Authors Iain Begg | Gabriel Glöckler | Anke Hassel ... - The Europaeum

The Lisbon Agenda changed the European approach towards welfare and
the labour market: In the context of mature welfare states ensuring high
levels of social equality, the Lisbon Agenda and the renewed European
Employment Strategy – now renamed the “Partnership for Growth and
Employment” ultimately shifted the focus of the debate away from welfare
provision towards activation and labour market participation. It set itself
strong targets – maybe too strong, since the Kok-Report, which was
commissioned in 2004, criticised that “an ambitious and broad reformagenda
needs a clear narrative, in order to be able to communicate
effectively about the need for it.” 4 Moreover, the report complained that the
employment goals set for 2010 were far from realisable and recommended
an increasing focus on “naming, shaming and faming” in order to enhance
the activities in the member states to increase employment.
The clear narrative and focus was found with the flexicurity agenda,
which can now serve as the most natural starting point for fostering both
employment growth and social cohesion in the EU. Flexicurity is currently
the most sophisticated policy approach at the EU level which aims to
combine change, flexibility and the protection of workers. It has recently
moved to a highpoint on the agenda of the European Commission through
its endorsement by the European Council of Ministers in December 2007.
In the words of the Commission, it “involves the deliberate combination
of flexible and reliable contractual arrangements, comprehensive lifelong
learning strategies, effective active labour market policies, and modern,
adequate and sustainable social protection systems.” The flexicurity
agenda is therefore the single most important point of reference for the
modernisation of the European social model. The various debates on the
European Social Model have also made it virtually impossible to separate
the debate on minimum incomes from terms like active labour market
policy, flexicurity or social inclusion.
Moreover, the flexicurity approach has also taken into account the
complexity of the interaction between social policy and the labour market.
As the recent report on Employment in Europe points out: “Everything
considered, there is no single combination of policies and institutions
to achieve and maintain good socio-economic results, but rather there
are different pathways to good performance that are, to a large extent,
the result of distinct historical trajectories. Respecting the principles of
subsidiarity (and the Open Method of Coordination), this allows scope for
tailor-made policy packages to suit national preferences with respect to
distributional aspects, risk-taking and other national objectives.” 5
Chapter 9 – Anke Hassel 133