In June 2010, the Council of Europe adopted the Strategy Europe 2020, the new ten-year plan for creating an «intelligent», «sustainable» and «inclusive» growth in the member countries of the Eu. The article recalls the recent developments in the implementation of the new governance. In the social sphere, the overall picture seems alarming. With the crisis, all the Council of Europe’s priorities and the legislative agenda of the European Commission seem concentrated on economic governance. This number of the column recalls the features of the new Pact for the Euro plus, and the European Parliament’s intervention on the coordination of economic policy. The Eu’s action is taking form in a context of union resistance to the multiplication of austerity plans in the Eu. At the same time, fundamental rights too are frequently at the centre of debate. This number of Observatory Europa underlines the evident risks of the European institutions, and so the national governments too, entering a spiral of austerity policies that may already be leading to a further reduction in social rights, with the risk of worsening the outlook of a feeble economic recovery.only subscribers can see the full article

The current Great Recession is the cost of the global imbalances of the Great Moderation period, when monetary policies and regulations were very lax. In the future we will pay the cost of policies that allowed us to avoid a new Great Depression seventy years after the previous one. This article reflects on the effects of the crisis and on the priorities and constraints of future choices in economic policy in relation both to the systems of social protection and the need for additional resources. After the first oil crisis the industrialized world awoke from its twenty-year dream of a golden age of growth, and this awakening meant revising downwards expectations as to improvements in individual standards of living, but the challenge for economic policy now is to prevent any further decline.only subscribers can see the full article