Making the Employment Strategy Work

2002/C/04

From Luxembourg to Lisbon
and Beyond

Edited by

Edward Best

Danielle Bossaert

The European Commission contributes to EIPA’s activities
and publications through the European Union budget.

Institut européen d’administration publique

Maastricht, the Netherlands / Pays-Bas

http://www.eipa.nl

Table of Contents

Page

List of Contributors vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction: Making the Employment Strategy Work 1

Edward Best and Danielle Bossaert

Five Years of the European Employment Strategy:
Achievements, Prospects and Limits of the Open Method
of Coordination 17

Gunnar Lund

The Open Method of Coordination: An Effective Instrument
for Social and Economic Management in a System of
Multi-Level Governance? 23

Anne Van Lancker

The European Employment Strategy and the Open Method
of Coordination: Mixed Results and Multiple Challenges 31

Philippe Pochet

The Future of the European Employment Strategy:

The Dutch Experience 49

Theo Langejan

The Social Partners and the European Employment
Strategy: The View of UNICE 55

Wilfried Beirnaert

Trade Union Reflections on the European Employment Strategy 61

David Foden

Fruitful or Fashionable? Can Benchmarking Improve the Employment
Performance of National Labour Markets? 67

Leonello Tronti

Peer Review in the European Employment Strategy:

A Preliminary Evaluation of the Results So Far 87

Monika Natter

Improving the Delivery of Employment Services:
A Core Concern of the European Employment Strategy 101

Ronald van Bekkum

The Luxembourg Process and the Structural Funds:

Two Tracks of One Employment Strategy? 111

Ines Hartwig

The Employment Strategy and the Enlargement of the Union 121

Hélène Clark-Dageville

Preface

It is a timely and important matter to reflect on the European Employment Strategy, all the more so because social Europe is still limping far behind economic and monetary Europe.

The difficulties were clear when the Employment Strategy was created. When the internal market was being completed and the preparatory process initiated for Economic and Monetary Union in 1992, it already seemed to some that the social dimension was missing in Europe. The European project remained incomplete. Once the Maastricht Treaty was ratified, all European policies were subordinated to the pursuit of budget stability, the precondition for those Member States which wished to qualify for the third phase of EMU. It is strange to note that, in this period, Labour Ministers spent their time not on employment policies or on European harmonisation of labour law, but on the negative effects of monetary policies for employment, while the Finance Ministers, in their meetings, applied themselves to the subject of employment. A world upside down!

Indeed the social chapter which was concocted at Maastricht in 1992 was not very ambitious, mainly, although not only, because of the UK’s “opting-out”. The 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, in contrast, included a social chapter which was a bit more ambitious, largely thanks to the efforts of the Government of Sweden, which had joined the Union in 1995 – a new Title specifically on employment. A key role was then played by the new French Government of Lionel Jospin which pushed things along by insisting, at the time of the Amsterdam European Council, that Europe should be given a genuine employment strategy and by proposing that the first-ever European Employment Summit should be organised during the Luxembourg Presidency. The problem, however, was that the Amsterdam Conclusions contained no substantive provisions in this respect, only an agreement to proceed in applying the employment provisions without waiting for ratification of the Treaty. The major challenge when preparing the Extraordinary European Council on Employment in Luxembourg in 1997 was thus to “give body” to the new Employment Title in the Amsterdam Treaty. This was an especially laborious exercise since one had in the first place to make an inventory of the ideas which were on the table before envisaging common guidelines and – the most important thing for the Luxembourg Presidency – to define an operational strategy to combat unemployment.

We had been forced to recognise that those governments which supported the idea of an employment summit wanted to be given in Europe arguments with which to argue better the national policy that they were already putting together. Once again, Europe would serve as no more than an external projection of national policy manoeuvring – something which had to be avoided at all costs. Furthermore, we had had to recognise that the concrete proposals concerning employment which were submitted to the Luxembourg Presidency by the Member States were characterised by a remarkable timidity.

Our idea was thus to introduce some order into the proposals which were made, and to develop a new approach by adding a methodology inspired by the so-called convergence strategy. The aim was to have the same “convergence stress” in social affairs as in economic affairs, accompanied by specific and verifiable objectives.

In the end the Luxembourg Government’s proposal was adopted, by which the European Council would provide the European Union every year with concrete, quantified and verifiable guidelines concerning employment, to be implemented by national employment action programmes, which would be articulated around four broad pillars. In all these actions, it was very important for us to be associated not only with national governments but also with the social partners as well as the regional and local collectivities.

The “Luxembourg process” has certainly been successful in shaping the ways in which the EU functions. At Lisbon in 2000, it in turn inspired the “open method of coordination” which has been adopted, in different forms, in a variety of new policy areas.

How much has it achieved in terms of employment? Ten million jobs have been created since 1997 and more than four million people who were unemployed have found work again. Nevertheless, even if the Luxembourg process has undeniably had some success in helping create jobs through this “convergence stress”, much remains to be done. At the level of the European Council, the employment guidelines of the Community and the employment policies in the Member States are no longer really discussed in a focussed way, the Heads of State or Government preferring to leave this work to the different formations of the Council of Ministers. In this way the Summits each December where the Employment Strategy of the European Union should traditionally be on the top of the agenda have become little meetings, which is deeply regrettable.

Another weakness of the present system is that the social partners, who are reluctant to put into effect the employment guidelines, are not really accountable to anyone at all, unlike the national governments. For this reason, the Luxembourg Government has insisted to the Spanish Presidency at the time of the Barcelona European Council that the social partners should be better associated to the Luxembourg strategy. One could imagine that all the Member States should agree the national action programme for employment in a tripartite structure, bringing together around the table government, employers and trade unions.

On top of all this, enlargement is inevitably going to lead to serious new challenges which must be foreseen as the Employment Strategy is developed with a view to the future.

This book is a valuable and timely contribution to a debate which must remain high on the European agenda in the coming years. It shows the successes which have been achieved since the Luxembourg Summit in November 1997. It also has the merit of addressing those aspects of the European Employment Strategy which need to be perfected – not only in the light of the experience which has been acquired in the course of the last five years, but also in terms of the responses which have to be found to deal with the new challenges with which our societies are now confronted.

Jean-Claude Juncker

Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and former Minister of Labour of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg