Our European Future

Abstract

Unemployment in the European Union rose sharply in the late 1970s and early 1980s to more than triple its previous levels, and remained around 10 per cent for the rest of the 1980s. From 1991 to 1995 EU unemployment averaged 10 per cent: 21 per cent in Spain, 15 per cent in Ireland, 11 per cent in France and Italy, 9 per cent in the UK, and 7 per cent in Germany.¹ The new phenomenon of mass unemployment has, as in the UK, been associated with a major shift in political priorities and economic philosophy. This was crystallised in the Treaty of Maastricht which has confined European economic policy within a deflationary straitjacket. As the deadlines for Monetary Union draw near, the convergence provisions of the Maastricht Treaty have increasingly led to further deflationary measures being taken, at a time when the immediate need in dealing with Europe’. unemployment problem is to focus on ways of expanding demand.