European Employment Strategy and Spanish Labour Market Policies (original) (raw)
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Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2016
The European Employment Strategy (EES) illustrates the most ambitious attempt to regulate and coordinate employment policies. However, some doubts arise about its capacity to favour convergence in the field of employment due to the regulatory nature of the process, based on the so-called soft regulation. This article aims to contribute to the debate of whether the EES can favour the convergence of employment policies by focusing on the effects of the policy discourse. It analyses the EU discourse on activation developed in the European Employment Strategy (EES) from 1997 to 2010 and its influence in Spain and the United Kingdom by means of a policy frame approach. The conclusions show that we are observing a process of relative ideological convergence of the activation models due to the influence of the EES discourse. However, divergences are still observed at the level of the instruments and methods of activation.
Europeanization and Spanish welfare: the case of employment policy
Europeanization has particularly been meaningful given the Spanish historical context, something which has involved incorporating objectives, indicators and procedures defined by European institutions. There has also been a tendency to look to Europe in order to legitimate or de-legitimate certain policies or political proposals. On analysing Europeanization, the focus is not only on the socio-cognitive influence of the concepts, methodologies and indicators disseminated by European institutions, but also on the role played by the coalitions of actors and institutions and on how social actors mobilise and instrumentalise cognitive and normative frameworks in policy-making. An important aspect of the Europeanization process relates to social actors’ strategic ‘use’ of Europe so as to legitimate their positions and to gain a hegemonic or influential position in the policy/political debates.
2016
VIII 3.5. Youth unemployment 3.6. Long-term unemployment 3.7. Labour supply reduction policies as passive labour market policies 4. Active labour market policies 5. Some thoughts on the existing employment policies 5. Flexicurity in Spain in order to help unemployed people: A barren relationship between active and passive measures? María Salas Porras Abstract 1. Flexibility of labour market to avoid unemployment: Does it work? 2. Spanish National System of protection for unemployed people 2.1. Contributory Level-Nivel Contributivo Unemployment Benefit Unemployment Subsidy 2.2. Assistance Level-Nivel Asistencial 2.3. Temporary Extraordinary Programs 3. Spanish Strategy for Activating the Employment 3.1. Strengths and weaknesses of the Strategy: Variations according to the evaluation method 3.2. Materialization of its content Activation of the unemployed people Activation of the labour market Activation of the Employment Public Services 4. The necessary activation for having access to unemployment social protection 5. Conclusion Conclusion, Tania Bazzani conditional on the fulfilment of certain duties, the author criticises a narrative prevalent in Spanish labour policy according to which unemployed individuals are deemed responsible for their situation. This would explain two underlying premises of the Spanish labour policy, namely that active employment policies will reduce unemployment while passive measures will lead to an increase thereof. María Salas Porras, finally, concludes that the aforementioned concept would foster a tendency to actively assist unemployed people who receive public assistance benefits to a greater extent compared to other people who do not receive state support, which, in turn, leads to discrimination against young unemployed people and those that have never worked or have not worked sufficiently in order to benefit from social security benefits. The author, inter alia, recommends that labour market policies should focus on the support of groups that were hit hard by the recent waves of unemployment, in particular the youth and people aged over 55. She suggests that Spain could "learn" from the experience of other countries where labour market policies managed to cope with the 2008 crisis in a better way. This suggestion allows us to return to the objective of the workshop which was drawing comparisons between European countries as well as between the different routes taken in terms of employment policies. Based on the findings, it may be possible to identify best practices, but also some preconditions without which certain policy options are bound to produce suboptimal results or, in the worst case scenario, fail. The growing discontent of groups that feel deprived of their rights and the rise of populistic parties and nationalistic leaders should be considered a warning that worries of certain social strata cannot be ignored any longer. One can only hope that the many constructive proposals submitted by the authors offer the EU and the Member State officials food for thought on future employment policies.
Executive summary The Labour Market in Spain: Problems, Challenges and Future Trends 2
Despite a need for measures to ameliorate the impact of the labour market crisis, Spain is among the EU countries to have introduced the least number of improvements in recent years. On top of that, the severe structural reforms implemented have considerably worsened labour market access in the country, particularly for the most vulnerable groups, such as young people. The lack of accompanying measures to soften the effects of economic adjustment has worsened the position among the workforce and the unemployed alike. The immediate effect has been to accentuate Spain's economy was hit particularly hard by the financial crisis. After severe austerity measures have been implemented in recent years to contain a strong public debt increase, first signs of economic recovery are emerging. However, as SIM Europe results show, very few measures to soften the social consequences have been enacted. Spain scores second to last in the 'Labour Market Access' dimension of the Social Ju...
The European Employment Strategy
2007
Although the Euopean Employment Strategy (EES) has applied to the new Member States only after accession, it had shaped the Czech employment policy already well before that date. Therefore, the question arises, how the EES could gain such influence, despite the fact that the EES represents neither a very strong kind of EU regulation nor was pushed by the European Commission in course of its pre-accession strategy. Europeanisation theory suggests that basically institutional misfit between EU and national regulation as well as certain national conditions may explain the adaptation of national policies to EU norms. However, as the EES represents a very soft type of EU regulation, the cognitive influence on dominant national actors plays an important role for its impact. In the Czech case, the EU has been quite successful in influencing the agenda setting for the employment-the interpretation of labour market problems was shaped by the aims of the EES and led to an activation and streamlining of the employment policy. However, it was less the official employment policy review as part of the pre-accssion strategy than the model function of the EES that was decesive for successful and early adaptation.
The Spanish Labour Market: Reforms and consequences
International Review of Applied Economics, 2001
The institutional design of the Spanish labour market has been subjected, during the last three decades, to permanent pressure fuelled by two beliefs. On the one hand, by the assumption that a higher degree of flexibility would help to reduce unemployment; on the other, by the assumption that such increased flexibility would also help to reduce inflation rates and, consequently, the inflation gap between Spain and the rest of the European countries. The recent histor y of the Spanish labour market is, therefore, the histor y of the reforms implemented to increase the flexibility in such a market. The aim of this paper is, firstly, to describe the main features of these reforms, showing the measures implemented in order to increase the flexibility in the labour market and, secondly, to show the degree of flexibility reached in the labour market. Finally, we will briefly analyse the macroeconom ic consequences of these reforms.
2013
The EU decision to take into account only economical origin and discard the social one, adopting the Pact of Euro as the best ?and only- way to get over the crisis, has the mistake to confuse origin and consequences. As known, the main content of the Pact of Euro is addressed to reduce public deficit. As a result of these policies, almost all EU-27 countries have been converting private debt in public debat, cutting public spending in Education, Health and Social Service and bailing out several banks, worsening crisis social causes. This idea, obviously, is expressed in another way, affirming that in order to maintain Social State is firstly necessary to control public deficit. But in fact, after five years of austerity measures, there are many doubts about sincerity of these (neoliberalism) policies
The European Employment policy: from ends to means
To be published in Salais R., Villeneuve R., eds, 2002, Europe and the politics of capabilities, forthcoming THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL VERSION COMMENTS WELCOME The European Employment policy: from ends to means?