Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office

Roundtable on European Public Investments for a Socially Just Transition

On June 27, 2023, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung and Counter Balance organized a roundtable on "European Public Investments for a Socially Just Transition", bringing together labor unions, civil society organizations, and academics. The aim was to discuss the impact of EU public investments on energy, housing, public services, and industry and to facilitate dialogue on pressing issues in these areas.

A Caring State?

Welfare State Retrenchment, the Effects on Women, and Feminist Responses in Sweden

Countering the neoliberal privatisation of services

Will the COVID-19 pandemic drive further privatisation of the services sector and a new wave of austerity, or can we expect a departure from neoliberal orthodoxy, towards re-municipalisation and increased public investments?

Austerity and Health

With the current crisis making this issue increasingly topical and urgent, we sat down to discuss health care with three prominent speakers with a view to developing an analytical overview of the dramatic situation, explaining its causes and coming up with alternatives worth fighting for.

Austerity kills

A decade of austerity imposed by the European Union institutions and EU Member State governments has caused significant deterioration in healthcare services across the EU.

The EU`s role in attacking healthcare

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the EU’s healthcare and public sectors to be ill-equipped to respond to the outbreak in accordance with international best practice.

Call for Tenders: Report/Study on “The effects of the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state on women”

The romanticisation of the Swedish welfare system and its positive effects on gender equality persists, notwithstanding the substantial dismantling of the welfare state in recent decades and Sweden’s drop in gender equality rankings. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, this development reflects an impact not so much of the last economic crisis when the government did not pursue the politics of austerity seen across much of the continent ...

The core of the yellow vest movement rejects the far right

Quantité Critique (Critical Mass) is a group of sociology lecturers, doctoral students and undergraduates who have been investigating social movements in France since September 2018. For their survey on the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) movement, they distributed questionnaires in a number of national Facebook groups linked to the movement ...

Ideological divisions in the ‘yellow vest’ movement

The ongoing mobilisation of yellow vest adherents is arguably the most enduring and significant social movement in France since May 1968. It will doubtlessly have profound political consequences, though toward what end depends on the political direction it takes going forward.

Schicksalswahl für Europa?

Es sind denkbar unruhige Zeiten für die Europäische Union, in denen die Europawahl 2019 stattfinden wird. Die Folgen der Eurokrise sind lange nicht überwunden, während die Union mit Sorge auf den nahenden nächsten Krisenzyklus blickt. Als eine der Folgen der Eurokrise hat sich in der Europäischen Union und in den Mitgliedstaaten zudem eine handfeste Legitimationskrise des Systems der repräsentativen Demokratie verstärkt ...

The Yellow Vests in France

A car drivers’ uprising, or something deeper? A look at the anti-social ‘climate’ policy of Emmanuel Macron that sparked the largest, most sustained social movement in France in a generation.

Feminist Responses against Austerity

In Europe and elsewhere, the structural effects of austerity on gender equality are palpable, but often not sufficiently acknowledged or documented

Impact of Austerity Measures on Women in Croatia

When we first started to look at various data, we found that both men and women in Croatia suffered grave consequences of the recent economic crisis. Only when we turned our eye to the devastation that happened during the 1990s and in the early 2000s did it became possible to see the different effects of cuts to social services and privatisation processes on women as a group ...

Feminist Responses to Austerity

Our interviewees talk about how austerity has gendered effects in their respective countries and how those effects articulate in very similar ways despite of different economic and social contexts. The interviewees refer repeatedly to the case studies they have written. Those studies have been published recently on our website and are available for download on this page: When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter Videos Pauline Cullen (Ireland), duration 5,27 min ...

"Should Women Have More Rights?" - Traditional Values and Austerity in Russia

Russia has been experiencing the results of an acute economic crisis since 2012. However, the government has not been explicit in its declarations regarding austerity policies. On the contrary, it tends to represent its measures as "normal" and generally justifies cuts to public expenditure and reduced spending as part of a new understanding of the welfare state and socio-economic relations ...

Devaluation of Female Labor and the Retreat of the State

Following the Euromaidan, the outbreak of war and ensuing economic crisis, the Ukrainian government introduced wide-ranging reforms guided by the neoliberal idea that stability and economic growth can be generated by cutting social spending. Despite the government's proclaimed intent to support the poorest and weakest members of Ukrainian society, the opposite has occurred, and the negative effects of the new reforms have ended up targeting them most ...

Irish Feminist Approaches against Austerity Regimes

We find austerity is gendered and that, following almost a decade of austerity, the position of women in Ireland has regressed economically and socially. Different dynamics shape gendered austerity which in some instances re-feminises care, while in other instances forces a process of de-domestication for some women ...

The Permanent Care Crisis and Its Effects on Gender Equality

The international financial crisis that began in 2007 hit the Spanish economy hard, accelerating the housing market's collapse and increasing unemployment (which rose from 9.6% in 2008 to 26.9% in 2013) and the risk of poverty. The European Union intensified its pressure on Spain in spring 2010, as Zapatero's government approved the first package of austerity measures in May of that year, along with labour market and pension reforms later on ...

When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter

"Without us, the world stops working" – This was the slogan under which millions of Spanish women launched a general strike on 8 March 2018. The strike was more than just a strike, however, giving women the opportunity to discuss different related topics and engage in processes of self-organization around questions like work, care, and consumption (read more about the strike) ...

Gendered Aspects of the Austerity Regime in Greece: 2010–2017

Though austerity has prevailed across Europe to varying degrees, Greece in particular faces a situation of permanent austerity. The fiscal consolidation programs implemented since 2010 have brought extensive cuts to the public sector, over-taxation, privatizations, institutional reforms, devaluation of labour, high unemployment and precariousness ...

Tag: austerity