Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations - 71

Employment policies and multilevel governance

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on the Authors

Introduction

Part I: The Framework Context of Europanisation of National Employment & Social Inclusion Policies

Chapter 1

The Impact of Globalisation on Employment and Social Inclusion Policies: Experiences and Proposals in Individual European Countries

Jean Michel Servais

Chapter 2

Looking at the EES in Search of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of National Employment Policies & Social Protection Systems

Juan Pablo Landa Zapirain & Edurne Terradillos Ormaetxea

Chapter 3

EES & European Social Inclusión Policy: Employment as a Means of Social Inclusion in an International Human Rights Perspective

Aránzazu Fernández & Nuria Pumar

Chapter 4

The OMC as Decentralisation of Regulations and Case Law: A   Gender Mainstreaming Perspective

Julia López López

Part II: Multilevel Governance Experiences on Employment Policies  in a Cross-National Perspective

Chapter 5

The Reform of the Labour Market and of the Social Benefits for Unemployment in Germany

Maximiliam Fuchs

Chapter 6

The Reform of the Public Employment Service in France. Modernisation and New Governance Issues

Philippe Auvergnon & Philippe Martin

Chapter 7

Vocational Education Policies in the Process of Multilevel Governance: a French Perspective

Thierry Berthet & Pierre Iriart       

Chapter 8

Facts and Limits of the Regionalisation of Social and Employment Policies in Italy

Giancarlo Ricci

Chapter 9

Centralisation and Decentralisation within the Spanish Model of Social Federalism: the Examples of Social Assitance and Employment Policies

Antonio Baylos, Jaime Cabeza & Maria José Romero

Chapter 10

The Jobseeker’s Allowance: A British Perspective on Job Activation

Jo Carby-Hall

Chapter 11

Who Governs Labour Market Policy in Canada?

Brian Langille

Notes on the Authors

Philippe Auvergnon, Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Bordeaux IV, France

Antonio Baylos, Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Castilla-la Mancha, Spain

Thierry Berthet, Senior Researcher Spirit-CNRS, Political Science Institute of Bordeaux University, France

Jaime Cabeza, Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Vigo, Spain

Joseph Carby-Hall, Director of International Legal Research, Centre for Legislative Studies, University of Hull, United Kingdom

Aranzazu Fernández, Lecturer of Labour Law, Faculty of Economics, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Maximilian Fuchs, Professor of Labour & European Law, Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Eichstäet-Ingolstadt, Germany

Pierre Iriart, Senior Lecturer of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Bordeaux IV, France

Juan Pablo Landa, Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Brian Langille, Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Canada

Julia Lopez, Professor of Labour Law, Department of Law, University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, Spain

Philippe Martin, Senior Researcher Comptrasec -CNRS, University of Bordeaux IV, France

Nuria Pumar, Associate Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of Barcelona, Spain

Gian Carlo Ricci, Associate Professor of Labour Law, European Law Institute, University of Catania, Italy

Maria Jose Romero, Associate Professor of Labour Law, Industrial Relations School, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

Jean Michel Servais, Former Director the ILO, Visiting Professor of Labour Law, University of Girona, Spain & Liège, Belgium

Edurne Terradillos, Associate Professor of Labour Law, Faculty of Law, University of the Basque Country, Spain.

 INTRODUCTION

Juan Pablo Landa & Brian Langille

1. The essays in this volume have a common, specific, and important focus – the development of effective policies for promoting employment. But the problem which animates our discussion of this issue is a very basic and more general one. It is a question which stalks most policy debates in these times and in our ‘globalized’ world. That question is: ‘who should create and administer such policies?’ At one time the answer appeared to be simple – this important policy arena belonged to individual states and their law making bodies. But today that question and its possible answers are seen to be much more complex. We now ask: ‘Should employment policy be developed and deployed at the local, national, international, or supranational level?’ We also ask: ‘If our aim is effective policy making aimed at promoting employment, should this task be undertaken by state or non-state actors?’ And these questions lead on to other difficult inquiries such as, ‘what types of regulation, beyond formal state law, are conducive to maximizing our desired employment outcomes?’ These are the issues which animate this volume. At the core of this enterprise, for many of the authors, is the effect of the so called ‘Europeanisation’ of employment policies. But, as these essays reveal, there are many other issues as well. These include the varied dynamics of legal and administrative systems in individual states, whether federal in a formal sense of not. Federal states have a long tradition of facing the question of who, in the sense of what level of government, local or central, should have authority over employment issues. But these questions addressed in this volume are now pressing for all states, whether internally federal or not, and whether in Europe or not. Hence our use of the more general term ‘multilevel governance.’

