Building social partnership? Strengths and shortcomings of the European Employment Strategy

The European Employment Strategy is now seven years old. Whilst its contribution to improving labour market performance has been evaluated, less attention has been paid to the manner in which the EES has worked, in particular the ways in which policy has been formulated and implemented. In particular, there has been little investigation of the extent to which one of the stated objectives of the strategy – the improved involvement of the social partners in the formulation and imple-mentation of policy – has been achieved. This paper argues that in many respects this objective has not been met. Even in countries where social partnership structures appear relatively well developed, the Luxembourg process has added little – in part because it is seen to be concerned with technical matters. Employment policy is ‘settled’ elsewhere. In addition, realisation of those elements of the strategy where social partner participation is most critical has often been frustrated by the lack of mechanisms to implement commitments made at the centre at places of work. Moreover, by subscribing to the strategy, social partners were also subscribing to a wider approach to economic policy – an approach that was scarcely compatible with the approach advocated by trade unions. Accordingly, the conclusion has to be that the Luxembourg process failed to develop social partnership. An exception might be the closer working together of the European-level social partner associations. However, their involvement in the strategy has been little noticed by their constituents, and it might even be argued to have encouraged elitism rather than to have promoted greater participation in policy-making.