The Starting Point: Three Key Dimensions

Abstract

The opening chapter made some crucial assumptions about the three key dimensions of the EU — the economic, political and social — as well as taking for granted the wider context. These assumptions need to be substantiated and in the process the context filled in. The first assumption is that ‘Europeanization’ rather than ‘globalization’ is the key reference point — that ‘Europeanization’, in other words, is not just a cipher for ‘globalization’. The second is that it is meaningful to characterize the EU polity as a ‘multi-level system of governance’ with a capability to exercise a significant influence on industrial relations developments. The third is that it is possible to identify the main contours of a ‘European industrial relations model’ as a constituent element of the European social model, even though the EU framework is skeletal and there are many points of difference between the systems of the member countries.