25 January 2010

Tackling Job-Losses - Varieties of European Responses

Article by Søren Kaj Andersen 

The financial crisis has led to an employment crisis in Europe although the unemployment rate continues to differ between European states; some countries have been hit harder by the crisis than others. At the same time, policies curtailing the impact of the financial crisis on the labour markets vary across the European borders, reflecting not only the dept of the crisis in different European states, but also the different regulation regimes - traditions for labour market regulation - that we can identify on the European continent. In the first part of the paper some of the recent policy initiatives adopted in the wake of escalating unemployment rates are identified. The second part of the paper focuses on the medium and long-term perspective, which in this case concerns the ability to create employment in spite of economic uncertainties, technological development and on changing patterns in the global division of work. The European debate on ‘flexicurity' will be used as the empirical example.

The article was presented at the fourth EU-China High Level Roundtable on Social Security, which was conducted at the Swedish EU presidency in Stockholm the 15-16th of October. The article is being translated to Chinese.

Download the full article (pdf)