A quick Google search found :
The Website for Tilburg University's Flexicurity Research Programme "Flexicurity: A New Paradigm for Labour Market and Employment Regulation?" can be found here
A paper by Dr. Ute Klammer, "On the path towards the concept of "flexicurity" in Europe" in pdf can be found here. I found this paper very enlightening.
The European Trade Union Institute has funded a research project whose web page can be found here. I quote from that web page for comment:
Flexibility seems not only to be the monopoly of employers since employees and their representatives also show a need for a more flexible organisation of work in order to meet employees' individual preferences and circumstances, e.g. in combining work and private duties and responsibilities on a life-long basis.
The concept is interesting but I also see some issues - to put it mildly.
Globalisation and the Reform of European Social Models (pdf) - Background document for the presentation at ECOFIN Informal Meeting in Manchester, 9 September 2005
As described elsewhere, it identifies 4 models, based on whether they are efficient (Scandinavian, Anglo) or not (Rhineland, Meditteranean) and fair (Scandinavian, Rhineland) or not (Anglo, Mediterranean). The study itself cleary makes the Mediterranean model the worst, and the Scandinavian the best, with the other two in between, with different political choices.
The study has been grabbed by various parties, mostly in the business press, and you can now read the "definitive" proof that the Anglo model is better than the Rhineland one as it is supposedly more efficient.
Efficient being the only criteria of our times, Anglo and Scandinavian economies are thus both symbols that "reform" (i.e. cheaper labor) is what's needed everywhere.
Eric Le Boucher often falls for that trap. He alternates between insightful columns, bringing to France much needed economic literacy, and simple regurgitation of the "efficiency" talking points that show France in economic hell. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
