The European Union as a Virtual Learning Forum for National Labour Market Policy? - Comments on a 'Late Vocation' Field of European Governance

Abstract Recent reforms on the EU level led to a "Joint Employment Policy" which is characterised by a "soft governance" approach and the intention to promote institutional learning processes by benchmarking rules. Based on an economic-evolutionary, thus process-oriented, model of institutional learning, the success of this strategy can be assessed. The investigation leads to the identification of a need to redefine the function of EU institutions in a globalised world, and ends up with some remarks on possible reform options. 1. Institutional learning as an objective of Joint European Employment Policy Combating persistent unemployment in the EU Member States is one of the most pressing and difficult problems with which national governments have had to grapple for many years now (OECD, 1998; OECD, 1999; Eurostat 1999). They are mastering this challenge with varying degrees of success, and in recent years have shown an increasing tendency to seek and explore those areas where their diverse experience, strategies and factors overlap. Escape routes out of the dilemma between international competitiveness, on the one hand, and the feathering of social hardships generated by structural adjustment of the labour markets, on the other, are recurrent agenda items at recent EU summits (Hocker, 1998; Schmid; Roth, 2000). With the institutionalisation of a "Joint Employment Policy", approaches involving a concerted influence on the labour markets, which started off as 'exchange of experience', are now becoming a distinctive policymaking field for new, emerging forms of European governance (Tidow, 1999; Schutz; Speckesser; Schmid 1998). The recent focus on new domains for European governance pertains above all to the allocation of responsibilities among the various and multiple levels that characterise the European system, and to co-ordination of efforts by the national states. The direction being taken has less to do with formalistically defining Europe-wide policies that must then be implemented at national level, but rather, and more to the point, with the supranational level applying instruments centered on common, shared objectives, and on providing support forums for policy co-ordination and the exchange of information (Roth 1999; Schmid; Roth, 2000). Unlike other policy fields there are few, if any, transfers of national (or regional) decision-making competence. With commitments to achieve specific employment policy targets and to document both the steps undertaken and the results achieved, incentives are to be created at national level for seeking new ways out of the employment crisis and to learn from examples of good practice in other countries. The following paper analyses the extent to which this approach-stimulating and fostering national learning processes - can be a trendsetting strategy for European governance within the multilevel system, and hence for other policy fields as well. This core question will be answered by focusing on three subsidiary issues, against the background of experience already gained with institutional learning processes at national and transnational level: - What is meant by institutional learning, and what role does it play in the context of German labour market policymaking? - To what extent can European governance influence these learning processes at national (and/or regional) level? - What knowledge is gained from this experience for other policy fields? These three sub-issues provide the structure of argumentation in this paper. The analysis identifies a need to redefine the task of responsibility to be exerted by European policymaking. Action on a supranational level must concentrate to an ever-greater extent, in the context of globalisation and diminishing capacities for sovereign regulation, on providing support in relation to international market processes and on capacity building at individual level. …