The Czech Republic has taken over where France left off and now holds the presidency of Europe for the first six months of 2009. While the Czech presidency is likely to be less frenetic than the French presidency, the troika system guarantees at least some French involvement. To ensure continuity each EU presidency is helped by its predecessor (France) and its successor (Sweden) to shape the agenda, even though it is almost always the presidency that chairs and leads. The outspoken comments of President Sarkozy on the unsuitability of smaller countries to lead Europe at a time of flux and crisis are unlikely to have won him many friends. They also could not have gone down very well with José Manuel Barroso, who, after all, has done rather well as president of the European Commission for the past three years. More importantly, they are unlikely to fundamentally change the troika system, which ensures that there is support for smaller countries when they hold the European presidency.

Each presidency produces a detailed set of plans, although in recent years these plans have been long on rhetoric and short on concrete action taken. This is not because a country wants to be deliberately obtuse - in fact, it has no choice. The function of the plans is entirely political and designed to reassure the competing factions within the European Council, Parliament and the Commission, as well as trade unions and employers’ organisations, that whoever holds the presidency is ‘a safe pair of hands’ furthering the European ideal.

Making sense of presidential plans and identifying intended action is like doing a jigsaw - all too often you are staring at the wrong piece. The Czech presidency will focus, in the employment and social field, on four areas, with their intended actions as follows:
• Workers’ mobility in the EU labour market 
- finish modernising legislation on the coordination of migrant workers’ social security;
- focus on measures that will reduce illegal work and the informal or ‘grey’ economy;
- raise awareness of mobility within the EU (sharing examples of good practices in removing obstacles, such as language barriers, etc);
- draw attention to the adverse impacts of existing transitional measures on the free movement of workers.

• Increasing employment and labour market flexibility through general “flexicurity” principles 
- focus on the implementation of the Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs;
- seek a compromise with the European Parliament in a conciliation procedure on the working time directive;
- address the issues of modernising labour law.

• Horizontal support for families within EU policies 
- stress the importance of home childcare as a fully fledged alternative to a professional career;
- propose opening a debate on a possible review of the Barcelona objectives in the field of pre-school childcare services;
- continue discussing legislative proposals aimed at the reconciliation of work, personal and family life.

• Social services as a tool for active social inclusion of the most disadvantaged persons and as an employment opportunity 
- organise a conference to discuss social inclusion issues.

So what will the Czech presidency actually do in the social and employment area and what will this mean to HR professionals grappling with redundancy programmes in 2009? The outstanding issue is the need to broker a compromise with the European Parliament on the working time directive. It will need to be a compromise as the proposal is subject to the conciliation procedure. This is a hangover from the French presidency, where the European Parliament voted to end the UK opt-out. This will be a difficult negotiation and the pressure on the Czech presidency from other member states (such as the UK) will be high.

The second area of concern is likely to be ‘modernising labour law’. In a recession, Europe, with entrenched social partner institutions, is only likely to go in one direction when it comes to labour law modernisation. And flexibility is not in that direction.