Hello, I'm Timothy Garton Ash, welcome to the Europe Stories podcast, what the young Europeans want the European Union to do and to be.
Over the last three years,
an amazing group of young Europeans have worked with me here at the European Studies Centre at Oxford University to answer this question.
And this podcast will present their findings.
Host Anna and Luckhurst say have a series of conversations with the authors of our concluding report and give you their answers.
So I think we can go ahead and introduce our guests here today, both of whom co-authored this chapter in Social Europe,
both of whom have a lot of expertise and experience researching social policy in Europe as well.
So Kristjan is originally from North Macedonia and actually has been working with the Europe stories team remotely,
mostly, I think this entire time during the pandemic. And he is currently.
Completing his defence of policy at Oxford and especially coming from North Macedonia is especially interested in question.
Do you enlargement also in relation to social policy,
yeomen's judicial candidates in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford.
His thesis is focussed on employment patterns of couples in Europe and how social and employment policies can affect the formation of jobless couples.
So thinking back on our conversation, I think what's really striking is that both of them have a lot of deep knowledge about social policy,
but they're also bringing in practical experience at the European institutional level,
but also personal experiences from growing up and from having experiences of different parts of Europe,
which I think really comes out in the course of a conversation. Yeah,
and it's interesting because you started out more sceptical about the prospect of
integrating the EU further and Kristjan is much more optimistic about federalisation,
for instance. And and I think he he at least started to change his mind a bit as we get into this conversation.
Yeah, which is one of the great things that we've seen over the course of these interviews is really
how the co-author is often hash out their differences and sometimes come to a new agreement,
or sometimes they understand their differences in a different way.
So could you both tell us a bit about your background and how you came to write about this particular chapter in our report?
So currently, I'm a soon to be second year student at the Department of Social Policy,
but I'm looking at family policy, particularly in Eastern Europe, and my thesis,
which is a very preliminary stage,
deals with financial support for parents in six European countries and the relationship between the support and fertility rates in these countries.
So very much a European topic, even though not all of the countries I cover are in the EU.
But it is geographically and culturally speaking and terms of social policy and based social policy intervention department.
I consider myself a proud European. I used to be a member of the young European Federalists in my home country in North Macedonia,
in our local chapter of Federalist Magazine of the European Federalists.
Where are you joining us from, by the way? Christesen. I'm currently in Skopje, in Macedonia.
I'm in the second year of my different social policy and I'm studying, broadly speaking, employment policy in Europe.
I'm interested in the relationships in terms of labour supply within couples where one partner works,
whether the other partner will be more likely to work or not. And I'm studying that over the last 40 years in European countries.
So very much an EU focus. I'm just concentrating on EU countries and have been from undergrad to master's to Ph.D. without interruption.
And in the course of that, I realised I wanted to get experience from outside academia.
I've always been really interested in the EU.
As I said, my thesis focuses on the EU and I've always known that I wanted to work in some way on the EU like Christian,
Democrat, European definitely feel more European than French, which is my original nationality.
And so to me, it was very natural to apply to work for the EU.
So I did a five month graduate traineeship for them and I was lucky enough to be selected
in the team working directly for the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs,
Nicholas Schmidt, which was a fascinating experience, very intense work.
That's a crucial time as well for employment and social affairs in the aftermath of covid.
Congratulations, by the way, where are you joining us from now? Some in Geneva currently, because that's where my dad lives.
Let's build on that a bit. So it sounds like both of you have really found this passion for social policy and in particular European social policy.
I wonder when you reflect on how you came onto this interest,
whether you think it was something very organic and natural that emerged from your background growing up.
And it's something that perhaps you share with many other people that you grew up with.
Or whether it's the more or particular interest that might be quite different from those of people around you.
And if so, what might have led you on to this more specific path?
For me, it's always been completely natural to be interested in you.
And I feel completely European and I've been really lucky.
To be honest, I was privileged to grow up in a very international environment, be able to follow my parents when they want to.
Then I went to international schools. And it's not an environment really that made me feel very European.
And that's why it's always been completely natural to focus on European issues.
I'm a political scientist by training.
I did East European studies with an emphasis on politics, both from an undergraduate degree and my graduate degree.
It always fascinated me how both materialist these European countries that I have focussed on have become always
cultural issues that people prefer to talk about a lot of nationalism involved and the issues that really matter.
In my opinion, the domestic social issues, economic issues are usually sidelined.
So that has motivated me to try and disrupt the status quo and direct the focus.
This as an academic in the mainstream, it's more difficult the words social policy and domestic politics more broadly,
because it really tends to be neglected in my region of focus.
Of course, being from North Macedonia, some people would say still clashes with being European,
despite the obvious geographical and cultural belonging.
Because my country has been trying to join the European Union for almost, what is it, 30 years.
And we're still not even close to doing so because we haven't even opened our accession talks with the EU.
So I have been very frustrated with the union at times, but luckily, until now at least, it hasn't interfered with my with my broader European ID.
And I have throughout the years been a strong advocate for the European integration of my country.
