Labour markets, employment policies / Europe’s Difficulties and How to Get Out of Them

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In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the "European model" ousted the "American model" but, alas, betrayed a series of limits due to excessive State interference in the economy. This led, inter alia, to the hypertrophy of welfare systems and the virtual abolition of a labour market in the strict sense of the term – with all the unemployment that this entailed. There are three ways out of the conundrum, each very different from the other: 1) so-called European social harmonisation, which is pure Utopia; 2) the across-the-board adoption of the British model, with a return to flexibility and weakening of the unions; 3) the eastward expansion of the Union, hence a transcontinental labour market. Looking to the future, however, the globalisation of the labour market and the ensuing disappearance of paid work as we have known it to date appear inevitable.