‘Whoever becomes the ruler of AI will become the ruler of the world,’ said Vladimir Putin in September 2017. The USA, Russia and China are all adamant that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the key technology underpinning their national power in the future. What place, then, is there for Europe... Find out more

Are we currently living through a new industrial and technological revolution? Does it differ qualitatively from similar revolutions in the past? How can we gauge its political implications? Researchers working within the school of evolutionary economics, in particular those who embrace the concept... Find out more

Tax avoidance by corporations is widespread in Europe and costs governments more than €70bn annually. This revenue loss, and the legal ramifications of strategies that multinational companies use to avoid paying taxes, starves public services of funding, limits the bargaining power of trade unions... Find out more

The 2017 revised Shareholder Rights Directive gives shareholders a say on executive pay and requires institutional investors to improve shareholder engagement. The directive is thus designed to provide a counterweight to the increasingly dominant ‘shareholder’ model of corporate governance which has... Find out more

This policy brief examines the effectiveness of policies which aim to dismiss labour market institutions, in the name of competitiveness, across the European Union (EU). It also assesses the evidence which supports a positive relationship between deregulation and decentralization and productivity... Find out more

Although there is little argument about the fact that climate change and the digitalisation of the economy are the two main trends that will matter most over the coming decades, to date they have predominantly been considered separately rather than together. The first step towards shaping our future... Find out more

This policy brief examines how the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) can be used to strengthen the social dimension of the EU. For the EPSR to matter, the relevant actors should strongly commit themselves to its principles, ideally through a legally binding mechanism. Starting from the premise... Find out more

This paper discusses the European Parliament’s Resolution of 16 February 2017 with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (European Parliament 2017). It provides a brief summary of the content of the Resolution and looks at its basic principles and raison d’être. It also... Find out more

This Policy Brief provides information about the recently established ‘EU Observatory for Nanomaterials’, how it is being developed, its limitations and why it is not an ideal option. It suggests a different monitoring scenario, based on rules which would ensure transparency, improve the ability of... Find out more

This policy brief discusses the implications for labour and trade unions of new forms of work that are organised via distributed digital networks using the internet.The authors focus on what has been called ‘commons-based peer production’ but also address the more controversial case of ‘platform... Find out more