The future of living and working in Europe

00:00:01    Intro    
                
00:00:32    Mary McCaughey
Hello and welcome to this edition of Eurofound Talks. In today's podcast, we're going to look at the core of what it's all about. What does it mean for Europeans across 27 countries – young and old, urban, rural, rich, poor – what are the critical challenges facing us all today, what is the future of living and working in Europe? 

Joining me this morning to delve into the details and to do a spot of crystal-ball gazing is our relatively new Executive Director Ivailo Kalfin. Ivailo is a former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Bulgaria. He's also a one-term member of the European Parliament. Clearly, he can offer us a wide-ranging perspective on what it means to live and work in Europe. Good morning Ivailo. 
                
00:01:24    Ivailo Kalfin
Good morning Mary. 
              
00:01:25    Mary McCaughey
Ivailo, we are speaking at a very difficult time. It's nearly two years since COVID-19 took hold in Europe, we've seen progress, but unfortunately we're seeing a deterioration again. It's impacting on all our lives in many different ways: economically, socially, psychologically. We have seen many changes. I think young people today could be forgiven for thinking that we, as the older generation, have failed them entirely. Or do you think that is too gloomy a scenario? 
                
00:01:58    Ivailo Kalfin
I think it's a bit gloomy. Sometimes there are such moments in history where changes happen more rapidly. This is what we have seen with the pandemic. We are still striving to get out of the pandemic, but it has changed many features of our lives for good. It will also have an impact in terms of quality of life. This is a very challenging time and I'm very happy that, unlike in the previous crisis in 2008, this time the European Union, the governments and societies reacted much better, with much more coherence. If the keyword was austerity back in 2008, now the keywords are recovery and resilience, and those also make sense in the policies. 
                
00:02:53    Mary McCaughey
The core challenges that you've raised here don't affect all people in the same way. We have seen that young people and women tend to bear the brunt of the economic fallout of these kinds of crises. 
                
00:03:08    Ivailo Kalfin
Indeed, young people as a generation haven't yet recovered from the previous crisis. The levels of unemployment and poor living conditions, including access to housing, etc. were already low and very badly impacted from the crisis of 2008. Now there is a new shock affecting them, so certainly young people are extremely vulnerable, and this is what the research of Eurofound shows. 
                
00:03:41    Mary McCaughey
What do you think we can do about this? Does the asymmetric impact of this call for asymmetric responses? 
                
00:03:50    Ivailo Kalfin
You're absolutely right, the pandemic was a symmetric shock, but with asymmetric consequences. The most vulnerable groups in our societies are hit the most, and we see both a generational and gender impact and divide. Again, in the research of Eurofound, you will see that the stress levels due to the pandemic are increasing for young women. This is not only a generational but also a gender-related divide, so we really should not consider the average figures. European societies and governments have to take lessons from the previous crisis. You shouldn't look at the average figures, you need to look at those who are the most vulnerable. 
                
00:04:48    Mary McCaughey
Would you fear the danger of deepening divides and inequalities that we can see emerging? Do you think we are actually sowing the seeds of social and political discord into the next generation? 
                
00:05:01    Ivailo Kalfin
Certainly, there will be not only political discord but also disruption in our societies – if we allow it to happen. There is no wealthy society where you have pockets of poverty or of very vulnerable people. In such instances we need to show solidarity because the collective interest here is very much in line with the individual interest. Everybody would live better in a more coherent society, and indeed the crisis affects some vulnerable groups more, but the response has to be more attention to them. Going beyond the crisis, this approach has to be applied across the board, for example with the green transition, as shown in recent Eurofound publications. Very often, you have a dividend or benefits from the green transition, which are for everybody. Cleaner air will mean longer, healthier lives and better living conditions, but the price to pay for that should be progressive: you should not ask the most vulnerable to pay that price. 
                
00:06:22    Mary McCaughey
You're talking about discord, potential discord in society. Prior to the pandemic, we were already looking at a labour market that was increasingly divided in the type of employment that was available, with non-standard or precarious employment, etc. COVID has clearly compounded this. Are we looking, do you think, at an increasingly fractured labour market in the long run? 
                
00:06:44    Ivailo Kalfin
I wouldn't say that the pandemic brought new phenomena, but it rather catalysed many processes that we had been seeing before that, such as teleworking. Before the pandemic, teleworking jobs accounted for about 3% to 5% of all jobs. With the lockdown, this share increased to 14% or 15% of all jobs; in some countries this was more than 20% of jobs. There is a clear interest for the employers and a clear interest for the workers. However, this also creates new divisions in the labour market: from a necessity, remote working becomes a privilege. What we have witnessed is that when restaurants and hotels started to open, there was no personnel; staff simply went somewhere else. The creation of systemic shortages on the labour market because of the existence of the privilege of remote working is also going to impact the type of jobs and the structure of the job market. 
                
