migration Policy”, which reemphasises the need to develop a transnational policy on regular immigration facilitating the admission of certain categories of immigrant workers through “a needsbased approach” and especially taking into account the case of the “highly skilled”. By September 2007 the Commission intends to present two proposals for directives dealing respectively with the conditions for entry and residence of highly skilled workers and a common general framework of rights for all immigrants in legal employment. The main questions evoked by the EU’s ‘global and comprehensive’ approach and these two proposals are considered along with the essential weaknesses that current policy and legal trends in the national arena may pose to any eventual Europeanisation as a result of following their patterns too closely

Balancing climate change mitigation and environmental protection interests in the EU Directive on carbon capture and storage

The EU Climate and Energy Package highlights the potential contradictions between the climate change imperative of reducing GHGs emissions and the importance to maintain environmental integrity. While the package supports climate change mainstreaming, it remains to be seen to what extent it succeeds in achieving internal environmental integration between climate change mitigation and other environment- protection objectives. Directive 2009/31/EC on the capture and geological storage of carbon dioxide (hereinafter the CCS Directive) offers a paradigmatic example of this potential conflict. One of the main regulatory challenges arising from the CCS Directive relates to finding the proper balance between the different interests involved and the not-fully-consistent objectives of environmental protection, climate change mitigation, and energy security. The present article will discuss this regulatory challenge and examine how the CCS Directive’s regulatory framework for CCS permits a combination of the various interests at stake and the giving of proper weight to concerns about environmental protection. The role that the precautionary principle in conjunction with the proportionality principle may have in balancing climate change mitigation and environment-protection interests will be considere

Italy: The Search for a Sustainable PAYG Pension System

During the 1990s the reform of the pension system had been at the core of the effort to consolidate Italian public finances and ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. The reform process began in 1992 when a quarter of perspective public sector pension liabilities was abruptly cancelled. A second major reform, in 1995, aimed primarily at reducing distortions in the labour market and at making the system more fair. This latter reform began a shift from a defined benefit to a defined contribution system. The Italian system will remain on a PAYG basis, but each individual will hold a notional social security account. Pensions will be related to accumulated contributions and to retirement age. The introduction of the defined contribution pensions aims at mimicking the incentive effects of funded pensions, while avoiding the need to pre-fund future liabilities. Over the last decade, pension expenditure trends have been substantially adjusted down. Microeconomic incentives have been improved. Distributive effects have been largely redesigned. However, the reform process is not yet over. Italian pension spending, which is proportionally higher than that in any other western industrial country, is still expected to increase as a share of GDP. This also depends on the very low fertility rate and the relatively high life expectancy. Moreover, some reforms have been implemented without adequate analysis of their implications and they include solutions which may result unsustainable in the long-run. This lengthy reform process generates uncertainty, limits the microeconomic benefits of the actuarial approach introduced by the 1995 reform, and induces elderly workers to retire from the work-force as soon as they are in the condition to for fear of possible cuts in benefits. An actuarially based pension system, such as that introduced in Italy in 1995, can deliver the expected labour market benefits only if the link between contributions and benefits is transparent and perceived as stable by citizens. This may not be the case in Italy, where a large number of workers are not affected by the new pension regime and where public opinion expects further reforms.

Pharmaceuticals Delivery in Ireland. Getting a Bigger Bang for the Buck

Ireland

Budgetary Consolidation in EMU.

There is a general consensus that monetary stability in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) requires sustainable public finances of the member states. But how can a sufficient degree of budgetary discipline be maintained in Stage three of EMU?To answer this question, this study provides an empirical analysis of the budgetary consolidations in the EU member states by carrying out an analysis of: the importance of the quality of the budgetary adjustment for the success of the consolidations; the anatomy of fiscal adjustment processes in the EMU member states during the 1990s; the quality of the budgetary institutions of the member states and the changes in these institutions that have occurred during the 1990s; the macroeconomic aspects of fiscal consolidations. The results of the analysis support the proposition that, in order to maintain a high degree of sustainability in Stage three of EMU, attention might shift away from the numerical criteria regarding overall deficits and debts, and focus more on the quality of fiscal adjustments and of the institutions governing public finances in the member states.national budgets, emu, economic and monetary union, public finances

Migration as a Political and Public Phenomenon: The Case of Hungary

Publication within the project “The V4 towards migration challenges in Europe. An analysis and recommendations” is financed by Visegrad Fun

Implementing the Open Method of Co-ordination in Pensions

The article presents an insight into the European Union Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) in area of pension. The author’s goal was to present the development and the effects of implementation the OMC. The introduction is followed by three topic paragraphs: 1. the OMC – step by step, 2. the evaluation of the OMC, and 3. the effects of OMC implementation. In the summary, the author highlights as except of advantages there are also disadvantages of the implementation of the OMC, and there are many doubts exist in the context of efficiency of performing that method in the future.OMC, pensions, Open Method of Co-ordination, European Union