And that's about it. I've done public advocacy on that topic.
So yeah, those are the European gateway and the social policy gateway for me into writing this chapter.
Christiane, you mentioned that in today's public discourse, cultural issues seem to be prioritised over social issues.
Did it surprise you that in your findings in the first section of the report about what young Europeans want,
you came to the conclusion that for the majority, of course, there are nuances and we'll discuss that.
It seems that young Europeans are still mostly concerned with social policy issues.
Do you want to comment on that? Well, let's start with the qualitative insights.
We because from the interviews that are available on the website of Europe stories and they're
actually we didn't get a lot of mentions of social policy and social issues in general.
I think what we have in the report and the last game and I for is the number of interviews is changing constantly on the website.
But we were looking at was probably about four or five people identifying social policy or social topics in their interviews.
So that wasn't a lot. But of course, we can also attribute it perhaps to people thinking that social issues are obviously important.
So there is no need to highlight them in interviews.
You have to decide through specific issues that you consider to be most important to Europe right now.
So that was maybe not necessarily a surprise, because people do tend to focus, at least in my experience, more on cultural issues.
But yes, of our opinion polls and the positive things as it would have acquired social policy and social issues seem to be very high up on the agenda.
And that was certainly a very positive surprise for me. Of course, for our chapter, we drew on our own polling and your stories,
but also other police sources, the Eurobarometer, mainly the European Social Survey.
And most of them were given, all of them seem to be pointing in a similar direction.
So social issues are important for everyone, but especially for young people and more so than most other issues out there on the menu.
So, for example, young Europeans stand out from the general population and mention inequality as the second biggest threat at the moment.
They're also young Europeans have emerged as disproportionately concerned with job insecurity, even compared to people above the age of forty six.
We found in one of the sources we've looked at and they're also fighting poverty,
fighting economic and social inequalities and boosting employment right as three of the top five priorities for the EU amongst the young Europeans.
So clearly, social issues are very salient. I wasn't that surprised because a lot of these young Europeans would have known
very closely the effects of the financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis.
And so we're talking about people who might be 15 to 30 years old. And so loads of them were probably just graduating from university or into their
first job or just beginning on the job market when these crises happened.
And we know how high still today, especially at that time, unemployment was for young Europeans.
And so to me, it feels kind of. Normal,
but also reassuring in a sense that these social issues haven't been completely forgotten
when you see the complete polarisation of the discourse and certain cultural issues.
And then more recently, we've had obviously the social consequences of the pandemic.
So when you take these two factors into account, it wasn't a complete shock to see it like that.
Before moving on to the next question, let me just make sure to mention that we will have the links to the polls in our podcast notes,
so many of these very interesting findings. Don't worry, if they're flying by you in the conversation, they will be in the notes.
So human Christian, I would really like to ask you about a very interesting finding that or at least the suggestion,
which is a difference between young Europeans and very young Europeans.
Possibly in terms of the relative weight on social policy vs. other adjacent, but nonetheless distinct areas such as the environment.
And I was wondering if you could tell us about that difference. What exactly are these two groups?
How do you define them and what might be the difference as well as why might there be such a difference in general?
As I said, all forces seem to be pointing in a similar direction, and that's really the high salience of social issues for young people.
But there is this important subdivision.
So in most of our resources, very young Europeans, we consider to be people in their late teens and early 20s,
and then those slightly older would be young or older young Europeans,
if that makes sense, because there were usually some differences, not very significant, but some differences between the two groups.
And that's what we describe as a cohort effect in our report.
So basically, everyone older than twenty to twenty three, I would say most of the sources would rank social issues as most important,
but then amongst the slightly younger subgroup, you would have people drinking the environment.
Education is more important than social policy.
So the question that arises is, once these people who are in their mid and late 20s now leave this age group,
whether social policy will still be dominant in this age group.
So when the children of today, in other words, become the young people of tomorrow, will our conclusions still stand?
And of course, what Gail mentioned about the previous big crisis, the financial crisis of 2008, whether that might have played a role,
of course, because these older young Europeans do remember very vividly the crisis and that might not be the case.
So much for the slightly younger subgroup.
But then, of course, we have to qualify this, because even if those young Europeans in their early 20s prefer citing the environment,
for example, that's still a very slight difference.
So we in our polling data, it was just a couple of percentage points of social social issues are still very much important to them as well.
And thinking of crises, of course, we can't permit the ongoing crisis with the pandemic and whether there might be a period effect as well.
There is another thing to keep in mind, because the more we look for our sources from reporting cycles, from those sources,
from the last four or five years, I would say, and the most recent waves usually indicated even more salience of social issues.
So there might have been a covid-19 effect there, which might not necessarily be permanent.
So we'll have to keep an eye on how that develops after the pandemic is more or less over before passing on to you.
Maybe I can just open up. An opportunity here to reflect on the pandemic,
which obviously is both very important and rather unknowable at this point in terms of the effects on attitudes towards social policy.
In the report chapter, you hint at this uncertainty in terms of the possible effects of the pandemic.
