Economic governance

Bart Vanhercke has been appointed as Visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges campus), a postgraduate institute of European studies. During this academic year, he will be teaching a course on ‘The Social Dimension of European Integration’ to an interdisciplinary group of students from across Europe. The course addresses the interaction between EU economic and social policies as well as the variety of EU social policy instruments. It will ultimately ask this question: is the ‘European social model’ a reality or an elusive concept?

The OSE was contracted by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) to conduct research, which will result in the 18th edition of the joint edited volume. It will feature renowned academic scholars — Daniel Clegg, Amandine Crespy, Maria João Rodrigues, Vivien Schmidt and Mario Telò — as well as OSE and ETUI contributors. Editors: Bart Vanhercke, Sebastiano Sabato and Denis Bouget.

With inequality increasing across Europe and the EU not on track to achieve the Europe 2020 social objectives, the UK-based European Social Network (ESN) has again asked the OSE to provide scientific underpinning of its work on the European Semester. The focus will be on the impact of austerity policies on public social services management and provision, territorial disparities and evidence-based policy-making. Policy areas covered will include children’s services, homelessness and housing exclusion, community care and de-institutionalization as well as services to immigrants and refugees.