Incremental Synergies or Growing Fragmentation between the Luxembourg Process and EU Cohesion Policy? EIPA Working Paper: 2002/W/1

Hartwig, Ines (2002) Incremental Synergies or Growing Fragmentation between the Luxembourg Process and EU Cohesion Policy? EIPA Working Paper: 2002/W/1.

Abstract

[Fron the Introduction]. As stated by both the Council and the European Commission, the European Union's actions concerning employment follow two main tracks: on the one hand, there is the European Employment Strategy (EES), embodied in the employment title which was incorporated into the Community Treaty at Amsterdam in 1997 and developed further at the Extraordinary European Council in Luxembourg later in the same year. On the other hand, many Community actions to assist employment are taken in the framework of the Structural Funds. However, there are quite some differences between these two instruments. Whereas for the EES there is direct and explicit link to support employment, the involvement of the Structural Funds in the EU’s support of employment is much less explicit. This is not only due to the fact that the Structural Funds are much broader in scope and not only limited to support employment. It is also due to differences between these two instruments which are more fundamental in nature. The European Employment Strategy as such - that is, the so-called "Luxembourg Process" - is one of the main fields in which the "open method of coordination" is used, based upon policy coordination and benchmarking rather than legally-binding acts. This "third way" in EU governance is used when harmonisation is unworkable but mutual recognition and the resulting regulatory competition may be too risky.