Helene Gagliardi
CPO 3103
Prof. Kostadinova
December 11th, 2009

The rise of Unemployment in Europe

This paper focuses on the rising unemployment in Europe. It will study the widespread concerns and problems facing the European Union in regards to unemployment. It will evaluate and analyze multiple strategies and solutions that have been proposed by the European Union and implemented through the years to combat unemployment. The European Union has been dealing with this issue for many years and fingers are still being pointed in many directions, such as inflexibility in the labor market. Action has been taken against the issue, but efficient solutions are diverse and wide-ranging. Proposed resolutions include: the establishment of a European Employment Trust as an interconnecting means to accelerate job creation within the EEC, promoting economic growth and real wage cut, control of the welfare state and weakening labor unions and other social institutions in which the labor market is implanted. This research paper will provide statistics, from current European countries, different perspectives and arguments on why unemployment growth has grown to 9.6% in 2009 and how to ameliorate the problem of unemployment in the twenty seven nations of the European Union. The most decisive concern is how have the measures taken to fight unemployment, affected individual and specific member states economically and socially?

In the first section, an economic and cultural background history of the European Union will be offered followed by the definition and main principles behind unemployment, as well as the different forms in which it can be categorized. This introduction will be a pre-cursor to the next section which will provide a better understanding of the causes and effects of European unemployment through the eyes of literary reviews, the different point of views and opinions regarding the policies that have been implemented by the European Union to