Education and Social Protection Systems in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 20/January 2013

This report assesses the current status of the education and social protection systems in 11 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. It compares these countries using various education indicators and attempts to highlight the main differences in the social protection systems among the countries using qualitative analysis. The report finds that despite the differences among the countries, they share a common feature: when measured by the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI), their inequality-adjusted values are significantly lower than their HDI values and ranks when not taking inequality into account. Nevertheless, significant improvements have been achieved in all the quantitative indicators for education, while the qualitative performance is still modest in the majority of the countries studied. As to the social protection aspect, the research reveals that various social protection programmes are being adopted in the 11 countries. As most of their financing is covered by government budgets, however, this places a high fiscal burden on them. Yet few of the countries (Turkey being the most notable) are trying to improve the sustainability of their social insurance schemes.

Special Education and the Risk of Becoming Less Educated in Germany and the United States. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.1, 13 December, 2004

Over the twentieth century, a growing group of students has been transferred into considerably expanded special education systems. These programs serve children with diagnosed impairments and disabilities and students with a variety of learning difficulties. Children and youth “with special educational needs” constitute a heterogeneous group with social, ethnic, linguistic, and physical disadvantages. An increasingly large percentage of those students at risk of leaving school without credentials participate in special education, a highly legitimated low status (and stigmatizing) school form. While most countries commit themselves to school integration or inclusive education to replace segregated schools and separate classes, cross-national and regional comparisons of special education’s diverse student bodies show considerable disparities in their (1) rates of classification, (2) provided learning opportunities, and (3) educational attainments. Analyzing special education demographics and organizational structures indicates which children and youth are most likely to grow up less educated and how educational systems distribute educational success and failure. Findings from a German-American comparison show that which students bear the greatest risk of becoming less educated depends largely on definitions of “special educational needs” and the institutionalization of special education systems.

Cittadinanza, lavoro e diritti sociali nella crisi europea = Citizenship, work and social rights in the European crisis. WP C.S.D.L.E. “Massimo D’Antona”.INT – 100/2013

This paper explores the limits and potentials of European citizenship as a transnational form of social integration, taking as comparison Marshall's classical analysis of the historical development of social rights in the context of the national Welfare State. It is submitted that this potential is currently frustrated by the prevailing negative-integration dimension in which the interplay between Union citizenship and national systems of Welfare State takes place. This negative dimension pervades the entire case law of the Court of Justice on Union citizenship, even becoming dominant – after the famous Viking and Laval judgements – in the ways in which the judges in Luxembourg have built, and limited, what in Marshall’s terms might be called the European collective dimension of “industrial citizenship”. The new architecture of the economic and monetary governance of the Union, based as it is on an unprecedented effort towards a creeping constitutionalisation of a neo-liberal politics of austerity and welfare retrenchment, is destined to strengthen the de-structuring pressures on the industrial-relation and social protection systems of the member States. The conclusions sum-up the main critical arguments and make some suggestions for an alternative path for re-politicising the social question in Europe.

Towards Effective Regulatory Cooperation under TTIP: A Comparative Overview of the EU and US Legislative and Regulatory Systems. CEPS Special Report No. 88, 15 May 2014

The aim of this report is to inform the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment negotiations on enhanced regulatory coherence and cooperation, by providing negotiators, stakeholders and the public with a comparative overview of the US and EU legislative and regulatory processes in their current form, highlighting differences and similarities.