Helene Gagliardi
CPO 3103
Prof. Kostadinova
December 11th, 2009

The rise of Unemployment in Europe

This paper focuses on the rising unemployment in Europe. It will study the widespread concerns and problems facing the European Union in regards to unemployment. It will evaluate and analyze multiple strategies and solutions that have been proposed by the European Union andimplemented through the years to combat unemployment. The European Union has been dealing with this issue for many years and fingers are still being pointed in many directions, such as inflexibility in the labor market. Action has been taken against the issue, but efficient solutions are diverse and wide-ranging. Proposed resolutions include: the establishment of a European Employment Trust as aninterconnecting means to accelerate job creation within the EEC, promoting economic growth and real wage cut, control of the welfare state and weakening labor unions and other social institutions in which the labor market is implanted. This research paper will provide statistics, from current European countries, different perspectives and arguments on why unemployment growth has grown to 9.6% in 2009 andhow to ameliorate the problem of unemployment in the twenty seven nations of the European Union. The most decisive concern is how have the measures taken to fight unemployment, affected individual and specific member states economically and socially?

In the first section, an economic and cultural background history of the European Union will be offered followed by the definition and mainprinciples behind unemployment, as well as the different forms in which it can be categorized. This introduction will be a pre-cursor to the next section which will provide a better understanding of the causes and effects of European unemployment through the eyes of literary reviews, the different point of views and opinions regarding the policies that have been implemented by the European Union toameliorate the issue, all of which will be related to the effects endured by individual member states following certain changes.

Background
As complex as the European Union may seem, one of the original and initial goals of European integration was to seek economic prosperity and security. As prearranged and controlled as it may sound, this design was initiated by a combination of consequencesand impulses that are all quite significant to the economy and political climate of the European Union today. The cooperation between countries was instigated by many opposing factors, but to focus on our analysis, the economic aspects that led to the creation of the union were as follows: the economic disturbance within countries caused by wartime devastation, the appearance of two globalsuperpowers with rivaling political and economic ideologies, the need to base Western security and defense on economic reconstruction and well-being, and finally the desire for Franco-German compromise as the foundation of economic stability within Western Europe[1].
European integration was driven by political, economical and security motives, and gained the support of the United States as aprotection from communism. The European Union was influenced by multiple policies and economic changes throughout history that make up the fundamentals of its economic status, issues and controversies today.
The sixties was an era of economic growth and prosperity for Europe. Multiple significant changes and policies gave Europe the chance to experience economic freedom, such as the common agriculturalpolicy that gave countries joint control over food production[2]. The economic advantage of this policy was that the European Union grows an abundance of food and the farmers earned a good quality salary, this increased the mechanization of farming in Europe. On July 1st, 1968, an additional noteworthy policy was put in place within the European Union, the six founding countries removed custom…