A Short March through the Institutions? Trans-National Efforts to Politicise Unemployment in the European Union during the 1990s.

Between the late 1980s and the close of the millennium, the development of the European Union (EU), and the economic and social impacts associated with it, brought together a loose but co-ordinated trans-European network of traditional and ‘radical’ trade unions, social democratic and socialist political parties, unemployed activist groups, and faith-based organisations (among others). By politicising the high levels of unemployment found across Western and Southern Europe, these actors sought to contest de-industrialisation and the retrenchment and reformation of their national welfare states, and to push for a more ‘social’ European Union in response. Drawing on archival materials, this paper applies the power resources approach (PRA) to three separate but inter-connected expressions of this multi-scalar social movement: the European Network of the Unemployed [1989-1998]; the European Conventions for Full Employment [1997 & 1999]; and the European Marches against Unemployment, Poverty and Social Exclusion [1997 & 1999]. In doing so it documents how the various groups behind these initiatives came together to harness both ‘institutional’ and ‘coalitional’ power in a multi-scalar fashion that was novel at the time.

The paper then engages with the ‘failure’ of these efforts. Ultimately, this movement rapidly dissipated and European integration took a path starkly opposed to the aspirations of those involved. Here, drawing on recent debates regarding the PRA, it is argued that this case demonstrates the importance of structural constraints on how resources can be mobilised, and the impact of divergences in terms of goals and preferred strategies found within such movements.