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EU member states have seen high levels of unemployment in recent years especially amongst young people. At the same time the fiscal crisis of welfare states has made it difficult for them to invest in new jobs and new economic growth. The EU, at least since the enactment of the Amsterdam treaty, has had a focus on how to support member states' development of an employment policy which aims for higher levels of participation, lower levels of unemployment and more gender equal approaches. Through exploring patterns in the recent development of financing and governance of social services and de.

AbstractThis article evaluates a national project for the integration of long‐term unemployed and disadvantaged groups of jobseekers implemented in the Czech Republic since 2019. It discusses how individual work and active labour market policy measures for these groups have changed, and what the outcomes were. We combined a quantitative evaluation of the targeting and outcomes of the measures with a qualitative evaluation of changes in the project implementation through semi‐structured interviews and focus group discussions conducted at the Labour Office branches. The findings show the need to broaden the availability of hard measures such as private‐sector placement subsidies for the most disadvantaged jobseekers, and to improve soft measures (counselling and training), especially if front‐line workers do not have sufficient competences for individual work. We are cautious about generalising the findings, as the pandemic complicated the implementation of soft measures.

AbstractIn this paper, we analyze the targeting and outcomes of the apprenticeship program implemented under the Youth Guarantee/YG scheme in the Czech Republic. We examine the outcomes and targeting using counterfactual impact evaluation (quasi‐experimental design) of the apprenticeship program on the basis of administrative data from the Czech Employment Office. The implementation strategy is analyzed using various policy documents. The findings indicate that the program is apparently targeted at those groups of young people who are less disadvantaged as regards education level and previous unemployment experience. At the same time, paradoxically, the effects in terms of outflows from the unemployment register are weak for the short‐term and medium‐term unemployed, as well as for low‐skilled and high‐skilled youth, and stronger effects are evident in the case of long‐term unemployed and medium‐skilled youth. The failures in targeting and in adjusting the program to the needs of more vulnerable groups of youth are due to an inconsistent implementation strategy of Czech Public Employment Services.

This article explores the recent changes in mothers' employment, childcare policies and attitudes towards gender equality in the labour market, in the Czech Republic and Norway, how these factors interact and what impact they have on the provision of childcare. Analysis suggests that there is convergence of the Czech Republic with Norway in terms of female employment, but divergence in childcare policies. The policy feedback – the mutual interrelatedness of attitudes towards mothers' employment and childcare policies – has shaped refamilialising policies in the Czech Republic, whereas in Norway policies that support gender equality in work and family have emerged.

AbstractThis article argues that the financial crisis did not have a strong impact on Czech social policy. In contrast to the garbage‐can model, in which policymakers wait for a 'window of opportunity' to implement radical reforms, the Czech centre‐right parties instead used the crisis as a means of continuing their market‐liberal reforms that they had initiated before the crisis had even begun. Since they had extremely little public support for their reforms, they tried to bring about gradual change. Thus, instead of pulling radical reforms out of the garbage‐can, Czech right‐wing politicians have tended to take out smaller biodegradable goods that can decay and compost into fertile ground in order to sow the seeds of gradual change.

Abstract In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction – not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig‐zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social‐capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest‐avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.

EU programme documents designed to influence the social policies of the member states are filled with concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion. This paper aims to clarify these concepts as they are employed in academic and public policy discourse and to discuss the societal function of this discourse and the impact of the European agenda of social inclusion. The authors show that although concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion are far from straightforward in meaning, their influence on public policy discourse and agenda is evident. The reason is that they redirect social policy towards a multidimensional approach, towards balancing rights and obligations, and towards more complex but also local and individualised policies, though the corresponding discourse bears the normative features of a social 'vision'. The EU's social policy agenda exhibits aspirations towards and some potential for achieving real policy change. On the other hand, there are reservations about its true impact. In this respect, the specifi c societal and political context of its implementation plays a crucial role.

AbstractThis article analyses the pattern of poverty and social exclusion in the Czech Republic and the impact of social policy on this pattern. The analysis is mostly based on data from the Czech Survey on Social Conditions of Households (2001; 27,000 respondents); Eurostat data provide a benchmark for making international comparisons. The poverty rate in the Czech Republic is among the lowest in Europe. On the other hand, material deprivation, as well as concentration of poverty within specific population groups, is high, with the unemployed facing the highest risk of poverty. Social policy measures in effect reinforce this pattern: while the benefit system is highly redistributive and effectively eliminates income poverty among households of employed persons and among pensioners, incomes of persons outside paid employment are protected less effectively. Labour market policy measures are insufficient in scope and inadequate in targeting groups which are facing the highest risk of labour market exclusion and poverty. We argue that although this practice is effective at present, it is not sustainable in the long term.