Abstract
The word "flexicurity" is used to describe a social system combining an easy possibility for the employers of hiring and firing - flexibility - to important social benefits for unemployed people - security. This model is typical for Denmark for different reasons. Welfare benefits are centralised under the state authority represented by one minister that has in charge the employment issue and the social assistance. Moreover, in the Labour market regulation, the state intervenes rarely with legislation. Most of the rules are the product of a consensus between employers and powerful trade unions. The "flexicurity" model consists in on one hand, the free possibility for employers to hire and fire people, following the economic trend, which depends more and more on the international fluctuations, on opportunities offered by new technologies... On the other hand, the state has in charge the unemployed people and provides good conditions to maintain their standard of living but also to incite them to find a new job through training, education, job offers... This concept of "flexicurity" put together three notions that are not used to be coordinated: the Labour legislation, the unemployment benefits system and the employment policy. The objective is to protect people more than jobs. Indeed, the necessity was, after the crisis of the 1970s, to develop new mechanisms of security and social protection that are adapted to new requirements and that permit the society to take advantage of technical progresses and globalisation trend.
