Description: This book examines the manner in which the EU affects employee relations systems in economically peripheral European countries, specifically Ireland and Hungary. It asks whether the EU offers peripheral countries the opportunity to modernise their industrial relations. The EU dynamically promotes core-like employee practices, and national actors energetically attempt to implement the prescribed initiatives, yet little success has been achieved in modernising production techniques in peripheral economies. O'Hagan argues that the EU implements an unofficial development policy which it pressurises States to adopt. These initiatives amount to the frequently referred to European Social Model (ESM), which, she argues, can cause difficulty for policy makers because it is ill-defined, vague and contradictory. Contents: The Costs of Europe: Why Do Small Economically Peripheral Economies Join Europe? Theories on European Integration: Integrating Theories The European Social Model in Economic Peripheries: Ireland and Hungary The European Union and National Legal Systems National Administrations and the European Union National Industrial Interest Groups and the European Union Summary and Conclusions Author Biographies: EMER O'HAGAN is Research Fellow in the Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research at Queen's University, Belfast. Previously she held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Dublin City Business School.