We should point out that the rationale for this volume is not, however, a critical review of the suitability of the employment policies developed in certain political systems, nor the legal legitimacy of delegations of authority over them, whether upwards or downwards.[1] The goal of our work is both broader and also rather more modest. We seek to put in context, and then on view, European[2] examples of the struggle with the idea of multilevel governance of employment policies. In other words, we discuss how the idea of multilevel governance has played out within the political and administrative reality of each of the Member States of the European Union examined in this work and in the context of their efforts to achieve an effective employment policy. With this aim in mind these essays review the legal rules and the administrative procedures regarding employment. They do so taking into account both community and sometimes international law. Some of the essays also assess whether the execution of employment policies by those political systems inspired by, or at least implicated in, multilevel governance is, apart from being efficient, compatible with the traditional goals of the national systems of social protection.

Finally, the scope of this work also includes some analysis of the compatibility of resulting employment and economic policies with the defence of individual rights of a social nature both as guaranteed by the Member States analysed and by international human rights norms.

2. The creation of more and better jobs has become one of the indisputable markers of the success of economic policies.

The optimisation of employment policies is now a challenge that affects all countries to some degree. It is an issue which is profoundly raised and complicated by economic globalisation. As a result, one of the most difficult and central elements in a strategy of economic growth is the development of optimal employment policies. This is demonstrated by the importance attached to it by the EU since the EES was born in the Council of Essen, later renamed the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs.

There are, however, and as we shall see, many issues lurking here. Some are substantive. For example, the priority given to the success of economic and employment policies (as set out in the Lisbon strategy integrating employment guidelines with economic policies[3]) faces problems if we consider the defence of individual rights of a social nature. It is also true that there has been a growing introduction of the principles of flexicurity[4] in European employment strategies. But, for the moment, this phenomenon seems not to have been accompanied by an inadequate appreciation of the problems posed by the adoption of certain measures. Let us give two examples. One is social benefits made conditional upon the acceptance of employment activation steps (according to the principle of ‘make work pay’). A second is social inclusion through employment becoming the yardstick of policies known as ‘active social inclusion’. Both examples may illustrate a tendency to forget that the guarantee of minimum resources is an essential condition to keep those with no access to the labour market[5] away from poverty. In any event, this guarantee is essential to the credibility of the European Social Agenda, the European cohesion policy,[6] and, in short, the social dimension of the project of European construction.

Other issues raised are procedural in nature rather than substantive. In states where these policies have been executed at decentralised levels the development, management or evaluation of these policies is at least in part carried out by decentralised entities. Moreover, there may be other social and economic agents participating in the development and execution of these policies. All of this suggests potential for real problems of governability of these policies, whether it is a vertical (from community to local entities) or a horizontal question (with the social partners). More fundamentally, existing complex constitutional rules within federal states mediate any effort to think about multi level governance from first principles, or even in terms of rational allocation of administrative responsibility. Even more basic still there is the profound reality of radically different substantive political and legal orientations to employment policy which reveal different levels of receptivity to redistribution of authority on multiple levels.

3. The essays in this volume had their origins in a research meeting held in the IISJ at Oñati (Spain) in June of 2007. Some of the contributors to this study, all employment law experts, discuss some of the problematic aspects surrounding the European strategy for employment and its influence upon the decentralisation of  active employment policies and (albeit to a lesser extent) related elements of social protection. Other authors concentrate on ‘built in’ problems of existing federal structures allocating competences between central and regional governments. A third group of authors focus upon substantive approaches to employment policies within individual member states.

