Employability at the heart of the European employment strategy

Employability is one of the pillars accorded priority by the European Commission in its employment strategy, entailing a certain number of obligations for the Member States. In fact nine tenths of the employment policy measures come under this central pillar. In an initial section, the author shows that, over and above consensus concerning a very general goal (improvement of opportunities for all, and first and foremost the most disadvantaged, as regards access to employment), the category of employability is far from unequivocal given the widely ranging underlying economic and social models and the ambiguous - to say the least - links between this concept and employment. It is highly desirable for Community debate that these models and links with employment should be made explicit. In a second section, two goals of the 1999 NAPs are examined via their inclusion in national policies: activation of passive expenditure including social welfare and minimum benefits; improvement of the transition from school to work by the development of work and training. The same formal objective is far from having an identical meaning in each national setting and, behind partial similarities, the continuing prevalence of strong national specificities is stressed. In a third section, the question of the employability model is taken up once more, with reference to an essential challenge: how can the prerequisites for development of wealth in the EU be reconciled with the protection of those who produce it?