Towards ‘Flexicurity’? Balancing Flexibility and Security in EU Member States

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ‘flexibility-security nexus' in employment and the labour market in four EU-member states: Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. The starting point of the paper is the concept of ‘flexicurity’, viewed as a particular way of dealing with this nexus. The paper explores differences in the emphasis put on types and levels of flexibility and security, as well as the particular trade-offs between forms of flexibility and security. Co-ordinated decentralisation and flexible multi-level governance in national Industrial Relations systems seem to represent important preconditions for the introduction of flexicurity arrangements, as the Danish and Dutch cases show.