One of the first conclusions reached at Oñati was that it was premature to come to anything like a ‘theory’ of European multilevel governance of employment. Such a theory would have to be capable of revealing common and basic structural truths latent in this diversity of experiences. But in the course of our discussions it became clear that each state has had a unique experience. As these essays make clear, this is true for a host of reasons. But the result is the following truth: there have to be ‘multi levels’ to any analysis of ‘multilevel governance’ of employment policies. A single unifying theory is not within our grasp. From a simplistic, but nonetheless useful, point of view this should not come as a surprise because the idea of multilevel governance and related ideas which often accompany it (such as the Open Method of Coordination) simply open up, at various levels, more space for local differences to express themselves. These differences may be legal (indeed constitutional), or political, or due to the influence of local traditions, or the tensions brought by the progressive construction of the employment and social European policies marked by the principle of subsidiarity and the OMC since the Essen summit in 1994.[7] This led us to conclude that the best thing to do would be to adopt a more pragmatic and utilitarian line of thought, plural rather than unified.

But having said this we must for the sake of clarity, alert the reader to some functional definitions made necessary for consistency in the various contributions. To begin with, we understand by employment policies a rational ensemble of techniques and instruments for developing and achieving employment targets. Secondly, we use the concept of multilevel governance,[8] so ample in itself, to refer to a system of coordinated procedures and practices aimed at achieving good employment policies. We see, in common with others, two dimensions of multilevel governance to be coordinated. On the one hand, the vertical partners: from European level to national, regional and local levels. On the other hand, the horizontal level: administrative coordination of networks of civil society stakeholders and private partnerships (business representatives, trade unions, NGOs).

4. This volume is divided in two parts. Part I assesses the framework or context of developing multi-level governance of national employment policies in Europe. As we have noted, globalisation is an inevitable feature of national employment policies. And any reply to globalisation has a geopolitical element specific to the EU. The EU acts to a great degree as a supranational power. It is presided over by a Council in a position to face the challenges of globalisation in a coordinated manner, with an obvious impact upon the central role assumed by the nation-states during the 20th century. But at the same time it can be argued that the EU’s social and economic policy has encouraged a trend towards the decentralisation of state policies because the EU has enhanced the participation of the regions and local entities in the development of policy, and the involvement of private and economic agents of different kind in its governance.

In this part of the book many questions are raised, including: Are the regions and local entities capable of acting effectively in the achievement of the goals set by employment and inclusion policies? Are they to be viewed as a real alternative to the functioning of a ‘hollowed out’ state. Or, are they the recipe needed to bolster states against the blows of globalisation?

Part II offers perspective on five national efforts within Europe to regulate employment policies. Part II also includes a chapter on Canada’s struggle, within its federal system, to answer the questions ‘who does and who should regulate employment policy?’, including an analysis of the capacity of this particular model to adapt itself to the new demands posed by globalisation. It provides both a sobering reminder of the universality of these issues and also an interesting comparative perspective from which to evaluate the advantages and risks found in employment policies that are more decentralised.

5. As noted above, Part I of this volume frames, in general terms, the difficulties in having effective management of employment policies given both the internationalisation of the economy, and the European dimension of such policies. At the same time, it considers the effects on the levels of social protection traditionally guaranteed by welfare states. In Chapter 1, Servais tackles the different types of response historically given by different countries to the employment policies and the statutory protection for workers and their families. He finishes by pointing out the changes produced at the end of the century. These changes lead him to confirm the relatively minor weight of state policies, and the increasing importance of international political agents in the management of these policies.

Servais restates Europe’s urgent needs at present within the complexities of the international regulation of work. Europe is faced with the segmentation of the labour market, the difficulty of integrating the excluded and eradicating poverty, the new design of employment policies (from unemployment insurance to the disappearance of ‘work’ in the definition of the new policies of social protection) and, even, the new definition of what ‘work’ means socially in our time. To answer all these problems, the author offers general solutions inspired by the success of the experience of ‘social dialogue’ and collective bargaining. The goal would be to have a renewed dialogue of multipartite nature, in which civil society can be protagonist and the state assumes a subsidiary role. In his own words, ‘the state would thus act more as a source of inspiration than as a guide, a mediator ensuring an adequate climate for... bipartite or multipartite social dialogue’.

In Chapter 2, Landa and Terradillos examine the validity of the OMC as the form of governance that can best guarantee the effectiveness of the EES. The authors stress, however, that the OMC, in practice, and despite its decentralising impulse, has been implemented in a manner inconsistent with that premise. Execution and evaluation of the OMC targets is allocated to the Member States, since they are responsible for the EES. In particular, only Member States have the task of organising domestic coordination and cooperation. This task is very complicated as it is not just a question of vertical coordination between the EU and each Member States’s territorial entities, but effective horizontal coordination as well. This includes horizontal integration of social partnerships, both in the formulation and in the application, follow-up, and evaluation of the EES. In addition, the OMC also requires sectoral coordination between employment, social inclusion and social protection with educational and fiscal policies. This may result in a very complex and obscure procedure, without the benefit of either adequate guidance or prior standards. Frequently state administrations intervene which lack capacity or competence in the matter. Sometimes it is impossible to find who exactly is accountable for the execution of a specific measure of an employment policy within the administration of an Member States. This is not simply because the policy may be ill-adapted to the EES, but because in the OMC there is an inadequate and ill-organized distribution of tasks.

The authors also believe that, despite its apparent compatibility with Article 5 of the ECT, some aspects of the OMC violate the very principle of subsidiarity. There are doubts as to the proportionality between the objectives and measures of these community strategies and the effectiveness actually achieved by the OMC’s soft law regulations in their application. The authors also stress the ‘unbalanced integration of the EES and the social inclusion strategy.’ This is due, among other reasons, to the absence of any foundation on the European Community Treaty, with the result that the EU can not apply the OMC for inclusion and social protection policies using the same competences that it has for employment policies. In any event, the powers of political and economic coercion held by the Commission and the Council are rather effective (especially the economic ones) when it comes to the execution of employment policies (for instance, the financial measures of the ESF). But these powers are not much present in the social inclusion (and social protection) strategy, which lacks an effective control on the part of the EU.

This last thesis is the starting point for Fernández and Pumar in Chapter 3. They analyse the active measures of the European policy for social inclusion from the point of view of international human rights. They reveal an aspect little known about the EES: its often difficult relationship with international norms currently in force regarding the human rights to dignity and decent work. Only a guarantee of sufficient public resources can ensure those rights effectively. In short, the EES makes those at risk of exclusion even more vulnerable, as it subjects their right to social benefits to availability for a job.

Lastly, López’s Chapter 4 is guided by a concern to respond to the questions of whether the OMC can achieve equality for women  and, further, whether the introduction of the OMC has not resulted in the weakening of women’s presence in the labour market, with less access and  less protection  than before. In the author’s view the gender mainstreaming strategy of the EES implies the delegation of gender politics from EU level to national levels and the EU’s renunciation of its leadership on equality policies ( in contrast with the latest directives on family friendly policies or on the equality for access to employment). Consequently, she concludes that in reality there is no strategy of multilateral governance on gender equality: the role of collective agreements has been silenced, and with it, that of the social agents. The author challenges the binding nature of the instruments of soft law that characterise the EES, and questions the continuation of the ECJ as the main guarantor of gender equality, undermined, paradoxically it is argued, by the gender mainstreaming strategy itself.

6. The essays in Part II take as their focus the multilevel regulation of employment policies in individual states.

The analysis contained in these chapters reveal three different sorts, or dimensions, of tension between the reformation impulse promoted by the EES and the traditional legal institutions and political realities of the Member States discussed. These all conduce to a certain resistance, not necessarily conscious, on the part of individual states, when it comes to relinquishing, or sharing, or rationally allocating, regulatory powers within a system of multilevel governance. These three tensions construct the reality and context within which the abstract debate over decentralisation or centralisation of the management of employment policies takes place. These three tensions may be identified as follows. First, as the chapters on Canada, Spain, and Italy reveal, there is a formidable potential for internal constitutional rules on the distribution of legislative and administrative authority (whether formal rules of federalism or other) to constrain a rational approach to the appropriate level of governance, let alone multilevel governance, of employment policy. This is not simply another layer of ‘multi-levelness’ and might seem an insurmountable barrier to effective re-allocation of authority. Yet what these three essays reveal is a combination of both surprising constraint, and even more surprising potential for innovation, within existing rules. These essays suggest that much more fruitful comparative analysis is available here. Second, as the chapters on the UK and Germany reveal there is the brute fact of the heterogeneity of the fundamental political orientation, as well as the and basic structure, of domestic regulatory policies regarding employment. These differences shatter, or at least cloud, any image of the idea multilevel governance as introducing a homogenizing era in ‘on the ground’ respect for rights of workers or delivery of entitlements in the labour market. Third, the studies of France reveal a final difficulty which takes us to the heart of the matters raised in the book as a whole – the sheer complexity of multilevel governance within any already developed and entrenched legislative, administrative, and political reality. Here we are introduced, through a well documented and detailed account, to the complexity of the real life tension, struggle, and interaction between the EES and local administrative structures and their reform. Here the level of administrative, legal, political, and cultural intricacy involved in a serious engagement with multilevel governance of employment on the European model is put on full view.

Taken together the seven essays found in Chapters 5 to 11 of this reveal how difficult it is to set in motion the models of multilevel governance.

First, Chapter 5 contains Fuchs’ essay on the German federal model. It is worth noting, however, the federal nature of the employment agency. It has favoured the general reform of unemployment insurance in compliance with the principle ‘make work pay’. The reform has proceeded to unify in a single instrument the regulation of unemployment benefits and the social assistance for the unemployed. Thus, financial means and employment policy instruments are concentrated in a single state institution. However, this has not prevented the functioning of job centres (on the contrary, it has possibly advanced it), whereby local entities work together with federal employment agencies. These agencies unify all services of orientation and attention to the unemployed. Despite this, there has been a political compromise with the Länder, whereby local authorities shall manage some of the social benefits, mainly non-pecuniary ones.

France has undergone a similar experience. In Chapter 6, Auvergnon and Martin point out that the traditional and obscure share of competences on the instruments for employment policy has not prevented a degree of cooperation and concentration of said instruments at the most suitable and decentralised possible level, the local one. The ‘maison d’emploi’ – the French equivalent to the ‘job centre’ – seeks to concentrate the maximum of competences locally, thanks to, inter alia, the guarantee of coordination from the state’s administrative agent (the ‘préfet’). Similarly, the statutory reform recently begun will permit to coordinate the big state institutions for employment (ANPE) and management of unemployment benefits (UNEDIC), with an aim to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their services. The reform will, at the same time, confirm their nature of state public service (in the former’s case) and associative and bipartite character (in the latter’s case). In fact, the only truly decentralised and locally managed measure is the ‘revenue minimum d’insertion’ (RMI) as income support, together with some aspects of vocational training left in the hands of the regions.

Complementary to the former employment institutional reform in France, Chapter 7 focuses on the reform of vocational training measures in this country. Berthet and Iriart address the important influence of the EES in the governance of vocational training actions, the establishment of goals and the role of financial instruments of the ESF in its development and execution. Multilevel governance applied to vocational training pretends to achieve the best way of governance of the different actors involved: social partners, regional councils and state organisations. According to these authors, governance on this matter must be based on the principle of legitimacy. In this way, the state would deal only with the establishment of minimum standards at national level and would only finance actions of national dimension. Meanwhile, the regional councils would organise, together with the social partners, the actions needed at territorial level for each applicant, depending on his personal profile. In France, however, experience reveals a sort of hybridisation of the decision-makers, and confusion between agents and institutional levels when it comes to allocate competences.

On the other hand, Berthet and Iriart underline the definitive nature of the financial instruments for vocational training (New Public Market Codes) put in place by the ESF and the fact that the ESF guidelines direct these resources at local decision levels. However, multilevel governance of vocational funds is not exempted from risk either. The individualisation of actions may bring about situations of discrimination, as explained by the authors. The distribution of funds outside the logic of public subsidies, and the subcontracting of training services to non public providers does not guarantee the access to training to all kinds of applicants. In conclusion, efficient solutions may not be the fairest ones.

In both countries, decentralisation is not opposed to the markedly state character of the main institutions for the public service of employment. This is quite different in the case of other two European cases examined here. In both the Italian (Chapter 8) and Spanish (Chapter 9) cases, active employment policies and income support measures belong to the sphere of the region. Indeed, in the Spanish case, this decentralisation may give rise to a certain unbalance in the quantification of citizens’ rights; for example, when it comes to regulating income support by the regions (Baylos, Cabeza and Romero). In Italy, this risk of unbalance in the regulation of citizens’ rights is not excluded either, despite the fact that the regulation of the ‘essential’ level of benefits is competence of the state (Ricci).

Both in Italy and Spain, the decentralisation of these competences over to the regions has taken place through their respective constitutional laws. Within this constitutional statutory frame, it has been up to the case law of the constitutional courts to balance the role played by the regions and the state in the management of benefits, in accordance with the constitutional principles of equality, economic unity and solidarity. However, the most interesting thing about these two countries is not this sort of rebalancing function among the regions played by the constitutional case law. The interesting thing is the construction of institutional mechanisms for cooperation and coordination (the inter-administrative sectoral conference in Spain), as well as the renewed impulse given to social dialogue as a means to legitimise the correction by the state of any unbalance in the regulation of regional competences (for example, the social agreement reached in 2007 to reform the financing of vocational training in Spain).

Finally, Chapter 10 explains the British experience on the implementation of the principle of ‘make work pay’, that is, how to give social protection to the unemployed person so that he keeps actively looking for a job. The British experience is an example of a national strategy aside from the EES and the OMC. In any event, it has also been a particular example of institutional decentralisation of the employment services through the creation of the ‘job center plus’ at local level. In this sense, Carby-Hall explains at Chapter 10 the essence of Blair’s new deal on employment as a result of the 1995 reform of the job seeker’s allowance. The Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) Act of 1995 introduced measures that are still considered a model for an efficient employment policy. The JSA Act encompasses in a single act the economic treatment of unemployment benefits and income support, redesigning the latter as twelve different schemes. Its unified management is based on the ‘job centre plus’, which controls every aspect of the JSA. There is active commitment by the beneficiaries of the JSA (the job seeker’s agreement) combined with sanctions and training tailored to meet skill shortages.

After twelve years of application, the question is as follows: has the reform introduced by the JSA Act served to eradicate long-term unemployment, poverty and social exclusion? According to Carby-Hall, 25 percent of the beneficiaries of the JSA become unemployed again, which shows the difficulty in finishing with the segmentation of the labour market. In the opinion of the author, this plays down the effectiveness of the JSA. He also casts doubts about the true purpose of the reform: maybe under the cover of encouraging the unemployed back to work there only laid an economic purge of the social security system. Today, in line with the strategy of flexicurity, the UK is debating the effectiveness of the principle of make work pay and is proposing a programme based on a bigger participation by the business community in the insertion of job seekers, in the generation of better jobs and skills and in the anticipation of skill needs.

7. This variety of national experiences in the implementation of the EES

reveals that Europe is far from having achieved a unitary model of reference for the vertical and horizontal coordination of the EES in the Member States. Cooperation and coordination exist where they have already been permitted and established through national laws and customs. It seems unclear whether the EES is advancing this cause in places where it did not already exist.

Our final thought is this. Although the EES has not achieved this uniformity, it may have to do so if it wants to set in motion a new model based on the strategy of flexicurity capable of giving full potentiality to the EES. Here we have in mind the idea that what may be required is nothing less than a basic reformulation of the very notion of work, and of the rights and duties legally configured around it. It is far from clear whether individual European states will or can voluntarily join together to introduce a reform of such importance in their respective legal systems. As a result this may ultimately be both the biggest problem for, but at the same time the largest opportunity for, the credibility of the EES.

In Europe, historically, work has been a symbol of full citizenship. In past times, it was conceived as a duty inherent in the status of citizen. Today, work is, above all, a fundamental source of rights according to the social contract enshrined in the constitutions of most of the European countries during the twentieth century. In virtue of this, every person has the right to work; this is, to freely choose a suitable, professional and decent job.[9] Is this a perspective from which the EES could operate? This is a question best left for another debate, but, probably, an EES without such a modern notion of human work could only be valid only from a certain understanding of economic efficiency, rather than from a social and political perspective. Without a starting point of a modern definition of ‘work’ legally protected in Europe, in the long term the EES may be incapable of  serving effectively as an instrument to drive the modernising reforms needed for social and employment policies.  And as a further result, these policies may remain the exclusive property of the Member States.