According to its the latest labour market index figures, Germany's labour market has greatly outperformed that of its closest rivals since January 2010.
Moreover, All selected labour markets, apart from Germany, continue to perform less well than a year ago.
The UK was the only country to register an increase (3.1%) in the FedEE index in May 2012 compared with the previous month. The largest decline appeared in the Netherlands (8.1%) followed by Germany, Spain and Poland, where the index decreased by 3.8%, 1.2% and 0.9%, respectively.
Year-on-year growth rates reveal a more dramatic situation. Labour market dynamics deteriorated substantially in Spain, Poland and the Netherlands, where the index in May 2012 rose by 54.4%, 34.4% and 28.3%, respectively, compared to May 2011. A decrease was also evident in the UK (11.6%) whereas the German index grew by 7.4%. Overall, the EU27 index dropped by 11.2% from May 2011 to May 2012.
The movements of vacancy and unemployment rates and real labour costs per unit of output over the last year reveal wide variations between countries. In Germany there has been a positive year-on-year growth in the vacancy/unemployment ratio (+11.4%), whereas Spain (-45.9%) and Poland (-35.4%) have suffered substantial negative movements. Overall, the EU-average decline in the ratio of vacancies to unemployment was -7.7%. By contrast, labour costs increased on all countries analysed - and particularly in Germany (+3.6%), Poland (+2.3%) and Spain (+2.1%). However, production fell in Spain by 6.3%, by 1.7% in the Netherlands and by 1.6% in the UK.
Robin Chater, secretary-general of The FedEE said: " The conception of the European Union as a Common Market is now well and truly dead. Cracks are opening up throughout the EU between eastern and western nations, big and small countries, the eurozone and EU countries outside it and well managed economies like Germany and badly managed economies like Spain and Poland. EU politicians need to take a long look at recent trends and decide how the EU model of financial regulation, free movement and political checks and balances needs to change. "
"My view is that the EU experiment has been a fundamental mistake because it was conceived as a top-down solution to maintain the peace in the post-war years. Whereas a successful economic system should be built from the bottom-up - by involving people as much as possible in local economies. Big can be beautiful - but only if made up from the finest component parts."
