Labour Market Programmes for the Poor in Europe

In 1991-92 the European Commission launched a call for research proposals in the context of the Third European Poverty Programme. One of the priority themes was the analysis of "contradictions and perverse effects of public policies" from a perspective of combating poverty and social exclusion. This text is the result of a multidisciplinary research project in this field. It gives a critical assessment of the accessibility and effectiveness of labour market policies, mainly based on experiences from five EU countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, and UK). The book also discusses the consistency of targeted labour market policies with general, macro-economic policies. It ends with a set of concrete policy proposals for national as well as European labour market policy makers.