This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. <p>Freedom and equality are widely considered the two most important values in a liberal democracy. This wide-ranging study examines how both have developed across a thirty year period since 1990, and in particular the effect on them of the Great Recession of 2008. Drawing on extensive data from the six largest European democracies - France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain