ABSTRACT
The employment regimes of Western industrialized societies have been in the grip of a far-reaching structural transformation since the end of 1970s, which considerably accelerated during the 1990s and in the new millennium. A wide range of literature highlights the growing complexity of governance deriving from the widening and deepening of the European Union (EU), and its implications for employment and social policy more specifically. In particular, increased competition among (and within) socioeconomically and politically diverse member states, allied to the neoliberal macroeconomic vision steering the process of European integration, have contributed to make the European approach to social and employment policy appear difficult and often tentative in its scope. The eastern enlargement of ten new member states (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania) from Central and Eastern Europe since 2004 has far-reaching implications, exacerbating regime competition in Europe’s integrated market and threatening to stall the further Europeanization of the institutions and processes of labor market regulation (Marginson 2006).