So we're now a year and a half into the pandemic. We have a number of interviews with a number of polls and of course, in the past year and a half,
you've also observed the people around you, the conversations that are happening.
Do you see a possible shift in the relative importance of social policy?
Certainly at European level. I think it's emphasised even more than before that the EU has a role to play in social issues.
And to be honest, you always had some sort of social role, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker,
especially weak at the start of 2010 and the sovereign debt crisis where the main focus was on austerity.
But I feel like the importance of social issues in general and of what you can do has really increased when it's such a global crisis,
when incomes have been badly hit.
And we've seen that the EU has set up a scheme show to help member states establish and finance short time work schemes.
And my feeling from that is that yet the pandemic has put to the forefront issues of employment, but also income, maintenance, poverty.
And even if you think of a country that's not in the EU anymore, but the UK,
I mean, the UK, which was the epitome of the small states for the past 30,
40 years, have set up a furlough scheme that was maintained for such a long time and effort from a Tory government as well.
I mean, I thought that was quite telling in terms of the general shift in Europe,
in terms of the attitude towards public spending and social support in general.
But of course, the question is whether it'll be lusting after the pandemic.
Our interviews with Europeans from different generations are essential component of the Europe Stories project,
you can explore their answers about their formative best and worst moments on our website,
European Moments, Dotcom, several of those moments mentioned throughout this episode.
Harlington, the description Christesen. I think it was you who mentioned that one of the tentative explanations for in our interviews,
the concern was social policy not being as pronounced as it is in the opinion polls and other polling.
So one of the explanations that you mentioned is, you know,
it's such an obvious issue that people don't really think of it when they're confronted with what should be the priorities for the European Union.
Could it also be that because the European Union has a reputation for doing relatively well on this front,
it's also seen as taken care of and therefore people are thinking of what the European Union should be focussing on.
That's not been so well taken care of, for example, as a case of the environment.
If so, if you do think that this is a tentative explanation, how do you square that with the fact that young Europeans and very young Europeans in
particular don't seem to be very well informed about what the EU does in social policy?
And perhaps when answering that,
you could start by telling us a little bit about what the EU actually does that young Europeans don't know so much about.
Again, I have to qualify my migration of interpretation of those qualitative insights that we acquired.
I mean, again, here in my background as an Eastern Europe expert, my blaireau as well is in East European countries.
Talking about social policy can be a taboo sometimes because if you're talking about
social policies and advocating for more leftwing approaches to policy in general,
you immediately can be accused of being a socialist or a communist or the result as well.
Whereas in Western Europe, as we saw from our poll numbers, that might not be so much of an issue,
but your ideas of the broader picture and how informed Europeans are.
So, of course, on the one hand, from the numbers, it seems that social policy is all there they're thinking of.
But then when you scratch under the surface a little bit, there was this incredibly consistent statistic that came across.
Respondents were asked about the European pillar of social rights, an important initiative in this regard introduced by the EU in 2017,
people aged 15 to 24 are even less likely than the general population to be able to describe it.
And I emphasise even less likely because even the general population is highly unlikely to be able to describe.
It is eight percent for the general population, six percent remarkably low for those aged 15 to 24.
And to bounce back quickly on the reason why it might not be so mentioned by people in interviews,
I'm wondering what it could almost be the reverse in the sense that people know social issues are taken care of in the EU,
but also most people would associate it with member states rather than your social policy and the welfare state and especially benefits.
It's still seen as a sort of national prerogative.
And in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if people were kind of astonished if they knew already how much the EU does in social affairs.
Even if they probably do, you probably could do more. But for instance, the European Social Fund is a massive fund.
It's billions of finance projects in every EU countries. And I would think that a lot of people perhaps don't know about it.
And so yet, because of this idea that social policies, national level may be just not something that people bring up in interviews.
Yeah, if I may add to that very briefly,
we have this other statistic which actually brings more optimism into the picture about it's a little older from 2016,
but it asks young people, young Europeans, how they would use a potential eurozone budget.
And we have millennials at all levels of education prioritising supporting economically weaker countries.
So over 40 percent of them cited this use of the budget, this mechanism.
So there is a lot of solidarity there and interest really in action at the EU level, at least based on this particular statistic.
And another very sure point of where we were, where we're not hiding out beyond the night.
We were disappointed with how few people cited social policy topics in interviews, but those who did were really enthusiastic about them.
So that's also something worth highlighting because the numbers sometimes don't provide the full picture.
And it's helpful to look at the specific quotes that we got.
So we had a young Polish I.T. specialist, for example,
saying that there should be a common European health care as a means of creating something similar to the United States of the EU.
So I think the enthusiasm there is is clear and then also from a completely different age group and different country,
52 year old British Romanian teacher. So an older person, but still very much with a similar attitude towards this.
I hope that the EU is a beacon of civility and progressive socialism,
where the health and happiness of people are prioritised over profit and the natural environment is protected, expanded and treasured.
So equally, data sometimes reveal this more, I would argue pointedly, than the quantitative was.
If I can now bring in one issue here on Christian that I think might connect our discussion of what young Europeans want with what the EU is doing.
