Debates about the European Employment Strategy and the Greek and Irish employment policies

Introduction This paper develops a literature review of the flexicurity discourse as this has been developed in the European Union's debates and policies. The analysis of the European Employment Strategy and the flexicurity principles developed by the European Commission will be crucial factors for the development of this review. Furthermore, the chapter aims to review the literature concerning the relation between the European Employment debates and policies with the Greek and Irish ones. The objective of that review is to identify the affiliation of the Greek and Irish youth employment debates with the European ones and to investigate how the impact of the EES on the Greek and Irish employment policies has been conceptualized by the literature. Also, this chapter develops a critical review of the literature of the Greek and Irish political economies and institutional settings. This review contributes to developing a series of research hypothesis about the independent variables responsible for explaining the current Greek and Irish youth employment discourses and policies and the similarities and differences between them. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. The first section of that paper includes a review of the European Employment Strategy, tracing briefly its principal characteristics and political dimensions. The second section includes a literature review of the relation between the national and the European levels, taking Greece and Ireland as case studies. This review attempts to demonstrate the historical development of the relation of the European with the Greek and Irish employment policies and to identify how and to what extent the later have been influenced by the European Employment Strategy. The third section concerns the identification of those national characteristics which account for the differences and similarities between the Greek and Irish youth employment debates. This review has a twofold aim: 1) to identify how the Greek and Irish social actors and institutions can contribute to an understanding of 2 the Greek and Irish youth employment debates and the differences and similarities between Greece and Ireland and their relation with the EU 2) to build a series of research hypotheses concerning the relation between the Irish and Greek youth employment debates and policies.