"This article adopts a dual approach to the examination of unemployment insurance reforms in France and Germany. On one hand it looks back at the historical link between waged work and social protection which is characteristic of both systems; on the other hand it considers the impact of the European Employment Strategy on national reforms. The historical retrospective reveals the eminently political nature of social protection and its intimate relationship with a vision of society based on a nation of wage-earners. That vision is now being called into question but the kind of alternative political project needed to breathe life into the idea of Social Europe has yet to emerge."

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