FEPS Newsletter 17 March 2023 – EU fiscal rules, ESA, dark stores & new digital programme

📅 FEPS Newsletter: EU fiscal rules, ESA, dark stores & new digital programme Share Tweet […]

17/03/2023
📅 FEPS Newsletter: EU fiscal rules, ESA, dark stores & new digital programme
Q-commerce, Digital Research Programme, Survey & more
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Upcoming Events
It’s time to reboot and improve the overly complicated EU fiscal rules, so this week, we published a study proposing some guiding principles, and we further discussed it in Dublin 🇮🇪.

We also launched a new digital program on algorithmic management because we care about workers’ rights. If you do too, join our event on Dark Stores: they are innovative, and they are booming, but there’s something fishy about them.

But enough about us, let us know your opinion with the European survey to end involuntary unemployment. Join the movement!
UPCOMING EVENT
Dark stores: Back to the Dark Ages?
28 March – FEPS HQ – Hybrid

Quick-commerce is a service aimed at achieving superfast delivery from ‘dark stores’ to consumers. They use worker-intensive methods to deliver impressive convenience to your door. But who pays the price? We discovered that since this business is hard to
make financially sustainable, the workers and riders are the ones who bear the actual costs.

Join us on 28 March, at FEPS HQ, at the launch event of the two studies commissioned by FEPS and UNI Europa into the q-commerce sector. We investigated Germany, Spain and the UK, and unveiled the health conditions of the employees in the sector, their job security and social rights.

PAST EVENT
14 March – Dublin, Ireland

FEPS and TASC hosted a conference to discuss the possibilities for transforming the EU economic governance. With Marie Sherlock, Irish Labour Party Senator; Barbara Nolan, Head of the EU Commission Representation in Ireland; Tom McDonnell, Nevin Economic Research Institute
Co-director and other experts. The speakers exchanged on the new policy study to assess what reforms can be made to ensure the sustainability of public finances across the EU.
POLICY STUDY

What reforms do we need to ensure the sustainability of public finances across the EU? How can we prevent sovereign debt stress?

Fiscal rules may be reformed based on some guiding principles:
– Ensuring the sustainability of public finances across member states and preventing sovereign debt stress
– Facilitating EU’s public investment challenges, especially in relation to climate change
– Preventing macroeconomic policy from magnifying inequalities within or between countries
Any reforms proposed should be politically feasible. Read more.
POLICY BRIEF

What are the links between development cooperation and EU’s strategic autonomy? On the occasion of the UN 2023 Development Cooperation Forum, we explore the role that development cooperation can play in supporting Europe’s strategic autonomy ambitions, particularly with its neighboring continent, Africa. This policy brief is part of the project “Strategic Autonomy: Pathways to Progressive Action”, which has investigated the concept of ESA, in cooperation with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and Fondation Jean-Jaurès. Read more.

FEPS launched a digital research programme on algorithmic management and workers’ rights, together with Kalevi Sorsa Saatio, FES Nordics, Tankesmien Agenda, CEVEA, ECLM, SAMAK, and with the support of Nordics trade Unions.
Over the next two years, they will work on three different research strands. One on company case studies of algorithmic management, where workers’ performance is tracked and rated. Another on workers’ experience in algorithmic management from surveys and focus groups. And a third on online platforms, employment terms and algorithms. Read more.

What’s the best way to fight unemployment?How do we get decent work and transform our economy into a more sustainable society?
We want to hear your voice to collect citizens’ opinions on long-term unemployment and the potential for an EU-wide permanent program for direct, guaranteed public service employment. Take the survey here!

On Sunday 5 March 2023, there were elections in Estonia. The Estonian results inspire hope with record turnout, a record number of women elected in parliament and the defeat of right-wing and nationalist EKRE. A new coalition government that will most likely include the Estonian Social Democrats is also in the making.
EU’s socio-ecological transformation requires a very different industrial plan
by Isabelle Brachet

Today’s reality can increasingly be described as a polycrisis: the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent disruption of global supply chains; the war in Ukraine and the resulting fossil fuel price crisis; rising inequalities between and within countries, exacerbated by inflation; and, of course,
climate change. We need to transform our economy to make it resilient to shocks and respectful of planetary boundaries, and we need to reduce inequalities. The Green Deal Industrial Plan (GDIP) must be part of that socio-ecological transformation rather than a plan that mostly, and blindly, funds the industry. Read more.
Photo credits: Shuttherstock/Bilanol
#130 FEPS TALKS PODCAST

🎙️In this new episode, Tarik Abou-Chadi, Associate Professor at the Nuffield College, Oxford, engages in a conversation with Ania Skrzypek, FEPS Director for Research and Training, about the reasons for the electoral decline of social democracy and the growing
political fragmentation. Tarik also shares insights into his new research on the rise of radical right voters.

🎧 Listen to this podcast on
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