This article assesses the strictness of employment protection legislation and
its actual enforcement in the Baltic States. We use information from the
applicable legislation as well as employer surveys, data on the coverage of
labour legislation and the practice of law enforcement. Overall strictness is
close to the average of EU countries and relatively well aligned with EU
regulations; individual and collective dismissals are relatively heavily and
temporary forms of employment relatively weakly regulated. However, effective
flexibility is increased by problems of enforcement: there is much evidence of
violations of statutory regulations at enterprise level. In addition, the
proportion of the workforce actually covered by the regulations is relatively
low. In the Baltic States temporary employment is more widespread, implying a
higher level of flexibility than the EU average.
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