One of the very suggestive ideas in the chapter report is that of universal basic income, especially at the European level.
Now, I think that idea, UBI, is very interesting.
But let's just start with a factual question. Is there any movement on this at the European level?
The short answer would be no, I'm afraid both,
because the focus at the minute is more on jobs and getting people back in jobs in the recovery now after the phase of income support.
Now is the time, at least according to the EU, to put people back into jobs.
The other thing would be I think it would be terribly difficult politically.
You already see the minimum wage is already very difficult because you have to put so many countries together to accept it.
And UBI is even more revolutionary on many.
And I might be corrected by someone who did EU law on that, but on many social policy issues,
as soon as it requires harmonisation of Social Security rules,
for instance, you need all countries to agree unanimously and so on, very ambitious social policy reforms that also might be an obstacle.
There is definitely a growing movement in EU member states.
And for instance, I think that in Berlin that started the trial of an actual full universal basic income.
And there is a movement for sure in Europe, in member states, by civil society sometimes.
But I think at EU level we didn't see and we didn't foresee any movement on that front for the near future at least.
And it's important to remember that this remains a very popular policy.
So the gap between what governments do and what people want might be the widest for for for this particular policy,
because according to our polling from March 2020,
71 percent of people in general and the exact same percentage of people aged
16 to 29 support the introduction of the slightly higher four to four percent
are thankful for young people in terms of supporting a higher minimum wage at the European level to fix it at a specific percentage of median income.
But as you said earlier, even minimum wage action at the EU level is difficult, let alone the RBI action.
So this part of the conversation might be a little utopian because it's 27 countries that have different cultures.
And also that's the beauty of the EU, is that we make things with 27 countries that might have quite different backgrounds and cultures,
but on social policy and welfare state, which is really sensitive.
It might be hard because countries have very different visions and you have countries that CGU as a very political project.
So, for instance, that that would be from other countries to do more as a single market.
And they want the EU to refrain as much as possible from getting into social issues.
And many countries also see the welfare state as just a purely national thing.
You have to remember that the welfare state is very often tied to development of the nation state, for instance.
That's what we refer to in the chapter when we refer to Bismarck because he's seen as the great grandfather of the welfare state.
And it's often said that he did that to cement the national identity in Prussia at the time.
So all that to say that moving forward on things that can involve redistribution,
taxation and redistribution of income and direct income support to citizens is very, very touchy indeed.
I should add that while there's no move on universal basic income as part of the 54 for 55 environmental package,
there was a climate action fund that was created to compensate lower income
households from the notably the increase in the price of fuel or transport.
And it's very interesting that this Climate Social Action Fund gives the possibility to use the money of that fund for direct income support.
It doesn't say you have to use it for direct income support. He says, OK, you can use the money to directly give it to citizens.
And that is a big step for the EU because it's something that member states for a long time have been feeling very sensitive about.
The opinion polls are being conducted in partnership with Epinions,
revealed that 71 percent of Europeans believe the state should give all citizens a basic income.
You can find a link to our project's findings in the description.
For now, the Centre Rosemann Cell, a retired artist from the U.K., tell us what she would like the EU to have achieved by 2030.
Definitely some kind of basic income for people and for the northern wealthier parts of Europe, like the Netherlands and Germany and Sweden,
to actually help the poorer parts like Portugal, Spain, Italy to have a better economic value.
One thing that I found very interesting in the chapter is how young Europeans,
even though they value, much like the rest of Europeans, social policy issues,
in particular unemployment and welfare,
they do value these priorities differently and they're more willing to support some sort of policies than others compared to other generations.
So UBI is one example, minimum wage policy as well. First of all, did this surprise you in any way and regardless of whether you expected it or not,
do you have any tentative explanations for these nuances? Well, in terms of the minimum wage pacifically,
it's probably motivated by just how dire the situation is in real life and how far we are from a dignified,
I would say, level of the minimum wage in the USA.
We have requested the general picture is positive and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but the press has a minimum wage at about 60 percent.
I read somewhere of the median wage of the country, which is good, but most countries don't even have 50 percent.
A couple of them have about 40, which is which is very, very low.
So, of course, I think going to explain part of citizens frustration about this.
But in terms of the gap between, again, young Europeans and the rest of the population, I would highlight gender equality from our research.
And I think this is reflected in the report, as well as the one area where young people really stand out from the rest of the population.
So for all the other issues cited before you, a few percentage points here they are for for gender equality, even though,
of course, it has now penetrated the mainstream and even old people are very much in favour of gender equality.
I think the salience of gender equality young people is really distinctive, basically.
Thirty six percent of young Europeans cite gender equality as part of the ideal future for the European Union.
And I think they have to say only think about that several aspects.
And only 26 percent of the general population did that.
So the gap here is particularly striking.
And the other difference that I would notice is something that Christian into the poll in the previous answer,
which is the solidarity between EU member states that shows in different polls they are
willing to support economically weaker countries that are willing to support the unemployed,
even if it's in other countries. They would be willing to use a hypothetical using to support people moving from one country to another to get a job.
