Europe: inequalities are widening

By: Frédérique Lebel

The French economist Thomas Piketty publishes, a few years after his bestseller Capital in the 21st century, a new work Capitalism and ideology: a world history of inequalities and the economic and political theories intended to justify them.

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And, indeed, the figures show that the gaps between the richest and the poorest Europeans are widening. Since 1980, the richest 1% in Europe have seen their income grow twice as much as that of the poorest 50%. The only consolation for Europeans, the situation is not as dramatic as in the United States, where there are far fewer social transfers and public services such as education or hospitals. The chronicle of Eve Minault .

Workers 'heritage
Symbol of a Europe which is deindustrializing, we speak today of workers' heritage. Witness of a France which produces on its soil three times less cars than thirty years ago: the island Seguin . Quite a symbol, this is where the famous Renault factories were established in 1919. Imagine tens of thousands of workers and engineers on the Seine at the gates of Paris, at Boulogne-Billancourt. Today, most industrial buildings have been abandoned and then razed ... and there is no shortage of projects. Visit with Juliette Rengeval .

And in Poland, in Warsaw , it is an old vodka factory which has been entirely converted into Google campus, shopping mall, offices, hotels ... and a museum of Polish vodka. In Warsaw, Thomas Giraudeau .

In Berlin, the workers 'heritage is still very much alive
In the form of vegetable gardens, these workers' gardens that have been cultivated at the very heart of the German captial for 150 years. Green oases which still occupy 3% of the total surface of the city. But for how long? Because the population is growing and the pressure of real estate intense. But, city gardeners organize themselves to defend their small piece of land. Report signed Julien Méchaussie .

A mine in the Jiu valley , in the west of Romania, recognized as a national industrial heritage. It is only justice as the black faces have been for a century the spearhead of social and political protest in the country. When the miners marched on Bucharest, the power shook. Today, the old Petrila mine has ceased operations, but an artist has done everything to preserve the memory of the place. In Bucharest, Benjamin Ribout .

(September 11, 2019 replay)

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