Minimum Income Schemes: Increasing support, accessibility and inclusion

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament. MEPs want to address the current cost of living crisis with a new law to modernise and strengthen national minimum income schemes in EU countries. On Wednesday, plenary adopted a resolution noting that an EU directive on an adequate minimum income would make minimum […]

Here’s how natural disasters impact middle-class incomes

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Regina Pleninger, Economist, World Bank Natural disasters have short- and long-term effects on the economy as well as people’s lives. For example, weather shocks and the resulting macroeconomic fluctuations cost the economy 0.3% of permanent consumption in New […]

Team Europe contributes €500 million to COVAX initiative to provide one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses for low and middle income countries

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. Fair and equitable access to a successful COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of income, for millions of people across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific, and in Europe’s eastern and southern neighbourhood, has been enabled by €500 million of new European financial support for the global […]

Estonia: use robust growth to improve income equality and well-being

This article is brought to you in association with OECD. Estonia’s economy is performing well, and public finances are in excellent shape, yet growth is softening and spending pressures from infrastructure needs and an ageing population are mounting. Efforts should now focus on improving income equality and well-being, greening growth and accelerating the country’s digital transformation, […]

Why income inequality is bad for the climate

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson, President, The Swedish Trade Union Confederation In recent decades, income inequality has increased in almost all OECD countries. The average income of the richest 10% of the population today is about nine times as high as the […]

Family incomes stagnate in the EU; people excluded from ‘moderate recovery’

The Brussels Eurocrats are trying to convince us all that the European economy, after the 2008-2010 fallout, is now on the right track towards an era of growth and financial security. However, real people out there are still waiting to taste the benefits of this impalpable improvement. Apart from the fact that Eurostat, the EU […]

Eurozone at risk of home-made deflation and recession

Tomorrow Tuesday, 5th April, the European Commission will present its ‘Spring European Economic Forecast’ including assessments and predictions about GDP, inflation, employment and government finance for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Good providence made sure that last Thursday Eurostat released its flash estimate of April inflation standing at the edge of zero percent, up by an […]

EU Commission: Germany can make Eurozone grow again just by helping itself

On the political level, the European Commission and the IMF have been warning Germany for months now about its inextricable over stretched internal fiscal and incomes double consolidation. Now the Commission comes back with an excellent economic paper, which employs a structural multi-country model and assesses the negative impact of fiscal consolidation measures undertaken in […]

The inhumane face of crisis mirrored in numbers

The discussion and the argumentation about the unbelievable fall of living standards of the most deprived part of the population in the European Union during the crisis years is more or less an assertion, based on what every one of us sees and hears in one’s own personal social circle. Unemployment percentages tell only part […]

The miserables and the untouchables of the economic crisis

The worsening of social conditions for the poorer part of the population, in the years of the still ongoing financial and real economy crisis, is an easily predictable development. However it is a revelation and a pity to observe the difference of the degree and the way recession badly affects some, and at the same […]

How wealthy people transmit this advantage to their children and grand children

Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical service, published data on poverty and social exclusion risks for EU citizens in 2011, showing completely disappointing results. The interesting thing, however, is that Eurostat didn’t release similar data for previous years for comparison reasons. Given that the much-advertised by the Brussels EU bureaucracy, “Europe 2020 strategy”, has set as […]