And when you ask them what they would use the EU money for if it was a European budget,
one of the things that the least enthusiastic about is structural reform.
And we know that the EU is all about structural reform, something that especially in the early 2010,
a lot of money was granted only to states if they would reform this and that in depth.
And so we can see that young Europeans get a lot less about that and a lot more about solidarity, which is very interesting.
And again,
I would say contrast with what I was also hinting upon before about how member states sometimes see welfare state as a national perspective.
It seems that young Europeans tend to be kind of going beyond that and don't necessarily care about who pays and where the solidarity is coming from.
As long as there is some degree of solidarity and redistribution, which I found was interesting.
So on this theme of what the EU is doing, I wonder if I can ask you to reflect a bit on your time as a trainee at a European institution.
So you've worked with this project for a number of polls and reports and you've
come to those conclusions and then you've had that practical experience.
How has that. Perspective from inside the institutions enriched by the kinds of questions and findings that we can read about in the chapter.
I think the one thing it helps with is it helps you understand a lot more of what the EU means,
because I think a lot of us, even the most informed a lot of things together, like G.U. is the commission.
It's Pantaleon, it's the council, and we don't really know what it means.
And for me, I then realised the different actors and the interplay between them and how the commission interacts with the council.
And for instance, he made me understand a lot more the dynamics around the minimum wage directive
and how it has been adopted by the commission and the College of Commissioners.
But now it has to go through the approval of the member states, which might amend it, which might be rejected.
So I think it really improved, really, in the standing of what European social policy, of how it is made.
And also, it was interesting to be inside at a time where social policy is really at the heart of the agenda of the EU.
And it's a fairly recent thing. And it's not only covid, it was before covid, but honestly, in the early 2010s, all the you seem to talk about,
as far as I can remember, when I was younger was know budget, budgetary rules, stability.
And it has started to change with the presidency of Juncker,
who introduced the European pillar of social rights and Vandelay and really committed to that.
And Vandelay and is not a left wing politician who actually comes from the CDU.
But she really committed to this idea of a more social Europe even before covid and arrived at a time where the issue was really pressing,
especially working on the show programme that talked about supporting time work scheme.
So it was really interesting to be inside the EU as well at the time with the overall narrative
is has been changing in the past few years where social policy investment is seen as legitimate,
where social spending is encouraged by reducing poverty and inequality, are objectives that are really put to the forefront of the EU,
which is in stark contrast to what I remember the EU being like 10 years ago, basically.
We asked many Europeans what they would like the EU to have achieved by 2030.
Here is what Diana showed us, Hungarian communications officer said to us personally, I would love to see more social equality in every way possible,
because for me, it looks strange that we are all Europeans in the first year, different areas where the poverty is so bad.
I think we shouldn't allow that to be happening within the. So perhaps you could start talking about what you think the European Union should
do with regard to employment policy and welfare and social policy in general.
So you've stated a series of proposals. Would you like to sum those up?
And then we could go deeper into some of them, I would say, of the end of each proposal.
I think that the crisis has given you an opportunity to improve its social dimension with the recovery budget,
with the spending on shore leave, the cohesion spending, which has been improved through the reactor programme.
And really it has put social issues at the forefront.
And I think the main recommendation was that is something that the EU should seise and we should not let it go,
that we have a foot in the door to improve the social dimension of the EU,
that it hasn't always been the case, that it's not something we should take for granted.
It's still something that needs fighting for because it's not always accepted in every part of the EU or by every political party.
And so the general recommendation I take from this is that if you take the fact that Europeans in general,
and especially young Europeans care so much about social issues,
the fact that social issues are so salient and pressing for so many millions of Europeans and the
fact that there's loads of money now with this recovery budget and Jefford that the EU is doing,
then it's an opportunity that the EU should look to seise and to keep this foot in the door.
In terms of social issues, yes. At this point, I think it might be important to highlight that in the rhetoric of leading EU politicians,
both at the EU level and at the national level. So we only looked at what was reliant on and Merkel had to say about this.
You have a lot of focus on social policy, as we all said, even more so now with the Panopto.
But it's a very peculiar type of focus and I think they don't necessarily mean the
same thing that young Europeans mean or the general population needs about this,
because, of course, the rhetoric of politicians social policies is there, but with strings attached, I would say so.
Even when the covid-19 recovery fund was announced, of course, a huge triumph for super policy indeed.
But then Underlying described it not as a short term crisis management.
So she said that this was the term to avoid, but rather as a boost to the EU's capacity to tap into new economic opportunities.
So this was Merkel underlined that there has been a similar rhetoric in underlined life as well.
And then Merkel also added that this is not just a humane gesture, but a lasting investment.
European cohesion is not just a political imperative, but also something that will pay off.
So, yes, it is very kind of pragmatic way of talking about social policy,
and it ties into what we have in our recommendation section about the importance of active labour market policies,
because this seems to be as far as politicians will go in terms of social policy.
