This book offers a state-of the-art discussion of the political issues surrounding unemployment in Europe. It is unique in offering both a policy and institutional perspective and in studying the perspective of individual members of civil society who engage in collective action related to the issue of unemployment.The book emerges from a three year, European Commission financed, cross-national comparative research project with additional contributions from invited experts in the field. The book contains a number of genuinely cross-national chapters as well as chapters dealing with specific national cases, namely the UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden.In a burgeoning literature on EU employment policies, it is the first volume to bring together three key issues, and crucially, to study how these issues interact: How does the EU approach unemployment and how does that approach affect national policy? What are the main national differences in talk about unemployment and in unemployment policy? And, how do organized actors including trade unions and organizations of the unemployed produce, or fail to produce, coordinated demands with respect to unemployment policy?This will be an important addition to the reading lists of students and scholars of European public and social policy, and of great interest to policy-makers themselves.