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	Peer Reviews Thematic Review Seminars Follow-up activities Synthesis Reports European Employment Observatory European Employment Strategy		European employment policy There was a lively discussion on the European employment policy approach and its applicability to the participating countries. There seems to be substantial differences across countries in the degree to which evaluations are used to design labour market policies. Some countries hold strong evaluation traditions (e.g. Sweden, Germany, Norway), in others the culture of evaluation has only recently taken hold, enhanced by the demand for European employment policy evaluations. It has been questioned whether the concept of active employment policy ˆ developed in Scandinavian countries in the 1960‚s and focusing on the supply side of the labour market ˆ is the best policy for economies in transition, where job creation, skills mismatch and macro-economic development lie at the core of the reform processes. One of the dominant European employment policy issues in the discussion revolved around the most suitable market structure for evaluations. The evaluation market is an imperfect market, with demand monopolies at national and Commission levels. The Swedish quasi-public mode of provision was contrasted with a decentralised, tender-based provision. It was pointed out that advantages of a centralised quasi-public solution are that it secures economies of scale in doing research, it is trustworthy in the eyes of the public, it may produce more employment policy-relevant research, and it also saves on the costs of tendering for the projects. On the other hand, competitive market may provide greater cost efficiency, greater choice of projects and methods, and encourage innovation. The European dimension of the market for employment was also touched upon, and the debates tackled how the EU may encourage the evaluation culture and promote competition and cooperation at the European employment policy level. The meeting also looked at how evaluation results influence employment policy making. Whereas evaluations often induce reforms of programmes, they rarely have an influence on the introduction of new European employment policy programmes.
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