Press Release: Council of Europe Forum explores ways to balance labour flexibility with social rights

Report of the 2005 Council of Europe Social Cohesion Forum, 'Reconciling labour flexibility with social cohesion', Strasbourg, 17-18 November 2005.

Is it possible to reconcile labour flexibility and social cohesion?

The 2005 Forum hosted by the Council of Europe's Directorate General of Social Cohesion aims to highlight the key issues raised by the debate on whether so-called labour flexibility can be reconciled with European social models.

The preparatory work for this forum has shown that this is a difficult, sensitive question, which can be posed from different standpoints, reflecting participants' often diverging interests. It may be a matter of eliminating the "rigidities" inherent in social protection models and labour law in order to balance businesses' need for competitiveness and the unpredictable behaviour of markets. It may also entail adopting new approaches to reconciling employees' need for security and professional assertion with employers' adaptation requirements. Other considerations are achieving a fair distribution of the costs of change and satisfying individual needs for compatibility between work organisation and private life.

This "reconciliation" may be governed by the rules of global market competition or by the principles of social cohesion and the need to ensure equal access to well-being. It accordingly concerns policy choices and power relations that must be rebalanced or brought under control.