Challenges for Europe (Electronic book text)

Europe is at a crossroads as it adjusts to the realities of being a Union of 25 very different countries. The politicians of the old and the new member countries alike are preoccupied with pressing short-term issues, but whether an expanded European Union will be judged by history as a success of failure will depend on its ability to find answers to inescapable long-term problems. This collection looks at eight problem areas ranging from Europe's apparent inability to match American levels of productivity growth, the record of monetary union and the threat of deflation, via growing social inequality and the politics of education, to the future of the balance between private enterprise and the public sector to the demographic time bomb of that threatens our pensions systems and financial provision for old age.