"The Pressure from Europe: the European Employment Strategy and National Change"

Lopez-Santana, Mariely (2003) "The Pressure from Europe: the European Employment Strategy and National Change". In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2003 (8th), March 27-29, 2003, pages 18, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Abstract

Since the late 1980’s, there has been growing interest among policy-makers and scholars in the establishment of a cooperative framework for social policy in the European Union. The passage of the “Single European Act” in 1986 marked the beginning of an institutional change in the EU’s treatment of social issues and policies. The Amsterdam Treaty formalized the idea of the ‘European Employment Strategy’ (EES) an instrument to reform European labor markets. This is a data presentation and framework discussion paper that seeks to explore how European Union’s pressures on the employment policy area have affected European member States’ processes, institutional configurations, policies and actors. This paper will present preliminary data collected in Spain and Belgium to illustrate the effect of the EES at the national level. The project fits within the body of work that studies how ‘European pressures’ affect national policies, configurations, and processes on European member States. Moreover, the piece studies an instance where voluntary and non-biding mandates (soft law) rules.