ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a number of implications for the future of employment and social protection policies in Europe. The basic argument is that we are at the threshold of a third age of work and social protection, which is giving rise to major tensions and is accompanied by a resurgence of old and socially regressive models. Workers are calling for greater security in terms of their jobs, income and prospects to compensate for the requirements of flexibility, transformations of work and the risk of mobility. A knowledge-based economy is not confined to the need, however evident it may be, to train workers throughout their working lives. A European strategy to promote the implementation of a third age of work and security could have been based on the Treaty. The chapter concludes by raising the question of whether Europe has not missed its chance to victoriously anticipate the developments.
