EU-Flexicurity policies

EU Green Paper "Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century"

The balance in EU countries between unlimited full-time jobs and insecure or part-time jobs is tending dangerously away from socially secured jobs. At present in Germany every second newly created job is a temporary agency worker relationship. The EU wants better safeguards for part-time workers, fixed-term workers and free lancers. This is in principle a positive company but the title of the Green Paper already suggests that labour law decisions could have a powerful effect on political challenges in the labour market of the future. The German trade unions do not share this view.
The basic premise of the Green Paper is that European labour markets must become more flexible in order to overcome the challenges of globalisation and demographic change, to create more jobs and to counteract the division of the labour market. With recourse to the idea of “Flexicurity" the European Commission unilaterally singled out labour law as being in need of adjustment
Green Papers are the European Commission’s discussion papers on particular topics and have the aim of stimulating public and scientific debate. It depends on the discussion process as to how far an EU Directive develops from this.
The EU initiative started in November 2006; by June 2007 all participants had given their opinion. At the end of June the comments were summarised and published in a "communication".