A Single European Labour Market: moving it closer?
The great recession and the subsequent debt crisis have been hard on the EU. Public-finance restructuring in many countries has resulted in a significant increase in unemployment in Europe from 7% in 2009 to 10.8% in 2013 and in very high unemployment in the periphery. The apparent pre-crisis EU convergence has turned into what seems like continuous divergence roughly along a north-south fault line.
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