EMPLOYMENT REGIMES AND AGE ARRANGEMENTS:A COMPARATIVE SKETCH : Thematic Report - Draft paper

The European Council held in Lisbon in March 2000 was a turning point of the evolution ofEuropean employment policies. The ‘Open Method of Coordination’ (OMC) comes into forcewithin the framework of the European Strategy for employment. This method will justify thechoice and the implementation of various instruments aimed at measuring the convergencetowards many ambitious objectives and aims: develop information technologies, impulseinnovation, remove breaks to the growth of service sector, liberalise transports and energymarkets… The objectives of labor and employment are now well established: set up activationpolicies, reform the systems of social protection so as to handle the aging population, fight socialexclusion. The first comments on the ambitious program of Lisbon underlined the ambiguous,and often contradictory positions, aimed both at the growth of a competitive economy and socialcohesion. The ambition of the OMC is to help member states to define together their short,medium and long term objectives, to establish quantitative and qualitative indicators withevaluation criteria in reference to the best world achievements (benchmarking), to encite states toset-up policy lines at national and regional level and to put evaluation policies in action withfollow ups (using the evaluation procedure by peers).