How should the labour market become more flexible?
Progress has also been made in increasing the flexibility of labour markets. A number of measures reduce the restrictiveness of dismissal protection, in particular the range of social criteria that employers have to take into consideration in dismissal decisions has been reduced and the threshold number of employees above which dismissal protection legislation becomes binding has been increased from 5 to 10 employees. It remains to be seen whether these changes will reduce the legal uncertainty associated with the present legislation. Measures to increase labour market flexibility should include: • Evaluating the impact of recent reforms of EPL and considering further easing accordingly. Specifically this might include allowing the option of not adopting dismissal protection provisions as part of the work contract after a probationary period in exchange for higher severance pay and raising further the threshold of applicability of dismissal protection. • Widening the scope for wage det
