ABSTRACT
The rapid growth in unemployment during the 1970s and early 1980s, and the sustained high levels of unemployment since that time, in much of western Europe, must be counted one of the most conspicuous failures of the European Union. In the 1950s and 1960s, the nations of western Europe had achieved a remarkably successful record of full employment. Not only that but, and perhaps more worryingly, the recent experience of the EU countries has been very much worse than that of the major industrial nations outside the EU, in particular the United States and Japan (see figure 4.1). The working age population in the States has been growing at twice the rate of the EU countries, yet the peak US unemployment rate (in 1992) of 7.2 per cent was lower than the lowest rate achieved by the EU during the past decade. Closer to home, the low unemployment rates achieved by many of the smaller non-EU western European economies such as in Scandinavia, Austria or Switzerland (figure 4.2) during the 1980s can be contrasted with the sharp rise in unemployment in Finland and Sweden which has coincided with their accession to the EU.
