ABSTRACT
Europe seems stuck with high levels of unemployment as we enter the twenty-first century, with all the economic and social misery which goes with that. The blame is put alternatively on ‘rigid labour markets’, a ‘too costly welfare state’, or new technology – almost anywhere except on government economic policy. Yet the governments of the European Union have been deliberately pursuing deflationary, low-growth, high-unemployment policies, first under the auspices of the Maastricht convergence criteria and now under the post-Single Currency ‘Stability Pact’.
