Brussels,

EU Rules & Initiatives

The level of employment depends on many factors. Some of them:

  • Job offer, which can be made by the public administration and its subsidiaries and by private companies.
  • Offer of skills, because the job offer must meet the right skills.
  • Level of wages. If they are adequate they attract workers, if they are too short they drive them away. Europe does not have a uniform social fabric, there are richer regions and poorer regions and immigration policies favour the arrival of cheap labour. All of these factors certainly have a significant impact on the unemployment rate in the EU.
  • Subsidies received in the event of unemployment, which if they want to help the citizen not to enter the poverty bracket, must also stimulate the search for work.

The EU can intervene to:

  1. stimulate the economic grow (monetary and economic policies)
  2. asking Member states to new investments
  3. helping citizens to increase skills, both directly with its own programs (for example Erasmus +), and by entrusting member countries with the management of specific EU funds (for example the European Social Fund)


To give coherence and have a holistic approach, the EU has launched a Global Strategy and 

The first European Employment Strategy (EES) dates back to 1997.

The EU Member States committed themselves to defining a set of common goals and targets. The main objective was obviously the creation of more and better jobs across the EU.

It is now part of the Europe Growth Strategy and is implemented through the European Semesters, the annual processes that promote close policy coordination between EU Member States and EU institutions.​​

In particular, the implementation of the EES - supported by the work of the Employment committee - involves the following four steps of the European Semester:
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  1. Employment guidelines are common priorities and targets for employment policies proposed by the Commission, agreed by national governments and adopted by the EU Council.
  2. The Joint employment report (JER) is based on (a) the assessment of the employment situation in Europe (b) the implementation of the Employment Guidelines and (c) an assessment of the Scoreboard of key employment and social indicators. It is published by Commission and adopted by the EU Council.
  3. National Reform Programmes (NRPs) are submitted by national governments and analysed by the Commission for compliance with Europe 2020. (database – NRPs prior to 2011)
  4. Based on the assessment of the NRPs the Commission publishes a series of Country reports, analysing Member States' economic policies and issues Country-specific recommendations.

UE believes that people unemployed have the right to personalised, continuous and consistent support. The long-term unemployed have the right to an in-depth individual assessment at the latest at 18 months of unemployment.

Special EU Actions on employment:
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