ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses respective developments in three countries that correspond to three different welfare state types with Denmark showing many features of the social democratic type, Austria being part of the corporatist cluster and the United Kingdom (UK) representing the liberal type. It also analyses the adoption of the concept of flexicurity at the European Union (EU) level. According to Mailand, explicit attempts to deepen and widen the use of the concept of flexicurity at the EU level had their starting point in 2005, with civil servants from DG Employment of the European Commission as the main driving force. ETUC claimed that the respective debate focused too much on increasing external flexibility and the weakening of employment protection when compared to other possible strategies within the flexicurity concept. First respective interpretations are to be found in academic and applied research and in the OECD's Employment Outlook of 2004.
