Abstract
AbstractIn the mid‐2000s, the flexicurity concept was developed into a key EU policy concept. It drew its inspiration from the Danish and Dutch practices to combine labor market flexibility and security. However, the crisis' focus on bringing down national deficits and debts left little room to advance the concept. Lately, more emphasis has been placed on the need to take into consideration the social aspect of economic policy‐making. Current EU level documents see flexicurity as a guidance for structural reforms. However, the European flexicurity initiatives seem never to have had much impact in Denmark and the Netherlands. There are few accounts of the recent adjustment to the flexicurity models, be it at the EU or at national levels. Therefore, this article assesses the fate of flexicurity by scrutinizing its (adjusted) use as a political concept as well as a socio‐economic model. Although the Danish flexicurity model resembles the European flexicurity concept to a large extent, recent reforms have, overall, weakened rather than strengthened the flexicurity model. The Dutch flexicurity model has a narrower focus on normalizing atypical work, while recent reforms support this narrow flexicurity model. Meanwhile, the EU level concept has been changing every year, encompassing a growing number of issues.
Highlights
The concept of “flexicurity”, i.e., the combination of flexibility and security in the labor market, attracted a lot of attention in the year prior to the Great Recession which started in 2008
In relation to Denmark, the concept has been used to explain a positive dynamic generated by liberal redundancy regulations, high unemployment benefits (UB), and active labor market policies (ALMP)
With inspiration from countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, a flexicurity concept was developed at the EU level in the second half of the 2000s
Summary
The concept of “flexicurity”, i.e., the combination of flexibility and security in the labor market, attracted a lot of attention in the year prior to the Great Recession which started in 2008. The minor 2015 and 2017 legislative changes show an increased concern for non‐standard employees, the dominant “philosophy” behind these and the 2010 reform—and the above‐mentioned reforms of disability pension and flexi‐job (2013) and of social assistance (2014) as well as a social assistance reform (2015)—has not been flexicurity Rather, it builds on the “make work pay” philosophy of reduced benefit periods or benefit levels as a way back to the labor market, which in the case of the disability and pension reform is combined with a belief in the value of activation measures regardless of how much work capacity of the person in focus is reduced. As the Dutch labor market generated good results prior to the crisis, the example of normalizing atypical work was set Comparing this Dutch flexicurity model with the pre‐crisis EU level flexicurity concept, the Dutch model has a narrower approach, as it leaves out clear links with lifelong learning, ALMP, and adequate and sustainable social security. Other changes in social security have been targeted to the most vulnerable groups in society and aimed to get them in a regular job (Borghouts‐van de Pas & Freese, 2017)
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