The»Cologne Process«: A Neglected Aspect of European Employment Policy ARNE HEISE 6 he inclusion of an»Employment Chapter« in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty closed a fundamental loophole in its Maastricht counterpart, signed six years earlier. For, even after the path-breaking agreement on a single currency, critics of European integration had still been able to com­plain – with some justification – that the convergence criteria set for par­ticipation in European Monetary Union( emu ) placed too much weight on the new currency’s price stability, and too little on the employment sit­uation in the eu . Indeed, it could be said that the Maastricht Treaty still bore the hallmarks of the economic – and political – priorities of the 1980s, the»monetarist decade«. As growing importance was attached to combating the rising trend in unemployment, a pressing need became ap­parent; the European Central Bank’s remit to ensure price stability in the future»Euroland« had to be balanced by assigning the Union explicit re­sponsibilities for employment. Thus was a new field of eu policy opened up. The Three Pillars of Employment Policy in the European Union Without doubt this development was due in part to the constant political pressure applied by those member states which have traditionally had more active labor market and employment policies: Sweden and Austria. But it can also be attributed to the eu ’s gradual»social-democratization«, a process whose crucial moment was the arrival in power of Lionel Jospin in France and Gerhard Schröder in Germany. Yet the Union’s assumption of employment policy responsibilities in the Amsterdam Treaty was merely the beginning of a conceptual process which shaped the three pil­lars of current eu employment policy. These are: ̈ the»Luxembourg Process«, initiated at the 1997 Luxembourg Sum­mit, which established that member states would coordinate their labor market policies. In annually approved Employment Policy Guidelines 88 Heise, The»Cologne Process« ipg 2/2002