North, South, East, West: The implementation of the European Employment Strategy in Denmark, the UK, Spain and Poland

Article by Mikkel Mailand

In the mid1990s, European member states decided to coordinate their national employment policies through a common European Employment Strategy (EES). Building on a systematic comparative study of four member-states, the author argues that the strategy has influenced the member states' employment policies to a varying degree, but that the impact has generally speaking been limited.

The article examines the impact of the strategy as a result of peer pressure and key actors' strategic use of the strategy. The factors which explain why more cases of impact are found in Poland and Spain than in Denmark and the United Kingdom include: non-compliance with the EES predating the introduction of the strategy, relatively weak labour market performance, lack of consensus among the main actors in the labour market, and strong economic or political dependence on the EU.

The article is a contribution to the book Changing European Employment and Welfare Regimes - The Influence of the Open Method of Coordination on National Reforms. This book examines how and to what extent the European Employment Strategy and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Social Protection and Social Inclusion have influenced national labour market and social welfare policies. The book is edited by Martin Heidenreich, University of Oldenburg, Germany and Jonathan Zeitlin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

Article in Changing European Employment and Welfare Regimes - The Influence of the Open Method of Coordination on National Reforms, Routledge 2009.