00:07:49    Mary McCaughey
Do you think those changes in terms of increased telework, in the way that we work, and in the labour market are moving from a temporary to a more permanent structure? Do you think that our children won't even know what it's like to work nine to five?
                
00:08:08    Ivailo Kalfin
Our research shows that 80% of those who experienced teleworking during the lockdown want to continue it. This might be in the form of hybrid work, i.e. not 100% remote working but still having the possibility to telework. That's a very high percentage: once you test it you want to stay there. There are also other aspects of teleworking that need to be addressed by governments through the social dialogue between unions and employers: you have longer working hours, you have more stress working at home, you have again a gender divide because more women are employed in jobs that can be done remotely, and you also have issues like the right to disconnect, which is also very important. 
                
00:09:12    Mary McCaughey
The current Conference on the Future of Europe looks at trying to engage citizens to boost their trust, but the pandemic saw trust and optimism dipping. What do you think we can do to build that back up? 
                
00:09:26    Ivailo Kalfin
Trust in governments is decreasing, while at the same time trust in science, trust in the experts’ opinions, as shown in the Eurofound study, trust in people who are specialists without having any political motivation is increasing. We need to use that. Distrusting governments is very dangerous because it might bring – and this is what we see in some Member States – very extremist, very populist political solutions, giving easy answers to everything. This is not the way to go, because there are no easy answers in this situation. I think that the Conference on the Future of Europe is a very good exercise and we have to put not only governments versus citizens there, but we also have to include expert centres and universities into the picture, which have the expertise and which could give their input into the vision for the future of Europe. 
                
00:10:28    Mary McCaughey
When you refer to the future of Europe, of course children are the future of Europe, and we know from our own research that parents across the EU are actually less optimistic about the future of their children than they were about their own. 
                
00:10:42    Ivailo Kalfin
I am worried about the type of society which is going to happen, about the possibilities to progress and to go further, not only individually. What is going to be the way of life, the quality of life, what is going to be the environment? What are going to be the social inequalities in our communities? This is very important. As parents, we are doing our best to raise our children, but we have to bear in mind how Europe and our societies are going to look in the next 20 or 30 years. Those are my preoccupations. 
                
00:11:20    Mary McCaughey
You referred previously to saying that you don't like to talk about young people as the future because you see the challenges that are facing them in the present. 
                
00:11:31    Ivailo Kalfin
Yes, I have been active politically, as a socialist still as a student, and I'm fed up of hearing for so many years ‘the future is yours’, ‘the future belongs to young people’. I'm 57 now, the present has to belong to young people. You cannot tell them ‘wait and see, you are going to have a bright future’; we have to deliver it now. They will have fortunately longer lives, hopefully, ahead of them, but it is very important not to leave the good news for later, but to try to do something now. 
                
00:12:12    Mary McCaughey
On that upbeat note, Ivailo, we've looked at the challenges, we've looked at the attempts to address some of them and how we can improve things in the future. At the end of each of these Eurofound Talks, we ask the expert, in this case you, to talk to me in three: give me the three key issues that could help shape better living and working in Europe in the future. 
                
00:12:42    Ivailo Kalfin
That's a good question. I think the first point is inclusiveness. Whenever decisions are made, that has to be done with the largest possible participation. Citizens have to participate, stakeholders have to participate and social partners have to participate if you want to have sound solutions. The second point is coherence in societies: the more inequalities, the more disruptions we have in society, the worse the quality of life is going to be for everybody, not only for vulnerable groups, but for everyone. Maintaining coherence in society is very important. The third point is to dare to act, not to postpone actions but to take them now. There is never a good moment for inaction: with the environment, as with the pandemic, we have to act now. 
                
00:13:37    Mary McCaughey
Thank you, Ivailo: inclusiveness, coherence and action. That's very succinct. Thank you very much for your interesting take on where we are, where we're going. Thank you also to our listeners. Feel free, of course, to comment, question, query, anything you've heard today online at #EurofoundTalks. You can also listen back to our podcast on sustainable work. Next up, in advance of the European Year of Youth, which is in 2022, we will be looking at the specific issues which are facing young people today. Please look at our website, where you can find all our current and upcoming research findings and analysis on the issues we discussed today about living and working in Europe, and of course all the rest of our work, which is on our website. You can also follow us on our social media channels. Until next time, when Eurofound talks to you. 
                
00:14:34    Outro