European typologies of time use – the social model approach

Starting from the fact that working time it is influenced by factors related to employment policies (especially for mothers), including those relating to extending or not of the working life and, on the other hand on social protection policies, the present paper presents typologies of working time use. Also taking into consideration the influence of social protection systems to Western European states we have defined and analyzed four types of social models: nordic social model, liberal social model, continental social model, mediterranean social model. As a conclusion of the analysis of the proposed social models we can observe that the EU states circumscribed social patterns, characterized by common general directions for time use, driven in particular by social protection systems and legislation on employment. Regarding the new Member States, both the countries joined the EU in 2004 and also Romania and Bulgaria, it appears that they have imposed their own social models and the time use, but taking items (some of them imposed by regulations) of models in EU countries with tradition.