So minimum wage and and UBI is perhaps less realistic to see a lot of progress on those fronts compared to this active labour market policies where
states are treating their citizens more adequately for a very fluid labour market where you have to change jobs multiple times and requalify,
retrain, sometimes at a later age. So that might be one particular kind of direction where social policy can move in the future.
There's a theme that we've mentioned before that I think needs to be brought up again now,
which is the interplay between environmental and social policy,
and it seems that you're emphasising in the chapter that the EU really needs to make these exist in harmony rather than as opposing issues.
But I wonder what you think about the hypothesis that there are significant trade offs, for example,
the social and economic costs of carbon neutral by 2030 will be different from those of carbon emissions by 2050,
depending also, of course, on which part of Europe you live in and what the economic situation there is.
So I've really got two questions here. The first is, do you see significant trade offs between social policy and climate action?
And second, how can the EU be honest and effective in communicating what these trade offs are to
ensure that the public is in the know while acting decisively towards both priorities?
The two sort of trade offs dicey in terms of jobs,
so you're going to be having jobs obsolete at some point and new industries emerging and old ones sort of dying out.
And the other ones will be in terms of the price of energy,
because we know that the households that tend to use more fossil fuels tend to be lower income households.
You also have this trade off geographically because, of course,
we have many Eastern European countries that still rely on these technologies to heat their home and employ a lot of people.
So you have this all this sort of trade offs in the short term, and we need to be honest about them.
I mean, it's going to sound really basic.
But one way you can compensate people and we shouldn't be shy and you shouldn't be shy saying we should give direct income support to people.
If the times are hard, we should give them. And that's the main game of this facility, to give them direct income support,
to subsidise transport, to developed energy efficiency, to lower the bills.
So I think the only way to overcome the trade off is with income support and investment as well.
That being said, the communication needs also, to be honest,
there are some legitimate worries about jobs that needs to be put in perspective with the emergency we're living in.
We see it every every day now this summer. And I feel like this emergency really needs to be emphasised and the role that the humans have on that,
but so that there's going to be costs and it's going to be a bit painful in the short term,
but it can be overcome with strong, direct social policy, income support and investment spending is my feeling.
You. Yeah, maybe just a quick point on the earlier question about the potential overlap, but also tension between green issues and social issues.
This was not in the report because we didn't have time to delve into specific countries.
But the example of Germany comes to mind and how the Green Party is now treating very closely Germany according to the latest polls.
And it seems that to a very large extent, the Green Party there are,
but also in other countries has been emerging in the place of the more conventional social leftwing option, if you like, in the country.
So it might be a good opportunity for social policy and it might just be the case that these green
parties will will allow voters on the on the left who normally voted for the now obsolete or declining
conventional left wing parties to just vote for a hybrid of both green and social issues that are
kind of rebranding of social policy could emerge as a result of that because the voters are there.
They still a lot of attention to social policy, just a matter of politicians actually taking that into consideration and articulating it into policy.
So within that articulation, green and social will hopefully go hand-in-hand.
Clearly, articulating economic policy goals for the EU should be a priority,
according to Spears Cosmetics, a lecturer in politics at the University of Oxford.
Here what he would like the EU to have achieved by 2013. I would like the EU to build the infrastructure to protect incomes across member states.
For those who in need economic policy, redistribution should become a clear kind of aim for the EU as a whole.
So one of the very interesting proposals you you make is that the EU funds more trials,
especially with regard to and employment policies in different countries. Could you clarify how these funded trials would work?
So would it be more in terms of incentivising different member states to adopt employment policies
tailored to their circumstances and therefore just seeing what they do and then comparing results?
Or would it be more along the lines? These are recommendations.
We will fund this trial so long as you follow these recommendations and we expect some accountability.
EU already has funding for This Is Easy, which funds innovative social policies.
So one of the very basic suggestions is that this fund could be given more size and visibility,
because I think that's one key point we make in the report.
And that's linked to everything we've discussed, is that social policies need to be innovative.
We're living in very challenging times with the pandemic and climate change.
And we also know that the welfare state, many welfare state programmes were designed in the 50s around the model where,
you know, you had the male breadwinner and then women would stop working as soon as they married.
And a lot of programmes are still designed around that and it's very obsolete in many ways.
So between this like sort of long run obsolescence and the sort of short runs emergency with the pandemic and climate change,
we think that innovative social policy is more and more needed.
And so I would say more along. The first line of what you said is that we should be trying policies in different contexts,
innovative policies that work in local context and then share best practises and is already doing that.
So it's not a very revolutionary proposal making them, but more insisting on how important it is and that this shouldn't be a minor fund.
I think it should be in coming years, a very important friend of the year moving forward.
So as we're talking about these recommendations that you've suggested in the chapter,
there's one interviewee whose remark reminds me of this connexion that I think is lurking behind our discussion,
which is that between social policy and economic policy and also, I suppose.
The relationship between public policy and what's happening in markets and this interviewee, Adolfo Nunez, says that.
What he wants for Europe in 2030 is to be as competitive as China and the United States in the new economy, that is crucial to have better jobs,
better paid jobs, more opportunities, and to be able to be competitive would mean that we would have a better education and a better social system.
