ABSTRACT
I would like to begin with an acknowledgement – the acknowledgement of a cultural debt – and talk about the social dialogue. For this is a field in which one has to acknowledge the cultural debt which Europe owes to the Nordic countries – and, in particular, two of those countries – which have had institutionalised systems based upon this phenomenon for a long, long time. And it is important to recognise that, when you are talking about "social dialogue", it was really a Nordic country which invented it and which successfully put it into effect.
