Špecifiká politík zamestnanosti vo vybraných krajinách Európskej únie
SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF EMPLOYMENT POLICIES IN SELECTED EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Summary/Abstract: Despite a significant level of progress made in the overall political, institutional and economic integration of single member countries to form a unified frame of the Euro-pean Union, the labour market is the segment of the economic policy, that is typical by the largest scope and depth of specific features and long lasting differences among par-ticu- lar EU economies. No matter that certain global (i. e. OECD Jobs Strategy) all Euro- pean recommendations were and have been permanently worked into particular national employment policies, it is difficult to identify the rate of their influence and the adequacy for a favourable development of labour marker dynamism in a particular EU economy. The authors of this article focused on two substantial area of a comparative analysis in the given theme. Firstly, they identified fundamental structural and institutional characteristics of 2 concepts of employment policy, which have been implemented in Europe for a long time. The first one can be described as the market oriented concept sharing a certain analogy with the USA concept, and the concept currently used in Eng-land from the beginning of 80-ties. This concept is typical by its labour market flexibil-ity, by a less significant role of trade unions in the collective bargaining, by decentrali-zation of collective bargaining and by a lower level of obligatory protection of employees. The second one, so called corporate and consensual concept is typical by a strong influence of trade union membership and by a more structured form of a collective bar-gaining, by higher expenditures for the employment policy as well as by less significant range of wage dispersions inside and amongst single industries as a result of centraliza-tion and institutional unity of tripartity negotiations. Indeed, none of these two concepts does not currently exist in its clean form in any of the EU member countries. However, a prevalence of one or the other attempts can be quite significantly identified in the majority of developed European economies. Finally, this is not a surprise regarding the long lasting structural specific features in general, and also due to historically created profile of a specific national model of corporativism in particular countries of the conti-nent Europe (mostly in Germany, France, Holland and in Sweden), that were sometime presented like specific models of capitalism. Authors of the article in details further analyzed the labour market policy models and employment in selected European countries – in the Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Ireland. They paid attention especially to current tendencies and to changes within these policies with a special focus on their inter-relations and coordina-tion with the overall economic-and-political frame, and also in connection with their reflection to mutual EU initiatives in the field of the employment policy.

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