In Chapter 5 we saw how Europe's labour markets remain remarkably segmented: they continue to reflect unique national and regional characteristics, despite a concerted political effort – stretching over decades – to reduce barriers to mobility. We have one common market, but a plethora of local labour markets, each reacting differently to external stimuli. Unfortunately, Europe's approach to market integration has made it more difficult to address these local needs. It is now the market, more than political authority, which must respond to the needs of regional economic adjustment. In clearing a level playing field for that market, Europe has undermined the economic resilience of its member states. Consequently, local labour markets are increasingly unable to withstand, recover from, and/or reorganize in the face of market, competitive and environmental shocks. The evidence of this incapacity lies in Europe's frightfully high unemployment figures, as presented in Chapter 1.

Chapter 5 endeavoured to show that local labour market variance can be the result of several different factors. Some regions may be overly dependent upon a particular employer, industry or sector, as we saw in the case of Washington State and Boeing (in Chapter 3). Other regions will have local markets that are precariously exposed to pressure from third-country competitors, such as China. Still others may be more or less susceptible to broader external shocks, as was evident in the varied responses to the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak. Local differences of these sort require localized policy responses in the face of changing conditions.

One of the most significant differences separating markets is their level of economic wealth and development. Minimizing these differences has long been the aim of European policymakers, and has become a staple argument for increasing the fiscal power of the EU. We will examine some of these European-wide efforts in Chapter 7. Claus Offe, for example, discusses the promise for European-wide institutions as ‘the only adequate scope of managing European-wide problems’: