"Germany and the UK and the European employment strategy: Polar extremes and polar outcomes?"

It takes a considerable time for employment policy to affect employment performance and even longer to verify it. Thus the European Employment Strategy (EES) is still too young for a definitive assessment of its impact on employment performance. This paper adopts an alternative approach, the polar employment policy cases of Germany and the UK are analysed, with the UK's flexible labour market performance being compared to Germany's corporatist and largely unreformed labour market This will permit some assessment of the benefits of flexibility and of the EES policies directed towards flexibility. At first blush, the success of the UK as compared to Germany, in reducing unemployment and creating employment, provides strong support for the PIES which largely moves policy in the UK wholly favorable m the UK. For example, in Germany, the new Lander have very intractable unemployment, but the performance of West Germany has remained surprisingly good. In the UK there are problems of male inactivity and hidden unemployment. The conclusion is that the UK's employment performance is not as good and Germany's not as bad as simple comparisons suggest. The employment benefits of increased flexibility and of similar EES measures remain unproven in this simple comparison