Europeanisation and Regime Competition: Industrial Relations and Eu Enlargement**

Zusammenfassung

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Contending that regime competition and Europeanisation of industrial relations are two competing tendencies which interact, the paper elaborates on the two processes in the context of the "old" European Union of fifteen member states. The consequences of the EU's May 2004 eastern enlargement are then addressed. Simultaneously enlargement, by embracing a more diverse set of national labour market structures, wage and productivity levels, has both increased the scope for regime competition and threatened to stall the process of Europeanisation. Prospects for an augmented social dimension to accompany European economic and market integration rest on the emergence of pressure from the new member states of central and eastern Europe, as well as its renewal amongst the countries of the old EU.

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Auszug

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Europeanisation and Regime Competition: Industrial Relations and Eu Enlargement**

1. Introduction

The contrasting scenarios which Europeanisation, on the one hand, and regime competition, on the other, might lead to - in terms of Europe's system(s) of labour market regulation - have been the focus of extended debate. Europeanisation refers to a tendency 'in which there is discernible movement with common policies leading to common outcomes achieved by common processes' (Marginson/Sisson 2004: 8). Regime competition arises from the imbalance between economic and social integration within the EU (Streeck 1992): as European product markets are progressively integrated the labour market regimes of individual member states are increasingly set in competition with each other. Recently the dynamics driving these widely perceived alternatives have shifted from the former towards the latter. This shift is refracted in two major events in the evolution of the European Union (EU).

The first is the eastern enlargement of the EU, from May 1st 2004, to include 8 post-communist central east European (CEE) countries (plus Cyprus and Malta). The scale of the gap in labour costs and incomes, combined with the flexible labour market regimes embraced by most countries in the region, have triggered afresh fears of intensified regime competition - at worst resulting in widespread social dumping as production and employment move east motivated by the search for lower labour costs. In western Europe, the public mood triggered by these renewed fears is aptly captured by the description by Nicolas Sarkozy, then French finance minister, of Siemens' threat to shift a substantial proportion of production from two factories in Germany to Hungary, unless the German workforce agreed to work longer hours, as 'a form of extortion' (Financial Times, 20 July 2004).

The second is the fate of the EU's first constitutional treaty, adopted by the Heads of Government of the EU's 25 member states at their June 2004 summit. The constitutional treaty incorporates a Charter of Fundamental Rights which, should the treaty ever be adopted, provides a legal basis to a range of labour rights which are integral to the industrial relations dimension of Europe's so-called social model. These include the right to association, rights to conduct collective bargaining and take industrial action, the right to representation at enterprise level for information and consultation, equality between men and women and, more generally, non-discrimination in employment. The fear amongst some governments, including the UK's, and the business community had been that the Charter could mark a further step towards Europeanisation of labour market regulation. But with its rejection in referenda in France and the Netherlands in May/June 2005 the constitutional treaty looks unlikely to be adopted for the foreseeable future. Fears of, or hopes for, any resulting further 'Europeanisation' have been put on ice.

The renewed impetus towards regime competition which the EU's eastwards enlargement has unleashed, combined with the absence of further measures to augment the social dimen...

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