The research paper describes the empirical development on the labour markets in EU including employment, unemployment, public expenditures and inflows into labour market programmes. The analysis is set in a welfare state framework, and, uses welfare states clustering as a device for the comparison.
Furthermore, the research paper analyses the development of labour market policy at the supranational level. It discusses further the relation between supranational and national labour market policy historically and in the future. This analysis includes also the relation with the EU employment guidelines, and, the attempts in recent years to have a continuos development of labour market policy in EU and EU-member states.