So I wanted to ask you, because we've talked about various aspects of social policy, including solidarity and universal basic income and minimum wage.
But this aspect of economic competitiveness has not been highlighted in the chapter and in our discussion.
And I wonder what you think about that. Does it seem like young Europeans don't care as much as Adolpho does, or how would you make that connexion?
Yes, I'm not sure there were any polling data that we could use on will this important connexion between economic and social policy.
But in terms of just the issue in general, in one of these social policy speeches that delivered and looked at for the record,
even though it was technically a social policy speech,
the French president went through it quickly from discussing actual social policies and how it's really important
for the EU to fund more generously European Innovation Council and give it a budget on par with the United States.
So this is also in line again with that kind of productiveness to active labour market approach that we discussed earlier.
That is very much present in how politicians talk about social policy nowadays.
If we have a social policy so they have this trade off between economic growth and having a safety net very much at the back of their minds.
But then, of course, issues like the pandemic always remind us that you can't have growth without having the safety net,
especially in an interconnected world like the one today.
So we hope that in the future, these issues will continuously be viewed as overlapping and mutually reinforcing rather than conflicting.
I would say in terms of economic competitiveness, as Christine mentioned, as not so much data I can think of.
The only thing I can think of is the one that I already mentioned is when asked about how they would use a eurozone budget.
They tend to focus a lot more on solidarity and redistribution than structural reforms and reforms to make the economy more competitive.
There's also two fairly quick one, I would say is that they would favour, just like the general population,
a fairer taxation of big firms and big tech companies, and that for them,
they see there is just one polling question, which I always find interesting,
where they say that free market economy should come with a high level of social protection.
So I feel like quite a lot for young people and a lot of Europeans.
Increasingly, especially for young people, social policy is seen as something competitive, as something improving their competitiveness.
It's not incompatible. It's a form of social investment. And in terms of global competitiveness, I think the next big debate,
a European level and thus relates to what our interviewees said about China in the US will be about budgetary rules,
because for years we've known that DUI is very strict and tight about its budget,
except that we compete with the US and China, who they spend bottom less money.
They're not straight with their spending, as the EU are, and in certain respects, nothing can give them a competitive advantage.
And I know that at EU level, it's very, very hot debates.
I'm not saying we're going to move for sure towards a change in budget rules,
but that is definitely something that's going to be on the table and that is important for competitiveness.
And also there's a general direction question, which is that to be competitive with the US and China, I mean,
my view and view of some people is you need to be closer and closer to get together with a bloc of nearly five hundred millions.
And we can achieve a lot in terms of industrial policy and R&D.
But while we are a union, we're not completely alone yet like China and the US.
And to me, a lot of the solutions would be closer. European integration.
The prospect of more European unity isn't ideal for many Europeans, Alexander Borowski opposes it.
Specialist is one of the young Europeans who we interviewed.
Listen to what he had to say when asked about what he wants the EU to do by 2030.
I would like your opinion to be something more than glorified trade,
but I strongly believe in more European Union as, for example, a European Army European.
Health care, European social system, European code of conduct, common rules and laws that apply to all member states equally,
I believe something similar to me, the United States of America, this EU.
So how would you respond to critics of deeper integration, you know, how do you defend these solutions?
I think it's a very good question and it's a very important point to make, especially in the U.K., right.
As people are here and especially in the debate around Brexit, confuse sovereignty with power, wealth, development, prosperity.
The reason I'm saying that is that we shouldn't lie to people,
that the EU does involve states giving up a bit of its sovereignty in certain respects because you have to do things with 27 other countries.
Also in certain areas, the EU has exclusive competence.
But the reason we're doing that is precisely to make this country stronger because we think that we are going to be stronger doing this together,
that France is going to be more prosperous, that the Czech Republic is going to be more prosperous, Sweden is going to be more prosperous.
And the reason I'm saying that is that in the UK debate, it always felt like in this debate about Brussels or Brussels has all the power.
But no, it's the member states voluntarily chose to give up some of their power because they thought they would be stronger together.
And trade is an example. For instance, France and Germany cannot negotiate trade agreements on their own if the EU has exclusive competence.
But the rationale is that, you know, if you negotiate a trade deal with a bloc of 27 countries,
you can have better terms that if France went to negotiate on its own with China, Japan and Malaysia, for instance.
So I feel this sort of. Clear communication about why we are integrating is very much needed,
and I think it's completely lacking and often politicians in national and member states are guilty of that,
of saying oil comes from Brussels as if it was this dark entity that was imposing its orders.
But Brussels is the congregation of member states coming together because that's the European Council.
It's all the heads of member states. It's a very collegial decision making in the European Parliament can block any
proposal that the commission makes in European Parliament is elected by people.
And I'm saying that variance is just a click because before starting my traineeship with the EU,
I was very proud of you, but I wasn't immune to this sort of discourse of bureaucratic.
It's going to be anti-democratic.
And now, having been in it, it has changed my perspective from that, because you understand a lot more what the EU is and how it processes.
