Life Is Getting Worse in ESS Data: Is This Due to Micro or Macro Factors? Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 28/November 2013

In order to evaluate the success of a society, measuring well-being might be a fruitful avenue. For a long time, governments have trusted economic measures, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in particular, to assess their success. However GDP is only a limited measure of economic success, which is not enough to show whether policies implemented by governments have a positive perceived impact on the people they represent. This paper belongs to the studies of the relationship between measures of well-being and economic factors. More precisely, it tries to evaluate the decrease in happiness and life satisfaction that can be observed in European countries in the 2000-2010 decade. It asks whether this deterioration is mainly due to microeconomic factors, such as income and individual characteristics, or rather to environmental (macroeconomics) factors such as unemployment, inflation or income inequality. Such aggregate factors could impact individual happiness per se because they are related to the perception of an aggregate risk of unemployment or income fall. In order to strengthen this interpretation, this paper checks whether the type of social protection regime existing in different countries mediates the impact of macroeconomic volatility on individual well-being. To go further, adopting the classification of welfare regimes proposed by Esping-Andersen (1990), it verifies whether the decreasing pattern of subjective well-being varies across these regimes. This is partly due to the aggregate social protection expenditure. Hence, this paper brings some additional evidence to the idea that macroeconomic uncertainty has a cost in terms of well-being. More protective social regimes are able to reduce this cost. It also proposes an evaluation of the welfare cost of unemployment and inflation (in terms of happiness and life satisfaction), in each of the different social protection regimes. Finally different measures of well-being, i.e. cognitive, hedonic and eudaimonic, are used to confirm the above mentioned result.

An Arab Springboard for EU Foreign Policy? CEPS Paperbacks. January 2012

The EU has not been perceived as reacting very rapidly or effectively to the so-called Arab Spring. Events do appear to validate the idea underpinning the European Security Strategy (ESS) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP): only where governments guarantee to their citizens security, prosperity, freedom and equality, can peace and stability last – otherwise, people will revolt. But in practice, in its southern neighbourhood the EU has acted in precisely the opposite manner, so the Arab Spring is occurring in spite of rather than thanks to EU policy. The ENP stands at a crossroads therefore: Can a new start be made? Which instruments and, in times of austerity, which means can the EU apply to consolidate democratization? And, finally, can the EU continue to wage an ENP without addressing the hard security dimension, especially as the US seem to be withdrawing from crisis management in the region – or shall it continue to leave that to others?

The EU Global Strategy: going beyond effective multilateralism? EPC Discussion Paper, June 2016

The ongoing consultation process on the European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) presents an occasion for the European Union (EU) to redress the European Security Strategy’s (ESS) shortcomings and update its stance on multilateralism. As rule-based multilateralism remains deeply entrenched in the Union’s DNA, the EUGS is unlikely to represent ground-breaking innovations as to how the EU should act in international affairs. The key challenge in respect of the EU’s multilateralism is twofold. The first challenge lies in setting out clear priorities for the EU’s multilateral action to be pursued collectively by the member states; and the second in determining the form of multilateralism that would best suit the promotion of the priorities concerned. In this collection of six essays, policy analysts and academics are presented with the question: Over a five year horizon, what do you think should be the focus of the EU’s multilateral agenda? The answers dwell on the EU playing a proactive role in relation to emerging powers especially China, and Latin America as a whole; furthering the EU’s soft power through ‘science diplomacy’; and EU leadership in building a global energy and climate community, and counter terrorism measures.