The Covid-19 pandemic was meant to be a watershed moment in both global and European politics, offering humanity an opportunity to rethink our societal and economic arrangements and transform our economic and societal arrangements in a comprehensive way, making them more resilient to future shocks, while ensuring environmental sustainability, intergenerational fairness, a dignified existence, and a just share of the fruits of progress for all.
While it is undeniable that, in Europe at least, the immediate response to the Covid-19 crisis was markedly different from, say, the policy responses to previous crises - and in particular the financial and economic crisis of 2008 which followed by a long period of ‘austerity’ - it is equally clear that this response has been inconclusive. At the time of writing Europe is once more confronted with another profound crisis, often referred to as a ‘cost of living' crisis, with potentially far-reaching implications. The substantial, and in many ways unprecedented, degree of public expenditure and intervention in the economy may have offered a lifeline to millions of struggling families and businesses, but it has not fundamentally reversed some steadily deteriorating societal indicators, from rising inequalities to precipitating levels of wellbeing, not to mention excess deaths or the growing electoral appeal of far-right populist movements and political parties. It has certainly failed to prevent the emergence of a new crisis, a crisis linked to strained global supply chains, unchecked and rising profit margins, spiralling energy costs, and geopolitical tensions.
There is almost a sense that what was once defined as ‘Disaster Capitalism’ is becoming a hard-wired feature of our human condition in the 21st century, and that we may be destined to drift from emergency to emergency, from slump to slump, from a ‘disaster’ to the next.
This is arguably the time to recast a new social-ecological contract for the future of humanity, a contract that addresses the fundamental imbalances of our economic and social systems, and that ensures a dignified, convivial, and sustainable future for this and for the next generations.
Our task as ETUI, a centre of knowledge and research aligned to the interests of working people and organized labour, is to push the ambitions of these post-crisis reconstruction narratives beyond the cosmetic or patchy solutions that will invariably emerge in some quarters (while also escaping the ‘Il faut que tout change pour que rien ne change’ fallacy). As once put by the author of a no less socially ambitious reform project, William Beveridge, ‘A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching’. Our times are ripe for a new generation of innovative and comprehensive policy and reform ideas – the ones that will shape the transformative debates for the next decade - to be brought to the fore and defined in greater detail. We endeavour to bring together an internationally recognized group of progressive thinkers and radical intellectuals, in order to offer a comprehensive rewriting of the rules of the economy and society and to lay out a range of policy and reform ideas to reshape our futures along the guiding principles of
1. Economic and environmental sustainability;
2. Equality and distributive justice;
3. The democratization of the world of work.
The ETUI is bringing together an internationally recognized group of progressive thinkers and radical intellectuals, in order to offer a comprehensive rewriting of the rules of the economy and society, and to lay out a range of policy and reform ideas to reshape our futures along with the guiding principles of economic and environmental sustainability, equality, distributive justice, democracy, and resilience.
Blogs and Podcasts
Beyond the politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’ - Bridget Anderson
For a new post-pandemic economic constitution - Keith Ewing
Reconstruction: time for transformative ideas - Kalina Arabadjieva, Nicola Countouris, Bianca Luna Fabris, Wouter Zwysen
The never-ending pandemic - Danny Dorling
The urgent need for a post-growth society - Dominique Meda