Introduction:

Jan Priewe has wide ranging interests in economics, from macroeconomics and macroeconomic policies in developing and developed countries to financial systems development in developing and developed countries, along with European integration and labour market and employment issues. It is within the spirit of his interests in European integration and labour markets that we have chosen to honour him. We proceed with a few prolegomena in section 2, in an attempt to set the background to our contribution. We proceed in section 3 to discuss labour market differences in a currency union followed in section 4 by a discussion of the performance of different types of labour markets. A European social model is discussed in section 5, before we offer concluding remarks in section 6.