124 / 169
THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
124
information-processing technologies make, on
one hand, many unskilled tasks unnecessary but
require, on the other hand, corresponding
knowledge and skills to apply those technolo-
gies (Groß, 2015).
One central requirement in all the countries
examined is to acquire the skills necessary for
Work 4.0 in a digital economy. This means that
the interfaces between the labour market and
education, in particular, become relevant and
one of the crucial fields of future welfare state
action. Especially in knowledge societies and
high-tech industries, education is not only cru-
cial for the innovation potential of a society but
also important for social inclusion. This applies
increasingly to countries such as Spain, Italy and
France that are affected by constantly high
youth unemployment.
Most governments in Europe are addressing
the situation with reform programmes aimed
mainly at attaining more flexibility and less regu-
lation, but also activation and skills measures. In
all the countries examined there is evidence of
an increase in “atypical” employment relation-
ships. These often go hand in hand with pre-
carious employment careers and restrictions on
integrating into social security systems. Here,
ways must be found to include new work mod-
els (for instance, crowd- and click-workers
working as self-employed individuals) in existing
security systems.
Digitalisation has the potential to increase
productivity and could therefore boost demand
and create new professions and activities. If ap-
propriate investment is made, this can even result
in employment growth. Rising demand for work-
ers, however, is to be expected mainly in areas
that require greater skills. Decent jobs need inclu-
sive growth. Because professions and activities
can be automated in different ways, all the wel-
fare states examined here require solutions for all
those who lose out in the digitalisation process.
This requires greater investment in professional
development and lifelong learning for low-
skilled workers, as well as, for instance, for old-
er workers.
Digitalisation brings new opportunities, but
also risks. Societies that want people to take
professional risks therefore require social secu-
rity systems that are able to cushion such risks.
In short, working is becoming more mobile,
more flexible and less contained. This can be
positive, for instance in achieving a better work-
life balance by more flexibility and new (social)
support services, but also negative if the bound-
aries between work and leisure become blurred.
Because new social risks require new ideas for
ensuring a social security net, the long-term
question we have to ask is whether and how we
might design a social security net that is decou-
pled from work and how we might arrive at EU-
wide regulations.
Health and Social Care
Digitalisation also changes the health and social
care systems, which are in most of the welfare
states one of the largest employers already.
Digital services are entering the market and
starting to monitor our behaviour: apps count
our steps, wearables measure our blood pres-
sure, health and medication data is stored in
Electronic Health Records. Customised and per-
sonalised medicine offers the opportunity to
provide optimal support, but it is a concern if
this data is made available to employers, for in-
stance. For that reason, the data must be owned
by the patient, but this is only the case in very
few welfare states in reality, although the same
applies in the analogue world. For the most
part, patient data involve ownership without