The Institutional Pre-conditions for Regional Labour Market Policy Making in the EU: Case Studies and Policy Conclusions. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 70

Based on questionnaires conducted among PES organisations as well as Pacts and LEIs in 40 cities of 12 EU countries and 2 non-EU member countries we take stock of the preconditions for conducting local labour market policies in an urban context in Europe and analyse the development of both regional PES organisations as well as Pacts/LEIs in the time since the economic crisis of 2008. Our findings suggest that the most effective measures to foster partnership based regional labour market approaches in the EU would consist of: 1. increasing budgetary autonomy of the regional level of labour market policy institutions and aligning their competencies in other fields of labour market policy to the results that are expected from them; 2. investing in the development of partnership based policy institutions such as territorial employment pacts of local employment initiatives both in terms of the number of actors and their structure; 3. increasing the problem solution capabilities of regional actors by providing additional information in terms of evaluation and monitoring results with respect to policy measures and the regional labour market situation.