Europe's Pathways to Flexicurity : Lessons Presented from and to the Netherlands

This paper deals with the flexicurity approach as developed at the European level. It firstly reviews the emergenge of this EU perspective on combining social and economic goals. Secondly the paper discusses how the concept of flexicurity pathways responds to the necessity of combining these goals in various ways, depending on the national labour market situation. Thirdly the Netherlands are taken as a concrete national illustration of how lessons can be learned and presented from the flexicurity pathways methodology, also stressing that in practice a country can seek inspiration from more than one ideal typical pathway