Concern over the need to provide long-term care for an ageing population has stimulated a search for new solutions able to ensure financial viability and a better balance between demand and supply of care. There is at present a great variety of care regimes across industrial countries, with Mediterranean countries forming a distinctive cluster where management of care is overwhelmingly entrusted to the family. In some of these countries elderly care has recently attracted large flows of care migrants, ushering in a new division of labour among family carers (mainly women), female immigrants, and skilled native workers. The article explores the interconnections between the feminization of migration, on the one hand, and ongoing change in the Southern European care regimes, on the other hand. Different strands of the literature are brought together and reviewed to illustrate ongoing developments. One main objective is to identify issues of efficiency, equity and sustainability raised by this new ‘model’ of care. The results of recent surveys on provisions and costs of long-term care are accordingly reviewed to set the stage for discussion on the optimal mix of long-term care provisions in place of traditional family care.

Rapid population ageing has dramatically increased the social and economic cost of elderly care. Demand for care labour is increasing rapidly, and all countries are experiencing problems in recruiting enough workers to meet demand. In some countries, the shortage of care workers has been met by a large inflow of immigrant, mostly female, workers. The paper's aim is twofold. To argue that the way in which care is provided and financed may entail large differences in the creation of a formal care market. Provision in kind and 'tied' monetary transfers -that is, cash benefits that are somehow regulated -may prevent the formation of a large informal care market. National employment models in turn shape the features of the care labour market: in fact, they affect the quantity and the quality of the care labour supply, the size of the care labour shortage, and the degree of dependence on migrant carers. We show how these two factors combine to shape the characteristics of care regimes and their long term sustainability.

Two interpretations have been advanced to account for persistent German current account surpluses that translate into equally persistent deficits of countries in the European periphery. According to the first, the German surplus is the expression of a 'virtuous' savings behaviour, to be extended to the periphery. The second maintains that the increase in net exports reflects the stagnation of German domestic demand. The paper argues that differences in price competitiveness are only part of the explanation of the disequilibria and that an expansion of German internal demand, albeit necessary, would not suffice to provide a viable response to the long-term sustainability of the euro area. Adopting a multilevel perspective, the paper argues that to understand the persistence of deficits in the European periphery, the main features of the reorganisation of the German economic system, including its income redistribution and demand implications, should be considered. Three elements are singled out: the effects of eastward enlargement, the impoverishment of the productive matrix of peripheral countries and the quality composition of trade flows. This analysis, it is argued, is a crucial premise for devising trade and industrial policies targeted on redressing the increasing skewness of EU trade, especially through greater trade among the deficit countries.

Despite being symmetric in its very nature, the Covid-19 shock is affecting European economies in a very asymmetric way, threatening to deepen the divide between core and peripheral countries even more. It is not Covid-19 itself, however, but the contradictions within the EU's growth model and institutional architecture that would be to blame for such an outcome. The dramatic impact of the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic and the threat that it poses to Eurozone survival seem to have forced a reluctant Germany into action: a minor step, but an important signal. This note analyses the crossroads currently facing Europe-the risk of disintegration visa -vis the opportunity for a 'Hamiltonian moment'-discussing possible future scenarios in the light of past developments.

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