Documents Regazzoni, Pietro 6 results

"The European elections that were held in May 2019 constitute a fundamental event for framing the future developments in the European social dimension. On the basis of the outcome of the election a new political balance between political groups will be outlined, which will rely on the re-positioning of political parties across issues and policies. The increase in the votes for nationalist or Eurosceptic parties and a reduction in seats for the parties that have constituted the European governance so far (the European People's Party and the Party of European Socialists) will likely lead to new political arrangements between European political groups, the consequences of which will be crucial to determine the future path of the European integration in the social domain.

This study focuses on the analysis of the social dimension of EU integration as it emerges in the electoral programs published by the European political groups at the time of the 2014 and 2019 European elections."

"This report from the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) examines (sub)national social protection and inclusion policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in the 27 EU Member States, the UK, and the 7 candidate and potential candidate countries. It reveals an overall rapid reaction through the introduction of (mostly) temporary measures - primarily relaxing eligibility conditions, increasing benefit levels and creating new ad hoc social and job protection schemes. These emergency measures helped avert a massive social crisis and some would have seemed impossible one year previously. Yet they also highlighted the weaknesses and gaps in existing social protection and inclusion policies, and the pressing need to address these. Although these measures were the main tools used to tackle the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the report underlines their limited transformative potential for countries' social protection systems. It proposes a series of specific actions that could usefully be considered at national and/or EU level."

"With the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, the debate on fiscal policies and the role of deficits in supporting growth has been completely revamped. Through its unprecedented recovery programme, all EU member states have developed comprehensive Recovery and Resilience plans (NRRPs) that will allow them to positively make use of billions of euros worth of economic support to build back stronger after the pandemic. This analysis compares the NRRPs of Germany and Italy, two countries that have very different views and priorities on how their allocation of the recovery funds should be spent and invested over the short, medium and long-term. This paper is a continuation of the CEPS series of assessments of national plans' structural reforms and forms part of the CEPS Recovery and Resilience Reflection Project."

"With the aim of contributing to the ongoing policy dialogue between the European Commission, Member States and (potential) candidate countries, the European Commission asked the 35 country teams of the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) to look at how the eligibility conditions and benefit entitlements of social protection influence the capacity of young people to access the schemes and to highlight the main gaps and obstacles faced by young people in accessing these schemes.

This Synthesis Report provides a factual overview of the access for young people to social protection schemes for five categories of cash benefits in the ESPN countries, including an overview of the main gaps/obstacles:

unemployment benefits
maternity/paternity/parental benefits
sickness and healthcare benefits
Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) benefits
housing benefits"

"Based on original evidence from the European Social Policy Network (ESPN), the article investigates the extent to which self-employed and non-standard workers, who are less protected by “ordinary” social protection, were included in “extraordinary” income protection and job retention schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic in the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom. When the crisis hit, countries quickly introduced unprecedented emergency income replacement measures for the self-employed. Nevertheless, most of these schemes provided only basic support through lump sums and were, in some cases, subject to a variety of eligibility conditions. Non-standard workers were in general included in job retention schemes, but substantial gaps remained in some countries. The article discusses how such gaps were addressed in five EU Member States. The article concludes by highlighting some policy pointers for better and more adequate “extraordinary” income protection for the self-employed and non-standard workers in times of crisis."

"The report explores how 35 European countries monitor social spending through dedicated national frameworks, and investigates the processes assessing the outcomes and effectiveness of public social spending. While these are fairly diverse, the report identifies two broad categories of monitoring practices: within and separately from the overall public spending monitoring framework. The strengths of these frameworks include reliable, timely and precise indicators, mostly on levels of public social spending, as well as comprehensive centralised information systems. Social spending review processes may be recurrent, but are in most cases conducted on an ad hoc basis to respond to specific institutional needs or political circumstances. Supreme Audit Institutions often play a key role in social spending reviews. Monitoring of social outcomes of public spending, such as poverty, inequality reduction or income redistribution, appears to be quite uncommon, and reviews of its effectiveness (i.e. linking social spending to social outcomes) are even rarer."