Obviously, the specific forms of public sector employment relations in each country (civil services, state-owned companies with separate statutes of employment, public corporations...) and the scope and direction of national reforms (deregulation processes

Since the 1980s in France, like in most European countries, governments have had sustained interest in modernising State. The reforms implemented have resulted in huge changes in the management of public employment relations. The transformations are based on three simultaneous processes: the introduction of a more business-like approach, the socalled New Public Management (NPM), the decentralisation of management and the implementation of collective bargaining settlement (Transfer 2008; Keune, Leschke, Watt, 2009).