Towards Common Principles Of Flexicurity

Recoge: 1. The challenges and opportunities of globalisation and change - 2. An integrated flexicurity approach - 3. Flexicurity policies - 4. Flexicurity and social dialogue - 5. Developing common principles of flexicurity - 6. Flexicurity pathways - 7. The financial dimension of flexicurity - 8. Next steps: flexicurity and the Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs - 9. Annex.

Contains analysis of, critical remarks on, and constructive suggestions to Towards common principles of Flexicurity of the European Commission (2007).

Terms such as 'Social Europe' and 'European Social Model' have long resided in the political and regulatory lexicon of European integration. But in recent years, and in spite of the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU social profile has entered a profound period of crisis. The ECJ judgments of Viking and Laval exemplify the unresolved tension between the EU's strong market imperatives and its fragile social aspirations while the ongoing economic crisis, while the various 'bail out' packages are producing a constant retrenchment of social rights. The status quo is one in which workers appear to shoulder most of the risks attendant on making and executing arrangements for the doing of work. Chapters in this book advocate a reversal of this trend in favour of fair mutualization, so as to disperse these risks and share them more equitably between employers, the state, and society at large.

This book explores the normative and legal evolution of the Social Dimension - labour law, social security law and family law - in both the EU and its Member States, during the last decade. It does this from a wide range of theoretical and legal-substantive perspectives. The past decade has witnessed the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty and its emphasis on fundamental rights, a new coordination regulation within the field of social security (Regulation 883/2004/EC), and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the so-called Laval Quartet. Furthermore structural changes affecting demographics and family have also challenged solidarity in new ways. The book is organised by reference to distinct 'normative patterns' and their development in the fields of law covered, such as the protection of established groups, the position of market functional values and the scope for just distribution. The book represents an innovative and important interdisciplinary approach to analysing EU law and Social Europe, and contributes a complex, yet thought-provoking, picture for the future. The contributors represent an interesting mix of well-known and distinguished as well as upcoming and promising researchers throughout Europe and beyond.

'Converging Europe' evaluates the impact of European integration on social policy development since the launch and re-launch of the Lisbon strategy discussing the challenges posed by the still unfolding global economic crisis of 2007-2009. Given the unsettling economic conditions, does European coordination of social policies generate more social cohesion and integration or growing xenophobia, nationalism and exclusion? Informed by diverse theoretical perspectives, this book brings together a team of international experts working on an extensive range of policy issues central to the Lisbon agenda such as labour market policies, social protection systems, and social exclusion/poverty. Contributions assess the interfaces between European integration, the Lisbon strategy and social policy in three groups of countries related to the EU: old member states; the new member states; and a candidate country - Turkey. The richness of content and data allows rigorous analysis and critical comparative insights not only on the social outcomes of the Lisbon strategy but also more broadly on the dynamics and dimensions of European social policy. Pioneering the scholarly reflections on the repercussions of the global economic crisis of 2007-2009 for both the road map drawn at Lisbon and viability of national systems of social provision in Europe, this book is an important acquisition for policy makers and academics alike.

Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,3, Berlin School of Economics and Law, language: English, abstract: Nowadays, living and working conditions of EU citizens alter in a very fast pace due to globalization, accelerated technological progress and demographic change. Therefore,challenges European economies have to cope with are for example: - Increasing international trade and thus worldwide economic integration,- An expansion on global reserves of workforce, - An adjustment of labour division between industrialized and emerging markets and - A successive significance of human capital in course of a community of knowledge. On the one hand, to remain competitive this change1 means that firms within EU countries have to establish new markets while the requirements on mastering production processes and forms of organization increase. As far as employees are concerned, they have to be willed and capable to tune in to those labour market changes. Thus, life long learning and mobility become the very basics of success. In the same time higher pressure on wages and employment of low level qualified people can be seen in course of ongoing processes in job specialization. On the other hand, there has been an establishment of awareness within Europe of a common social model which carries the characteristics of: - Social cohesion, solidarity and the abatement of social poverty and discrimination, - Securing general access to a health and education system as well as broad social covering and - A significant role of the public sector to provide the necessary infrastructure. This shows that social security within the European society is strongly anchored which forms a certain constant in the approach of new reforms. Hence, flexicurity as an essence of the adaptability pillar of the EES has the task to strike the balance of a more flexible labour market to preserve European competitiveness with security of the social model. To achieve the objective of the Lisbon Strategy of full employment, enhancing quality and productivity at work as well as to underpin social and territorial cohesion flexibility and security are absolute mutually supportive. That is, to remain competitive only a dynamic, innovation oriented and business friendly economy provides those necessary resources that enable also the maintenance of social governmental structures.

Death of Labour Law? questions the on-going relevance of labour law in Australia and other Western industrialised societies in the twenty-first century. The tension between economic flexibility for business and social stability for workers is set against the backdrop of the Rudd government's 'Forward with Fairness' reform agenda and similar proposals for change in the European Union. Martin Vranken retraces the birth and subsequent growth of labour law and argues that it is essentially a mechanism for employee protection, not labour market regulation. Death of Labour Law? offers a fresh perspective on the current debate about labour law and the role of the state in Australian industrial and workplace relations.

This volume of 23 essays on diverse aspects of the complex and challenging concept of "decent work" has its inception in the "Impulses of Salzburg 2009". Questions of decent work and decent unemployment have become especially salient in times of an economic and financial crisis. The establishment of decent working conditions and decent unemployment provisions - a complex matter of securing the right ethical mix of security and incentives - are perceived as major challenges not only for developing and undeveloped countries, which still don't have stable economies and where the rate of poverty and corruption is still high, but also for "developed" societies themselves.