So I think clear communication on why we give you power and also incentivising the people to turn up more.
I don't know how you do that.
The political scientist and Christian could maybe answer better, but the European Parliament actually has eyes so people should vote.
And it's important that you vote in European elections because the European Parliament can amend laws and can block proposals from the commission.
And it really has a say in what he said the European Union might offer.
Right. But there was this polemic issue are not big issue, but perhaps embarrassing for the European Union,
which was a vaccination scheme and it was very well managed,
whereas the UK, who had some issues in dealing with the pandemic at the beginning, was in very praised worldwide for its vaccination scheme.
So in the face of these not so successful initiatives,
how would you again respond to critics of the EU with regard to more involvement in national employment and social policies?
Well, I think you can have them on how specifically the short term view and the long term view, the term views that ended in March, April,
there is no denying or February,
December 2020 and early 2020 when there there's no denying that the UK was more successful in getting the vaccine and rolling it out.
And it has to be remembered that health was not an EU level issue at all before this pandemic.
It was one of the few areas that remain exclusive competence of the member states.
So very suddenly, do you have to act in an area where they had no prior experience in doing so,
which I think and partly explain why it was slightly shaky at the start to.
I would argue now that it has been quite successful,
if we look at it six months later and the reason I talk about the more long term perspective is, in fact, I think if anything,
it vindicates EU action, this pandemic, because unfortunately and I don't want to be too pessimistic,
I'm not sure it is the last of these sort of disasters that we see.
And it has shown that there is value in acting together, even in a topic like health.
And yes, it was a bit shaky. It was because it was the first time.
But, you know, it's good to have coordination about where a virus might be present in the EU, coordination about how to manage borders,
coordination about how to get vaccines,
about how to maybe also distribute more of these vaccines to countries outside the EU, because that's also another issue.
And it might have been a bit shaky at the start.
But I think it's a really interesting foundation to be better able to deal collectively with these problems in the future.
And if they might emerge, we will notice that again, we will be stronger as Europeans dealing with them.
And so the short term perspective is that indeed, probably the UK did better in the long run.
I think collectively will be stronger to answer to these problems. Should they re-emerge?
And also, what was the alternative is a question we need to be asking ourselves,
do would would we have wanted to live our continent where every country would purchase
vaccines by itself and enormous inequalities would ensue on such a life and death matter?
Right. So the EU was instrumental to preventing that and it did prevent that kind of inequality,
even though at the cost of the slower procurement in the beginning,
which was picked up in the meantime, of course,
but also in terms of how democratic and how democratise the European Union is and the relevance of that for social policy.
I mean, by most theoretical, I think, frameworks,
the EU still very much qualifies as an intergovernmental organisation and not as a separate national organisation.
Member states still enjoy a lot of power. A lot of issues are decided on a one country, one vote basis,
and the veto apparatus is there for so many issues, sometimes for days, sometimes for bad.
So it's certainly not the case that nation states are powerless to stop any kind of trends in the EU that they dislike.
So if they ever feel like social policies is too much of a focus and they can always roll it back.
So that's one of the most valid criticism of more social policy action at the EU level,
because it will always be at the end of the day at the discretion of both nations.
This, if I can add two things to that. First, if you actually look at the stats for the vaccine in the health aspect was a bit shambolic.
But on the other hand, on social policy, desu was very, very reactive.
It suspended the budgetary rules to allow member states to spend whatever they want very
quickly implemented to show programmes of billions to finance short time work schemes.
So I don't think you can infer too much from the difficult stuff on that front in terms of the social one.
And I to be honest, part of it is because the EU has a lot more experience in managing funds and managing
social funds and the economics of social policy and all these sort of things.
And so they were able to react quickly and quite swiftly in that respect and to come back to the health thing.
And again, that's a broader perspective. But I think sometimes you need to think back about what the EU is and its purpose and a lot of it.
It's about peace, right?
It's about peace between member states and member states, not for each other for years or decades, sometimes century coming together.
And the reason I'm saying that is that when France was struggling with the first wave, a lot of French patients were taken care of in Germany.
And I mean, you may want to ask a historian to confirm that, but I'm not sure this would have happened in the 30s.
So that's also one thing that we shouldn't lose from sight.
When we talk about the EU's solidarity between member states and nation states, it's unprecedented.
And I think we should also be thankful for that aspect. Our guest today, William Hogan, and offers a huge thanks to our podcast editor, Billy,
and our research manager, Louisa Miller, and our report, Ed Professor Timothy Garton Ash.
We're also grateful to our founders, the Swedish Snowman Foundation, the type school and the system mercato for making the Europe Stories Project and
podcast a special thank you to Ellen Leach that will restructure Maev Moynihan,
Sophie Verité and Victoria Hansell for contributing to the podcast production music by Unicorn Heads.
And. Finally, thank you to the whole Europe Stories Project.
I'm your host and Martins. I'm your host. Lucasta, thank you for listening today.
Join us for the next episode of the Europe Stories podcast and until then,
you can find out more about our research project at European Moments Dotcom.