Abstract
‘You could say we have rescued EMU although I would be grateful if you didn’t say it too loudly’. The remark — off the record, of course — was made to the Financial Times by one of Tony Blair’s Ministers at the European Union’s Amsterdam summit in June 1997.1 However smug, the statement is quite accurate. The language of Blairism provided a makeshift bridge between Bonn and Paris in what at one stage appeared to be a clash over European unemployment that might have scuppered the whole EMU project. French Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin had won the May 1997 election with promises to change the thrust of European integration and put jobs back on the agenda. If that meant renegotiating the fiscally restrictive stability pact — ‘an absurd concession to the Germans’, in the words of Jospin — so be it. The French unemployment rate had risen from 9.5 per cent to 12.8 per cent between 1991 and 1997, and the victory of a Left coalition that embraced the Eurosceptic Communist Party showed just how many French citizens put the malaise down to preparations for monetary union. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s europhobic and racist National Front’s 15 per cent share of the vote rammed the point home.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Eatwell, J. (1997) ‘Effective Demand and Disguised Unemployment’, in Michie, J. and Grieve Smith, J. (eds) Employment and Economic Performance. Oxford: Oxford U.P.
Eatwell, J. (1994) The Coordination of Macroeconomic Policy in the European Community’ in Michie, J. and Grieve Smith, J. (eds) Unemployment in Europe. London: Academic Press
European Commission (1993) Growth, Competitiveness, Employment. Luxembourg: European Commission
Goodman, A. et al. (1997) Inequality in the UK. Oxford: Institute of Fiscal Studies and Oxford U.P.
Gregg, P. and Wadsworth, J. (1996) It Takes Two: Employment Polarization in the OECD, LSE Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper, September
Grieve Smith, J. (1997) Full Employment: A Pledge Betrayed. London: Macmillan
Handy, C. (1995) Beyond Certainty. London: Hutchinson
Henwood, D. (1997) Wall Street. London: Verso
Henwood, D. (1998) ‘How Jobless the Future’, Left Business Observer, no. 75
Holland, S. (1997) A New Deal for Europe. Brussels: European Labour Forum
Holm, K. (1997) Labour Flexibility: Solution or Misperceptionl Lehman Brothers Global Economic Structural Series. London: Lehman Brothers
Kenen, P. (1995) Economic and Monetary Union in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
Krugman, P. (1996) Pop Internationlism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Michie, J. and Grieve Smith, J. (eds) (1996) Creating Industrial Capacity: Towards Full Employment. Oxford: Oxford U.P.
Moss Kanter, R. (1989) When Giants Learn to Dance. London: Simon & Schuster
Singh, A. (1997) ‘Liberalization and Globalization: An Unhealthy Euphoria’, in Michie, J. and Grieve Smith, J. (eds) Employment and Economic Performance. Oxford: Oxford U.P.
Thompson, G. and Hirst, P. (1996) Globalization in Question. Cambridge: Polity Press
Viñals, J. and Jimenez, J. (1996) Monetary Union and European Employment. Madrid: Federación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada
Wood, A. (1994) North-South Trade, Employment, and Inequality: Changing Fortunes in a Skill-Driven World. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Robinson, A. (1998). Why ‘Employability’ Won’t Make EMU Work. In: Moss, B.H., Michie, J. (eds) The Single European Currency in National Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62795-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62795-0_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-312-23031-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-62795-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)