The Right to Work,EU Activation Policies and National Unemployment Benefit Schemes

Abstract

This contribution discusses national unemployment benefit schemes in the light of the right to work and EU activation policies. The paper also briefly touches upon possible long-term consequences of the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines with regard to the nature of the fundamental right to engage in freely chosen or accepted work and the quality of that work. The main hypothesis is that the EU activation policy, as most recently formulated in Guideline 7, marks a paradigm shift in unemployment schemes as it urges Member States to adopt activation and participation policies which aim at rebalancing rights and duties of benefit recipients and state authorities administering these benefits. If this policy recommendation is followed, it means that the right to work and the right to social security undergo a change of character: from an inalienable fundamental human right they develop into a (contractual) entitlement based on conditional reciprocity.