Open Access

Cristina Fraenkel-Haeberle

• The role of the State as an employer requires special regulation. Traditionally, the prototypi-cal public employee has been the civil servant, whose employment relationship had specific public-law status. In many countries, a shift may be observed from public-law status and from unilateral appointment to a contractual relationship, which may be ruled by public or private law. Against this backdrop the trend in European countries is not to fully abandon public-law status, but to concentrate it in core areas, such as the police, armed forces and justice. The contribution explores the different definitions of the public sector in European countries deemed to be the main players in the field of civil service. It further highlights the switch from a career-based system with the guarantee of lifelong employment to position-based employment with a much higher turnover. It examines the reasons of the privatisation process, its main criteria and limits, as well as the implications of this transition in terms of convergence of employment conditions in the public and private sectors.