Europe’s Recurrent Employment Problems

Daniel Gros

CEPS Papers from Centre for European Policy Studies

Abstract: As unemployment climbs to new heights, Europe’s policy-makers are desperately casting about for the few instruments with which the EU can claim to foster growth. After a thorough examination of the facts on the ground, however, this paper finds that the North and the South of the euro area are diverging so much that they need very different policy prescriptions. Moreover, it points out that the two instruments that the EU has at its disposal to address structural problems in the South (the EIB and the Structural Funds) are unlikely to be effective this time. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that the situation is not hopeless and that deep service-sector reforms in Germany would also be helpful to unlock the country’s productivity potential and open its market for the export of services from southern Europe. Opening the German market would yield a ‘double dividend’: not only would Germany benefit, but the South would also have the chance to find jobs for its rather well-educated youth, which right now face only the unhappy choice between unemployment and emigration.

Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/book/2012/05/PB271 ... for%20Employment.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/book/2012/05/PB271%20DG%20Europe%20looking%20for%20Employment.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ceps.eu/system/files/book/2012/05/PB271%20DG%20Europe%20looking%20for%20Employment.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eps:cepswp:6972

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPS Papers from Centre for European Policy Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margarita Minkova ().