A Single European Labour Market: moving it closer? Discussion paper for the Brussels Think Tank Dialogue 2015

The great recession and the subsequent debt crisis have been hard on the EU. Public-finance restructuring in many countries has resulted in a significant increase in unemployment in Europe from 7% in 2009 to 10.8% in 2013 and in very high unemployment in the periphery. The apparent pre-crisis EU convergence has turned into what seems like continuous divergence roughly along a north-south fault line.