Even though a Eurozone unemployment insurance project has been mentioned since the start of economic and monetary union in 1973, EU members have always swept this ‘too federalist’ issue under the carpet. The 2008 financial crisis relaunched debate on this potential tool for economic stabilization that provides for temporary financial transfers from the more well off countries to those suffering from unemployment. Paris and Berlin discussed the topic in March 2013 but more serious discussions were left for a later date. Currently, the Northern European countries with Germany at the head are not as yet ready to discuss ‘financial redistribution’. Nonetheless studies on this issue continue.
At the moment Lazlo Andor, European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs is travelling throughout Europe visiting the capital cities, promoting this scheme.
An automatic shock absorber. The European unemployment insurance scheme rests on a simple principle: the financial capacity of the 17 Euro zone Member States to smooth out economic crises. Speaking to Planet Labor, Florian Mayneris, tenured assistant professor of economics at the Université catholique de Louvain and author of an article on European Unemployment Insurance for the think tank Terra Nova, explained that “before 2001 and the euro currency, European states used ‘counter-cyclical’ policy tools to boost the economic cycle.”
Do you have information to share with us?