The report Benchmarking Working Europe 2014 reviews the crisis and EU austerity policies in the last five years from the point of view of Europe's social agenda. The publication, written by the research team of the ETUI, offers an overview of the most important statistics on the EU’s macroeconomic situation, labour market developments, inequality and poverty, deregulation of labour law, wages and collective bargaining, health and safety at work, worker participation rights and the impact of austerity on the green agenda. The Benchmarking Working Europe report comprises a critical, fact-based diagnosis of the first five years of the EU’s crisis management policies in view of the Europe 2020 agenda. It suggests that Europe finds itself “half-way through a lost decade” and provides the scientific underpinning of the ETUC’s political roadmap for a ‘new path for Europe’. The publication demonstrates that the European Union is in need of a fundamental change of course.

Published every year, the report analyses the state of working Europe explaining with the aid of statistics and graphs the main trends in terms of Europe’s macro-economic situation, its labour market development, the situation of wages and collective bargaining, and worker participation. The focus of this year’s Benchmarking report is on the lessons learned – or not learned – from eight years of economic crisis and austerity policy. The findings point to policy failures and to the need to redefine alternatives in order to get Europe back on a sustainable growth path. The deterioration of the labour market and social situation in the EU, along with the appointment of a new Commission last autumn, have led to some renewed policy initiatives that seek to restore growth as a means of addressing the situation. The most notable of these initiatives is the Annual Growth Survey with its three pillars: the Investment Plan, fiscal responsibility and structural reforms.

Widening economic and social gaps among EU member states, as well as among different groups and categories of citizens within society, are not only placing in jeopardy the future of Social Europe but threatening to undermine also the whole project of European integration. The post-2008 recession and debt crisis, helped along by EU leaders’ obstinate clinging to the failing remedies of fiscal austerity, have accelerated the disenchantment of millions of European citizens with the half-century-old project to build and consolidate a European Union. This is one of the most striking conclusions of the ETUI’s Benchmarking Working Europe report for 2013. Benchmarking Working Europe is one of the ETUI’s regularly appearing flagship publications. Issued annually since 2002, the report offers an alternative perspective on EU developments. Using publicly accessible data, it reveals what is actually going on behind the EU social and economic affairs headlines. After last year’s issue focused on growing inequality in Europe, this year’s Benchmarking Working Europe report will demonstrate by means of hard-hitting graphs and cogent arguments that Europe is, rather than converging, actually drifting apart in numerous respects.

Is the Europe 2020 strategy leading us, as it promises, towards smart, sustainable and inclusive growth? This is the main question addressed by this publication on the eve of this year’s Spring European Summit. The ETUC and ETUI offer a critical assessment of the strategy and its various components: will it be able to provide a framework for the creation of more and better-quality jobs? Are the policies and indicators set to promote an increase in social cohesion? How can workers better participate in the achievement of these various aims? Benchmarking Working Europe 2011 is structured in eight topical chapters illustrated by a significant number of graphs, and has a completely new layout. The various chapters on the different facets of Europe 2020 contain a carefully argued and critical analysis of the design and contents of the European mid-term strategy and of the state of the European economic, employment and social indicators. They question the underlying foundation which firmly places the emphasis on fiscal consolidation while neglecting the need for economic growth and quality jobs. The major problem is that, if the (macro) economics are wrong, all the other laudable targets and procedures in the Europe 2020 strategy – raising education standards and R&D spending, reducing poverty – will prove entirely illusory, further undermining the credibility of Europe. Several of the contributions to this volume show that it is rather by raising social and environmental standards and wellbeing that we might succeed in achieving a sustainable growth pattern and a healthier and more cohesive society for the future.