Overview

The movement for European integration has yielded a European Union of fifteen states with a unified monetary system that will eventually embrace over 370 million people. If current trends continue, an average of one in ten of these people will be unemployed. This book is about unemployment and European unification. It examines the consequences of each and their interconnections. It presents general essays on Europe as a whole, on labor unions and on a variety of case studies including Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Its central argument is that the European economy should be reformed but that it should retain many of its managed aspects and be wary of modeling itself on the United States. The book contributes to the literature on European politics, political economy, and comparative public policy.