Public Employment Services and European Law

How can the EU's community of welfare states to adapt their public policies to economic globalization? What happens when the economic and social aims of the EU come into conflict? This book examines the developing legal regimes and regulation of public services in the UK and other European countries. Public services are examined though a case-study of the complex area of public employment services. These are job-placement and vocational training services which aim to maximizeemployment and minimize unemployment within EU member States' Active Labour Market policies. Employment services are at the centre of a complex web of rules in both hard and soft forms of law deriving from the EU, national public law and from private, and at times contractual, agreements. They alsolie at the crossroads of a series of trends in regulation, and priorities have been inspired by an array of conflicting policy rationales. These policy rationales include the establishment of an open and competitive European internal market, the establishment of an efficient welfare state, thescaling down of state administrative machinery, the fulfilment of core public service responsibilities, and the creation of public-private partnerships. Public employment services provide a highly informative and novel case study of the interaction and conflict between the economic and social aimsof the EU and between regulation at national and supranational levels, and the changing forms which this regulation has taken.

Paul Craig QC FBA is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford. Mark Freedland FBA is Professor of Employment Law at the University of Oxford. Dr Catherine Jacqueson is Lecturer in Law at the University of Copenhagen. Dr Nicola Kountouris is Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading.