US poverty is much higher than poverty in Europe when a relative poverty measure is used. Using an absolute poverty measurement method, the picture looks different: poverty in some European countries is higher. This paper estimates poverty rates for all the countries of the (old) EU and the USA...

Official poverty methodologies differ from other poverty measurement methods in the sense that the official ones are more often used as a benchmark to develop new policies as well as to evaluate the performance of existing programs. Europe has the tradition and the practice to use relative...

The article shows that reservations in Europe against Turkey's future membership are really groundless. A Muslim nation already was a member of the EU: Algeria. When Algeria was still a colony, it joined the EU (then: European Economic Community) on January 1st 1958 as a French "Departement",...

The book, which is available on-line, evaluates the performance of the EU accession countries in the field of social security; disabled people and social inclusion; youth, family and generation policy matters, health policy and veterinary policies. The overall positive evaluation of the maturity...

Die Unterschiede im Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftssystem zwischen den USA und Europa waren zwar immer ausgeprägt, gewinnen aber seit dem Zusammenbruch des gemeinsamen Gegenmodells in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion und in Osteuropa und dem Lissabon-Prozess zunehmend an Bedeutung. Letztens hat diese...

The European Union’s center-piece of economic policy making is the Lisbon process, which tries to make Europe the most competitive economic region in the world economy by 2010. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso recently presented a Centre for European Reform (CER) study that...

In 2004, Frits Bolkenstein, former European Commissioner for the Internal Market, brought in the attention of the European Commission “The Services Directive in the Internal Market”. The purpose of this directive was to liberalize the services’ market in the EU, a major regulated field,...

The energy security is a growing concern both of the EU governments, and of Brussels. The European officials have been working on a strategy that should ensure the energy security of the Union. Some of the main courses of action are as follows: increasing the energy output from regenerative...

If Europe wants to fulfill it’s Lisbon agenda of catching up with the United States, it must overhaul its pension systems and introduce some form or other of private pension funds, which are a major force in financing technological advance in the capitalist world economy today. Our...