'Flexicurity' - a combination of 'flexibility' and 'security' - has become a hot topic among European politicians. At the European summit on March 2006, the European Council decided to develop a set of common principles of flexicurity. Since then a stream of reports and documents on the subject has come from Brussels. The latest example is a communication from the Comission with the promising title "Towards Common Principles of Flexicurity: More and Better Jobs Through Flexibility and Security". Based hereon, the Council will in December take the final decision on the common principles.Denmark is often taken as a prime example of flexicurity, because of the special combination of low employment protection, high unemployment benefits and active labour market policy. This 'golden triangle' har won international fame and is marketed - also by the European Commission and the OECD - as a prototype of how the appropriate balance between flexibility and security can lead to high employment and low unemployment. It was therefore no coincidence that Denmark was the location for a conference attracting leading European researchers of flexicurity.
The event took place in October 2006 and was hosted by the Centre for Labour Market Research (CARMA) at the University of Aalborg.For the first time, twenty up-to-date analysis of flexicurity both as existing national and European institutions and as a political strategy are collected in this edited volume. The contributions are divided into the following topics: Flexicurity as a European strategy to boost the Lisbon agenda; Empirical studies of flexicurity in the EU Member States: How far are they from realizing the ideal of flexicurity? And neglected aspects of flexicurity, like wage formation and flexicurity arrangements at firm level.