ÖZP 2000/3  S.329-340

Elisabetta Gualmini

LABOUR MARKET POLICIES IN ITALY: THE 1990S AND THE NEW WAVE OF REFORMS

In the 1990s, radical reforms of labour market policies have been introduced in Italy. The number of active policies has significantly increased, the state?s monopoly on employment services has been dismantled and new programmes for local development are gradually replacing old centralised policy measures. All these changes have taken place within a new political scenario, marked by the return of co-operative and consensual exchange relationships between the government and the social partners, by the fall of the First Republic and the growth of the Second Republic, and by the constraints and opportunities brought in by the European integration process. The intertwining of the transformations in the ?politics? of the labour market with the ?policy? changes has opened up a new path in the evolution of measures to tackle unemployment, which seems to have brought Italy nearer to European standards and requests.