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gies of information and communication. Still some countries were inadvance and some lagged behind. (see e.g. the spread in the ratios ofICT investment expenditures to GDP over the 80’s compared to themore recent period, OECD, 1999). The growing internationalisation ofmost developed economies was on its way and international competitivenesswas thought to depend strongly on the mastering of thesenew technologies.Countries, conscious to go through a period of transition, launchedunder different conditions and with different strength and emphasisthese two waves of institutional reform. While the deregulation of «regulated»services appeared to be a world-wide phenomenon which startedin the early eighties in the US and the UK and spread progressivelythrough the decade to the whole developed world, the need for thederegulation of labour markets concerned more especially Europe.The notion of European sclerosis developed in the early 80’s to takeinto account the continuous rise in unemployment in Europe. Thischaracterisation was a partial view, omitting to take into account thequality of the jobs created and the overall rates of employment whichitself referred to different lifestyles and traditions across Europe. Stillthe debate in itself echoed a widespread pressure to reform the rulesand practices of labour markets towards more flexibility; to short runchanges in product markets and to new patterns of organisation (bothwithin firms and accross firms) and to «activation». In all these casesthe change in the sectoral structure of employment did facilitate suchtransformation. The expansion of service activities, much less institutionalizedthan manufacturing activities, did help to get more flexiblelabour markets. This shift in the structure of employment was all themore open to new forms of work organisation, that the large serviceactivities, where labour was more organised and where more rigid practicesconstrained the organisation of work, were under the strain ofderegulation and the ensuing rearrangements of their productionprocesses. By the end of the 80’s, flexibility of the labour markets wasthe major issue on the policy agenda — as e.g. illustrated in the startof the OECD Jobs study addressing national unemployment and jobcreation issues (OECD, 1995).Luc Soete2 9 3Europe and national technology policies…