Di prossima pubblicazione in D. Gottardi, T. Bazzani, (a cura di), Workfare territoriale - progetto finanziato nell’ambito del programma joint project 2011 promosso dall’Università di Verona, Collana di Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche di Verona - Sezione raccolte e atti di convegno, Esi, Napoli.

The European employment strategy has long supported active labour market policies (ALMPs) and Public employment services as their implementation vehicle. ALMPs show two coexisting natures: a Scandinavian one, focusing on human capital development, and an Anglo-Saxon one, putting the activation of unemployment benefit recipients first. The ‘Nordic’ nature stems from the Rehn-Meidner model where public policies aimed at the empowerment of most disadvantaged workers to favour their reallocation towards more competitive industrial sectors and companies. In the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ nature, the main objective is, instead, the entry into the labour market (‘work first’) assigning to unemployed persons the (some) responsibility for their employment status.

The paper retraces the emergence of ALMP’s in the Italian legal system and examines the most recent legislation on the theme (the Fornero Reform). A number of indicators reveals the Anglo-Saxon nature of such a legislation, as it features, on the one hand, a scarce attention both to the financial resources allocated to ALMPs and to the quality of measures addressed to the unemployed and, on the other hand, an increased strictness in the requirements for the recipients of social shock absorbers.