Book excerpt: The report Benchmarking Working Europe 2014 reviews the crisis and EU austerity policies in the last five years from the point of view of Europe's social agenda. The publication, written by the research team of the ETUI, offers an overview of the most important statistics on the EU’s macroeconomic situation, labour market developments, inequality and poverty, deregulation of labour law, wages and collective bargaining, health and safety at work, worker participation rights and the impact of austerity on the green agenda. The Benchmarking Working Europe report comprises a critical, fact-based diagnosis of the first five years of the EU’s crisis management policies in view of the Europe 2020 agenda. It suggests that Europe finds itself “half-way through a lost decade” and provides the scientific underpinning of the ETUC’s political roadmap for a ‘new path for Europe’. The publication demonstrates that the European Union is in need of a fundamental change of course.