Focus panel 5 – From the welfare state to the social-ecological state: how to organise and finance welfare without growth?

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Summary

This panel aims to address the issue of how to build and finance welfare systems that are compatible with sustainable economics, that improve citizens’ wellbeing and respect planetary boundaries. It will highlight the growth-dependency of European welfare states, their blindness to the social impact of mounting environmental challenges, and the combined pressures that underinvestment, rising inequality and environmental crises put on welfare demand, along with the more recent social aftershocks of the pandemic and energy crises. The main objective of the panel will then be to clarify what it concretely means to move towards a social ecological state: What kind of risks should be covered? Which social and fiscal policies are needed? Who will bear the costs and who will benefit? What role should the EU take given the diversity of European welfare models?

This panel will first have a round of presentations by the speakers on how to cope with welfare without growth and then a round of reactions by discussants with a particular focus on the EU’s role.

Chair

  • Philippe Lamberts - MEP and Co-President (Greens/EFA), Beyond Growth Conference organiser

Speakers

  • Juliana Wahlgren - Director, European Anti-Poverty Network
  • Milena Buchs - Professor, University of Leeds
  • Timothée Parrique - Researcher, Lund University
  • Simone d’Alessandro - Professor, University of Pisa
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Discussants

  • Maria Joao Rodrigues - President of FEPS, former minister of the Portuguese Republic and Professor of Economics at ISCTE-IUL
  • Sebastiano Sabato - Senior researcher, European Social Observatory (OSE)
  • Anne Van Lancker - President of Solidar

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Speaker

Philippe Lamberts
Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA) and Co-President of the Greens EFA/Group, Beyond Growth Conference organiser

Milena Buchs
Professor, University of Leeds

Simone d’Alessandro
Professor, University of Pisa

Anne Van Lancker
President of Solidar

Timothée Parrique
Researcher in ecological economics at Lund University (Sweden)

Maria Joao Rodrigues
President of FEPS, former minister of the Portuguese Republic and Professor of Economics at ISCTE-IUL

Sebastiano Sabato
Senior researcher, European Social Observatory (OSE)

Juliana Wahlgren
Director, European Anti-Poverty Network