Bringing Public Employment Services back in : Assessing the EU call for and influence on PES change in the framework of the EU Strategy 2020

摘要

This paper deals with the changing role of the Public Employment Service (PES) vis-à-vis the EU Strategy 2020’s blueprint for socio-economic development. Both in the Guidelines for Employment Policy and in the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs, the EU envisions a new set of roles for the (Public) Employment Services, which are being conveyed into the domestic level through the Heads of PES (HoPES) Network and its Common Vision. It is evident that, in response to fundamental changes in labour markets and societies, a consensus on that new set of roles is gradually emerging: instead of focusing exclusively on the unemployed, PES are intended to support the entire work career and the transitions made during this career. This shift away from the ‘unemployment-employment’ dichotomy stems from the launch of a new paradigm – ‘transitional labour markets’ – by leading scholars in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the national contexts in which the new policy goals inherent to that shift need to be achieved vary considerably and put the arising consensus into perspective. Our paper explores the changing role of the PES within the European context by empirically focusing on the Common Vision as formulated by the European PES. It does so by means of a threefold research question: How can we characterize the changes on which the Common Vision is focused? How do participating countries perceive the distance between their role in the Common Vision and their current role? What is the interaction between the national PESs and the Common Vision?