Flexicurity Policies to Integrate Youth before and after the Crisis

The focus of this report is on the changes in employment policy making in the EU over time, focusing on those policies that have been directly or indirectly targeted on youth. The period considered allows for changes both in the institutions of the labour market and in the general economic conditions. Over this period, the European Employment Strategy (EES) has exercised its influence on member states policy making through the ‘open method of coordination’ (OMC), by establishing the employment guidelines, setting quantitative targets to be reached by the EU as a whole and giving guidance at the national level through CSRs on their employment policy (issued every year by the Commission and endorsed by the Council). This has also been the period in which European countries have been encouraged (by the EC and the OECD) to make their labour markets more flexible (i.e. more responsive to changes), with an emphasis on moving from job security to employment security, under the assumption that an increase in flexibility should lead to higher employment opportunities for all. Our aim is to provide an overview of policy making before, during and after the immediate effects of the crisis in order to highlight the emergence of flexicurity as a key goal of the EU policy framework for labour market reforms and its subsequent implementation at the national level (i.e. intensity and direction of policy changes). This broad picture provides a lens though which we can then consider policies targeted towards the inclusion of young people in employment. We chart shifting policy models and the underlying implications for youth in Europe focusing, on the one hand, on the CSRs issued annually by the Commission and the Council and, on the other hand, on the intensity and direction of policy activity by member states, as recorded in LABREF. Our analysis covers the pre-crisis years characterised by some employment growth and declining youth unemployment rate, the years of the Great Recession revealing the boomerang effect of the temporary jobs when young people were among the first to lose their jobs, and the austerity years when for many young people unemployment turned into either long-term unemployment or inactivity.