Institutional and financial framework for job rotation in nine European countries

Job rotation as an important element of labour market policy has only a rather short tradition in most Member States of the European Union, except in the scandinavian countries. The transnational partnership job rotation was founded at the end of 1995 and financing for job rotation projects came mainly from the Community Initiative ADAPT, but also from the European Structural Funds. Job rotation here is defined as the combination of further training for the employed and substitution by a previously unemployed person. In the nonscandinavian countries manifold local initiatives were started, which operate under very heterogeneous institutional and financial national frameworks. For these reasons a solely quantitative comparison of results of the individual projects may be misleading. We attempt to analyse and compare in this study the legal, political and financial preconditions on the national and local level as well as the relevant incentives for the firm of job rotation projects.