THE WORLDS OF FLEXICURITY-LABOUR MARKET POLICIES IN EUROPE

Abstract

In the past, European integration has concentrated first of all on profound economic integration, creating the Single Market with common rules and regulations throughout the European Union. European integration has been more limited in the labour market and social field, where the national state remains the dominant level of regulation. Although linguistically somewhat strange, “flexicurity”, the combination of labour market flexibility and security for employees, has become recently a much praised cornerstone of European labour market policies. Obviously, in an environment with rapid technical progress and frequently changing market conditions, employers need to manage their labour force flexibly. In order to achieve this flexibility without creating an unbearable situation for employees, security is the second pillar of the concept. As such, the concept looks like an innovative European way of consolidating economic and social interests, although some argue that much flexibility is gained while the security aspect is being neglected. Flexicurity forms a part of efforts to experiment with new forms of governance in the social and employment law of the European Union. It is compatible with attempts to introduce policies at supranational level that can influence self-transformation processes at the level of Member States in order to reach overarching economic goals defined by the Lisbon agenda. It is central in the debate over the reform of labour law systems since it is a key, if not the key concept in the 2006 Green Paper on modernising labour law in the European Union. The concept has been successfully adopted in some European countries, notably Denmark and the Netherlands. The experience in these two countries will thus be described in some detail, followed by a review of flexicurity-type policies in other European countries. The current paper is realized in the doctoral programme entitled “PhD in economics at the standards of European knowledge-DoEsEc”, scientific coordinator Prof. PhD. Gabriela Drãgan, institution the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, Faculty of International Business and Economics, period of research 2009-2012.

Keywords

• flexicurity, European Social Model, labour market reform, Denmark, the Netherlands.