Economic Crisis and Austerity in Southern Europe: Threat or Opportunity for building a sustainable welfare state?

• The failure of austerity to promote growth, whilst directly increasing poverty and inequality;
• How Juncker’s and Thyssen’s commitments to embed effective ex-ante social impact assessment to prevent future negative impact will be progressed;
• What further action ECFIN can take to ensure a better balance between cuts and progressive revenue increases (highlighting the example of UK where the balance has been 80% to 20% in 2014) and finally,
• The need for reassurance that the EU is not running a hidden agenda to roll back welfare states as hinted in the research findings.

For more information see OSE website www.ose.be/EN/agenda