<p>In the European Union political visions of a ‘Social Europe’ are being fuelled by the creation of common EU employment and social policy. The aim of the study is to investigate the workings and dynamics of policy-making in the area of employment, as an integral part of the fashioning of the European Union. Policies are channels for the cultural flows of ideas and notions and are in this way a part of forming ‘society’.</p><p>The study is an ethnography of the work of bureaucrats in the European Union institutions and the member state governments, in particular in the European Commission and the Swedish government. In this bureaucratic culture of policy-making the Eurocrats move between different EU meetings to negotiate, discuss and decide on common ‘EU’ positions, in this way creating a postnational EU.</p><p>At the core of the study is the tracing of the policy process of framing the vision of ‘Social Europe’ by the notion of ‘quality in work’. Particular focus is placed on turning this idea into ‘quality in work’ indicators. More specifically, the study explores the processes of making policy decisions quantifiable and transparent, and the assumptions underlying these processes. The development of indicators may be seen as part of a general global trend responding to demands for accountability, transparency and control over policy processes, a trend labelled audit society or audit cultures.</p>

In the European Union political visions of a ‘Social Europe’ are being fuelled by the creation of common EU employment and social policy. The aim of the study is to investigate the workings and dynamics of policy-making in the area of employment, as an integral part of the fashioning of the European Union. Policies are channels for the cultural flows of ideas and notions and are in this way a part of forming ‘society’. The study is an ethnography of the work of bureaucrats in the European Union institutions and the member state governments, in particular in the European Commission and the Swedish government. In this bureaucratic culture of policy-making the Eurocrats move between different EU meetings to negotiate, discuss and decide on common ‘EU’ positions, in this way creating a postnational EU. At the core of the study is the tracing of the policy process of framing the vision of ‘Social Europe’ by the notion of ‘quality in work’. Particular focus is placed on turning this idea into ‘quality in work’ indicators. More specifically, the study explores the processes of making policy decisions quantifiable and transparent, and the assumptions underlying these processes. The development of indicators may be seen as part of a general global trend responding to demands for accountability, transparency and control over policy processes, a trend labelled audit society or audit cultures.

Unemployment has begun to be considered as a European problem since the early nineties, when a coordination of activities in the social field at the EU-level has also gradually started. Since that time, spending on the social policy from the EU budget has been constantly rising, but, as shown in this thesis, the situation on the European labour market has not been significantly improved. This is illustrated also by the fact that any from the EU employment targets from the Lisbon strategy has not been until now met. The most important instrument of the EU-Employment policy is the European Social Fund (ESF). Because its expenditures on the Czech Employment policy are constantly increasing, it is necessary to ask whether it improves a condition of a labour market. Moreover, if nowadays contributions from the ESF represent the majority of expenditure on the Czech active labour market policy (ALMP) carried out by particular labour offices. Analytic part of this thesis focuses on the evaluation of the ALMP, which is financed from the Czech state budget as well as from the ESF and which is implemented by the particular labour office - in the region of Nachod. According to a similar analyses, programmes of a subsidised employment shows the highest effectiveness also in the district of Nachod, while direct job creation schemes and retraining courses contribute to reducing unemployment only to a limited extent.