Manifesto Social Europe

The European Union is excellently equipped to pursue the most urgent issues facing the advanced world: combating environmental damage and climate change, coping with the massive aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, reforming globalisation, regulating financialised capitalism, reducing material inequalities and reconciling the future of work in a rapidly changing economy with workers' needs for secure lives. The EU's leading role as global standard-setter, and the potential of the social-investment welfare state, are among the instruments at its disposal. But, argues Colin Crouch in this manifesto for a return to the 'social Europe' agenda, to achieve these goals the EU needs to face the two menaces stalking today's politics: neoliberalism and xenophobic nationalism. To do so it must confront the weakness of social democracy, historically the main political protagonist of the causes of co-operation and inclusion on which the strategy depends.

Presents eight ways of developing a constitutional framework for the EU: Parts I and II separated from Part III of the Constitutional Treaty; a "social protocol" to the Constitutional Treaty; enhanced cooperation; Schengen model; a social constitution through the European Court of Justice; a non-binding "social declaration"; an interpretative instrument; inserting a reference to a legally binding EU Charter in Part I.

'One of the most important books I've read in years' Brian Eno We are losing the commons. Austerity and neoliberal policies have depleted our shared wealth; our national utilities have been sold off to foreign conglomerates, social housing is almost non-existent, our parks are cordoned off for private events and our national art galleries are sponsored by banks and oil companies. This plunder deprives us all of our common rights, recognized as far back as the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest of 1217, to share fairly and equitably in our public wealth. Guy Standing leads us through a new appraisal of the commons, stemming from the medieval concept of common land reserved in ancient law from marauding barons, to his modern reappraisal of the resources we all hold in common - a brilliant new synthesis that crystallises quite how much public wealth has been redirected to the 1% in recent decades through the state-approved exploitation of everything from our land to our state housing, health and benefit systems, to our justice system, schools, newspapers and even the air we breathe. Plunder of the Commons proposes a charter for a new form of commoning, of remembering, guarding and sharing that which belongs to us all, to slash inequality and soothe our current political instability.

"Brussels - a manifesto : towards the capital of Europe is based on the results of the second year advanced research studio 'Brussels Capital of Europe', organized at the Berlage Institute from September 2004 to July 2005, and coordinated by Pier Vittorio Aureli. Parallel to this publication, and in the framework of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome (the official start of the European project), the exhibition and the international symposium 'A vision for Brussels: imagining the capital of Europe' will be held in the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, from 16 March to 20 May 2007. The publication, exhibition and symposium are an initiative of the Berlage Institute and are conceived and executed together with NAi Publishers, the Information Centre for Architecture, Town Planning and Design (Brussels) and the Centre for Fine Arts (Bozar, Brussels)."--Publisher.