Labor Market Policies to Tackle the Crisis and Sustain the Economic Growth in EU: Models and Solutions

Following the GDP decrease resulting from the economic crisis, EU member states experienced higher levels of unemployment and a decline in terms of employment rate. However, the implementation of so-called anti-crisis measures limited such increase – in some cases not to be as high as expected – in the majority of EU member states. With the view to minimize the impact of the downturn in social terms and to support both companies and employees, the European Union took a number of actions to drive the economic recovery and coordinate EU member states’ public interventions (European Commission 2008), with member states adapting existing labor market policies and/or introducing new ones. In this connection, the majority of member states launched ad hoc and comprehensive ‘anti-crisis packages’ consisting of a variety of measures to cope with the recession and resulting in a wide range of public policy tools aiming at reducing the impact of the crisis on the labor market. In providing a review of the anti-crisis labor market policies issued by EU member states, which focus on measures to maintain employment, measures to support employment and reintegration into the labor market and income support for unemployed or workers in short-time work or temporary lay-offs, this paper analyzes the alternative strategies (models and solutions) adopted by EU member states for mitigating negative effects of the economic crisis on the labor market.