Slovakia's courageous gimmick. CEPS Commentary, 14 January 2011

To help both the United States and Europe grapple with their rising levels of government debt and large budget deficits, this Commentary suggests that EU policy-makers might be well advised to consider an innovative albeit quirky approach devised by Slovakia to deal with the problem, in which the personal prosperity of top national officials is based not only on wage developments in the economy, but also on the country’s fiscal prudence

Protecting employment in the time of coronavirus: What is the EU’s €100 billion going to buy? CEPS Policy Contribution 09 Apr 2020.

This paper briefly analyses the proposal by the European Commission to establish SURE, the ‘European instrument for temporary support to mitigate unemployment risks in an emergency’. The SURE facility would borrow up to €100 billion on the financial markets, lend it to member states to finance short-time work schemes and similar measures, using guarantees from the member states themselves. The analysis makes the point that the scheme should be seen, first and foremost, as a proof of European solidarity to counter hostile propaganda from Russia and China about the EU’s ineffectiveness. It can also have an impact on national policies to deal with the coronavirus and to assist the most damaged and/or fiscally weak member states, but this effect is likely to be limited. Potentially, the most important feature of SURE is that it explicitly refers to itself as the forerunner of a future European Unemployment Insurance scheme

Will this time be different for Greece? How to assess its ability to deliver on the reform agenda. CEPS Commentary, 13 March 2015

Taking its inspiration from the ongoing debate on whether this time will be different for Greece and whether Syriza will deliver on its reform promises to the European partners, this Commentary expresses bemusement that the public debate on such an important issue as well as internal discussions among senior policy-makers frequently resort to ‘gut feelings’ or simple stereotypes. To counteract this tendency, the author presents a simple analytical framework that can be used to assess the likelihood that a government will deliver on its reform agenda. Its purpose is not to allow for a precise probabilistic calculation, but to enable better structuring of the knowledge we have. It emphasises that the change depends NOT only on the capacity of the state to design and deliver policies, but even more crucially on state autonomy from both illegitimate and legitimate interests and cognitive models used by policy-makers to make sense of the world

Economic and Social Reforms in Slovakia: On some Aspects of Public Process and Interests Advocacy

The Slovak Republic faces the task to secure conditions for a long-term economic growth. A crucial precondition for an efficient implementation of economic measures is the knowledge of the status quo and of the impacts on the economy and the society as a whole to be expected from the relevant measures. Foreign experience with economic policies can only adopted when adjusted to the conditions of Slovak's economy, and attention has be paid to both short-term and long-term prospects of the economic and social development. To be implemented, many economic measures require acceptance on the part of the public, and this requires, among other things, direct involvement of the citizens in economic processes

Government Responses to the Platform Economy: Where do we stand? CEPS Policy Insight No 2017-30/July 2017

The introduction of the platform economy in Europe has sparked debate on the challenges it raises for workers, companies, social partners, governments and other stakeholders, and how these challenges can be addressed. This paper assesses government responses to the platform economy in seven EU countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain. It shows that, owing to the lack of a specific framework governing the platform economy, countries generally attempt to apply existing legislation, regulations and policies to the new challenges that the platform economy brings. This holds for the status of workers, working conditions, and industrial relations and social dialogue. Nevertheless, this strategy is not necessarily successful. The status of platform workers, for example, remains unclear in most member states. Some member states consider all platform workers to be self-employed, while in other member states, their status is much more dependent on the specific circumstances. There seems to be little debate on the idea of introducing a new status in the countries studied. On working conditions, the results confirm that most countries have applied the existing framework to platform work. In many of the member states, this has turned out to be problematic in several dimensions (e.g. taxation and social protection). In the area of industrial relations and social dialogue, there is much less evidence of specific actions or initiatives

Let’s get to Work! The Future of Labour in Europe. Vol. 1. CEPS Paperback, 8 September 2014

Work is both an essential part of our daily lives and one of the major policy concerns across Europe. Yet the public debate of labour issues is all too often driven by political rhetoric and short-term concerns. In this volume, researchers from seven European countries explain, in accessible language, the findings from various social sciences and what they mean for the future of labour in Europe. The conclusions they reach are addressed to policy-makers, the business world, journalists and fellow academics, and to anyone interested in the shape, size and character of the labour markets of tomorrow. “Many valuable synergies emerged between the various strands of NEUJOBS and the in-house analytical work of the European Commission.” László Andor, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Education policy and welfare regimes in OECD countries. Social stratification and equal opportunity in education. CEPS Working Document No. 357, December 2011

In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare policies as measures of intervention in this process: do countries intervene in both education and welfare – driven by a ‘stratification culture’? Or is there a trade-off between intervention in education and welfare, with certain countries prioritising one over the other? Our findings indicate that there are two pure types of clusters: i) a cluster in which: “the role of public policy is to promote equality” including countries that are egalitarian in the welfare and the education systems and ii) a cluster with stratification in both, a cluster in which – “there is a proper place for everyone in society” and several mixed clusters. Second, we consider whether it is the state on the one hand or the market or family on the other hand that provides education and welfare. We found that countries can be grouped into more market-oriented and more ‘etatist’ clusters. Combining the analysis of stratification with the analysis of the market/state boundary, we observe a more complex clustering in groups of less egalitarian and market-oriented countries, less egalitarian market-oriented, egalitarian state-oriented, educational egalitarian state-oriented and educational egalitarian market-oriented countries. We interpret our findings as challenging a one-policy-fits-all approach that advocates education policy reforms designed to increase equal opportunities in education. We argue that the context of each country needs to be considered before the implementation of such policies