The Employment Research Centre, in association with the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS), at Trinity College Dublin hosted this symposium in June 2006 on the future of employment in the enlarging EU. Our aim was to bring together leading scholars to discuss how the enlargement of the EU towards Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is affecting employment and labour market standards in the Single Market.

A number of scholars have claimed that the accession of the ten new member states in May 2004 would inevitably shift the EU towards a deregulatory agenda, with declining employment standards, increasing low-wage competition and a reduction in trade union influence. The workshop will critically analyse how the new CEE member states are affecting the direction of the EU policy framework in the area of employment and what impact this has on national labour markets in individual member states.

Workshop programme (Word document)

The following presentatations (Powerpoint) are available to download:

The implications of the Lisbon Strategy for the building of Social Europe on the EU level
Janine Goetschy, CNRS Naneterre and Institute for European Studies, Brussels, Belgium

Institutional and Political Integration of the EES in Domestic Contexts
Caroline de la Porte, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Mobility of workers after the EU enlargement – labour market developments and institutional change in Norway
Jon Horgen Friberg, Institute for Labour and Social Research, Oslo, Norway

Labour migration from the new EU member states and its impact on sending and receiving countries
Pawel Kaczmarczyk, Centre of Migration Research, Warsaw, University, Poland