國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

This paper was an attempt to clarify the effects of the German labour market reforms, commonly known as the Hartz reforms. Competing arguments were used to identify the welfare implications for German society and economy in order to explore whether or not such labour market reforms might provide another German answer, following fiscal discipline, to the EU’s post-euro crisis management. This paper confirmed that the Hartz reforms effectively reduced German unemployment, but they did not fundamentally solve the problem. Moreover, such effects appeared to propagate an increase in the size of the low-paid sector, negative wage growth, and increasing income inequality. The reforms were not welfare-enhancing for individuals because of increased poverty levels in employment and unemployment, which further implied a counter-productive risk for the German economy because of the contraction of domestic consumption, and potential social instability for the German society because of rising inequality and deteriorating living standards. Therefore, the Hartz-style reforms could be neither a desirable model for other EU countries, nor the answer to the EU’s post-euro crisis management in a time of fiscal austerity and negative interest rates. The real danger to European integration, as argued in this paper, was not the challenge from high unemployment, but from Germany’s complacency of a one-size-fits-all thinking and, being the EU’s leading country, its double-standards of the differential nature and contexts of the European unemployment issue from the German one. This paper warned that the mishandling of labour market reforms could result in the collapse of the already fragile public confidence in European integration.