Progressive Structural Reforms Proposals for European reforms to reduce inequalities and promote jobs, growth and social investment SOCIAL PROGRESS WATCH INITIATIVE Progressive Structural Reforms Proposals for European reforms to reduce inequalities and promote jobs, growth and social investment A publication by SOLIDAR, www.solidar.org Responsible editor: Conny Reuter Editors: Rémi Bazillier, Giovanni Cozzi, Amandine Crespy, Ferdi De Ville and Angela Wigger and on behalf of SOLIDAR: Maurice Claassens, Bregt Saenen and Eva-Maria Schneider Cover design: Les Marquisettes, www.lesmarquisettes.be Proof reading: David Poyser Copyright: SOLIDAR, 2015 This publication has been produced with the fi nancial support of the European Union. The information contained in this publication does not necessarily refl ect the position or opinion of the European Commission. Published by: Ofi cyna Wydawnicza ASPRA-JR, Poland www.aspra.pl ISBN: 978-83-7545-641-7 SOLIDAR is a European network of membership based Civil Society Organisations who gather several millions of citizens throughout Europe and worldwide. SOLIDAR voices the values of its member or ganisations to the EU and international institutions across the three main policy sectors; social affairs, lifelong learning and international cooperation. Contents List of contributors 7 Foreword 15 Conny Reuter, SOLIDAR PERSPECTIVE BY EU DECISION MAKERS A perspective by Nicolas Schmit, Luxembourg’s Minister for Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy 19 A perspective by Thomas Händel, Member of the European Parliament (Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left), Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs 21 INTRODUCTION Alternatives to neo-liberal Austerity: Redefi ning a Progressive Structural Reforms Agenda to reduce Inequalities and promote Jobs, Growth and Social Investment Rémi Bazillier, Giovanni Cozzi, Amandine Crespy, Ferdi De Ville and Angela Wigger 25 A SOLIDAR PERSPECTIVE 15 progressive structural reforms to reduce inequalities and promote Jobs, Growth and Social Investment Maurice Claassens, Bregt Saenen and Eva-Maria Schneider, SOLIDAR 37 3 Contents PART I IDENTIFYING AND TARGETING INEQUALITIES Towards EU youth policies? The limits of current welfare states and the potential for a ‘Youth Transition Fund’ (YTF) Lorenza Antonucci 59 Growing up during a fi nancial crisis: The effect of family fi nancial distress on child development Marta Barazzetta, Andrew E. Clark and Conchita D’Ambrosio 73 A gender perspective to assess the economic crisis and develop counter-crisis measures: intersectional and horizontal inequalities Eugenia De Rosa 87 Basic Income as a Realist’s Transformative Strategy Gabor Scheiring, Miklós Sebők and Bence Tordai 103 PART II SHAPING SOCIAL INVESTMENT Economic democracy as a structural reform: The case for socialising investment Sacha Dierckx 119 Will the crisis be able to bring about a change in the current supply-side social investment agenda? Constraints and opportunities for new long-term investment strategies aimed towards social investment goals Andrea Ciarini 137 The role of employers in implementing social investment reforms: The case of disability Menno Soentken 151 4 Contents PART III EUROPEAN POLICIES AFFECTING SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS TTIP and Labour Rights: A Trade Union Perspective Daniele Basso 169 A Job Guarantee for the Eurozone: The Role of the European Central Bank and an Alternative Approach Toward Full Employment Diego Del Priore 181 Rapidly changing labour markets: Is EU fl exicurity still the answer? Florian Ranft and Renaud Thillaye 193 CONCLUSION AND REFLECTION Progressive structural reforms – the way forward to achieve upward social convergence – social investment for a better future Lieve Fransen, Special Adviser to the Social Progress Lab 209 5 List of contributors Lorenza Antonucci (PhD Bristol, MSc Research LSE, MSc/BSc Bocconi) is Senior Lec- turer in Social Policy (Associate Professor) at Teesside University. In 2015 she was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to conduct research on the new politics of inequality in Europe and the European Semester. She was RSE Visiting Fellow at the Euro- pean Trade Union Institute, and the European Social Observatory (OSE). Her research and publications are in the area of welfare state reforms, inequality, and young people. After co-chairing the ESPAnet stream on ‘Young People and Social Policy’, Lorenza co-edited ‘Young People and Social Policy in Europe’ for Palgrave’s Work and Welfare in Europe Se- ries. Lorenza was also given the fi rst ‘Policy & Politics Award’ by ‘The Policy’ Press for her doctoral research published in the forthcoming “The Real Lives of Students”. Marta Barazzetta, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher