Austerity, Human Rights Erosion and Political Radicalization: Implications for Eurozone Governance Reform

Miguel Santos Neves ()
Additional contact information
Miguel Santos Neves: Autonoma University Lisbon

A chapter in New Challenges for the Eurozone Governance, 2021, pp 247-266 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The chapter contributes to the analysis of the process of human rights and social cohesion erosion set in motion by austerity programmes in the Eurozone and to enquire about how this experience influences the current debate on the Eurozone governance reform in the context of COVID-19 crisis. The orthodox neoliberal adjustment policies imposed on several EU countries between 2010 and 2017 exacerbated economic recession, increased inequality and generated an extensive violation of human rights leading to far-reaching political radicalization. This experience has influenced the current debate on Eurozone reform functioning as a negative mirror of ineffective solutions and citizens’ distrust risks, which might contribute to the emergence of new and more adequate solutions. The main argument put forward if that a pragmatic governance reform of the Eurozone likely to be facilitated by a change in Germany’s position, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to respond effectively to COVID-19 crisis insofar the EU has also to enhance the priority to human rights protection in order to regain citizens’ confidence and interrupt the trend of rising political influence of anti-EU radical parties which constitute one the most significant risks for the EU in the current crisis context.

Keywords: Human rights; Austerity policies; Eurozone governance; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-62372-2_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030623722

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-62372-2_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().