at the PEARL Institute for Research on Socio-Economic Inequality (IRSEI) at the University of Luxembourg. She holds an MSc from Bocconi University (Italy) and a PhD from the University of Nottingham (UK). Her research interests lie in the fi elds of applied microeconomics, subjective well-being, devel- opment economics, poverty and inequality. During her doctorate she worked on the study of subjective well-being, with a focus on the effect of income aspirations and expectations. As a post-doctoral researcher, she is now working in the fi eld of child development, further to her empirical research on subjective well-being. She has previous research experience specialising in development economics and poverty measures which she developed as a research assistant at Bocconi University (Italy) and dur- ing collaboration with the Oxford Poverty and Human Initiative. Daniele Basso has been an ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) Trade adviser since January 2014. He is coordinator of the activities of the ETUC Working Group on Trade and Globalisation and he monitors the external trade policy of the EU. He is a substitute member of the TTIP Advisory Group and member of the EU-Central America and the EU–Colombia/Peru Advisory Groups. He was Assistant on international affairs and trade at the Party of European Socialists (2012-2013) and served an internship with an Italian MEP who was a member of the European Parliament’s International Trade committee. He graduated with a ‘double degree’ in International affairs from Turin University and SciencesPo Bordeaux, and he has a Master’s in European Governance and Public Policy from Cardiff University. 7 List of contributors Rémi Bazillier, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Orléans and a research affi liate at the Laboratoire d’Economie d’Orléans (LEO-CNRS). He is also member of the FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) scientifi c council. His research focuses on development and labour economics. His current work studies the economic consequences of labour standards, the linkages between migration and social conditions, and the infl uence of Corporate Social Responsibility. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2007. He has published several papers published in inter- national peer-reviewed journals including World Development, the Journal of Development Studies, and the International Labour Review. He published a book on the linkages between Labour and Sustainable development (“Le travail, grand oublié du développement durable”, col. eDDen, ed. Le Cavalier Bleu, Sept. 2011, 224p). Andrea Ciarini, PhD in Sociology, is currently researcher in the Department of Social and Economic Sciences of the Sapienza University of Rome, where he teaches Welfare Systems in Europe. He is scientifi c coordinator in the Semper Laboratory in the same Department and Secretary of the Italian Association for Studies on Industrial Relations (AISRI) affi liated to ILERA (International Labour and Employment Relations Association). He is also member of the Telemme Laboratory (Temps, Espaces, Langues, Europe Méridionale Méditerranée) at the University of Aix-Marseille. His main research interests are in the fi elds of comparative welfare studies, the labour market, industrial relations and collective representation. He has a PhD in Sociology. Maurice Claassens is Senior Coordinator at SOLIDAR and joined the team in 2008. He is responsible for the further development of the network and he oversees the building of civil society alliances in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the Western Balkans. Before joining SOLIDAR, he worked as political adviser on urban planning, welfare policies and economic development, and he also managed election campaigns in the Netherlands. Andrew Clark holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. He is currently a CNRS Research Professor at the Paris School of Economics (PSE), and previously held posts at Dartmouth, Essex, CEPREMAP, DELTA, the OECD and the University of Orléans. His work has largely focussed on the interface between psychology, sociology and economics; in particular, using job and life satisfaction scores, and other psychological indices, as proxy measures of utility. In addition to his Paris position, he holds research associate positions at the London School of Economics, IZA (Bonn) and Kingston University. He is on the Edito- rial Board of nine journals, and has acted as referee for over 170 different journals across the Social Sciences. Giovanni Cozzi completed his PhD at SOAS (University of London School of Oriental and African Studies) in March 2011, titled: “Crisis and Recovery in Malaysia. An assessment 8 List of contributors of fi nancial and real sector