A few lateral ideas advanced by FedEE’s Secretary-General

The word planning still makes Western policymakers wince. It carries the scent of Soviet steelworks and bureaucrats poring over production charts. Yet what China and, to a quieter extent, South Korea, Singapore, and post-war France have practised is a far cry from rigid command. It is a disciplined form of strategic coordination, guided by data, feedback, and continuity of purpose.

China’s planning institutions — from the National Development and Reform Commission downwards — have proved extraordinarily adept at marrying long-term design with practical responsiveness. Five-year plans there are not fixed decrees but rolling frameworks linking industrial policy, regional infrastructure, education, and technology goals. They adjust each year to performance data and global market shifts. The results are undeniable as they have lifted half a billion people lifted out of poverty, helped globally competitive industries build almost from scratch, and developed infrastructure networks that bind a huge economy.

The Western world’s aversion to planning rests largely on ideological memory, not empirical reasoning. Post-war France demonstrated that democratic planning can be compatible with liberty. The Commissariat général du Plan, established in 1946, coordinated investment, housing, and transport with such efficiency that France’s trente glorieuses became a benchmark for social-market success. Later, Japan and South Korea refined similar methods – technocratic, export-oriented, and far from autocratic.

The paradox is that democracies often now quietly plan with brilliance inside corporations, but recoil from doing so at national level. The very word has become contaminated by political fear in much of the west – as if forecasting employment or mapping technological priorities were preludes to tyranny. Meanwhile, China, unfettered by such taboos, has built an entire economic architecture upon foresight and measurement.

None of this means that democracies should imitate China’s idiosyncratic command structure (far from it). But they can learn from its single-mindedness. The alternative is drift: fragmented policies, short-term improvisation, and economies lurching from stimulus to austerity.

Planning, stripped of its ideological baggage, is not a restriction upon freedom – but its safeguard. It offers direction without compulsion, purpose without rigidity, and, above all, the capacity to think beyond electoral calendars. A society that refuses to plan condemns itself to permanent surprise – and no democracy can endure long in a state of constant astonishment.

Argentina – and indeed much of Latin America – now stands at this crossroads. The temptation is to dismantle protections in the name of flexibility, yet without any guiding design to replace them. The wiser course would be to restore the art of planning, not as bureaucratic theatre but as an act of national discipline. China’s achievement shows what coherent intent can produce when carried through over decades; France’s planification after 1946 shows that democracy, too, can coordinate without coercing. Argentina could draw from both – combining democratic legitimacy with economic purpose, creating a framework where markets serve an agreed direction rather than improvising toward chaos. It is neither central planning nor laissez-faire, but something steadier as it indicates a government with the courage to think ahead, measure its path, and act as steward rather than spectator. In truth, the economic freedom most worth protecting lies in foresight.

What FedEE can do for you

FedEE’s loyal membership speaks for itself. For the last four decades we have been offering timely, practical advice – not only about the law, but a wide range of HR-related matters.

We have also been active in representing the views of members on proposed changes in the law – such as the European Commission’s insistence that it has powers in the field of pay determination, even though its powers are formally denied by the EU Treaty. In the end, our pressure to have a key Directive declared as invalid by the European Court of Justice was successful.

A fairly recent development has been the development of ‘FedEE Law’, our one-to-one customised research and advisory service for FedEE corporate members. This has been supporting numerous multinationals with HR policy reviews, investigations into complex legal questions in difficult jurisdictions, the drawing up of employment contracts for one-off jobs, job pricing, benefit reviews and research in advance of collective negotiations.

You could probably secure a near alternative to FedEE by hiring a team of talented HR professionals, lawyers and economists with years of working in many jurisdictions and industry sectors, then by arming them with numerous costly database subscriptions – or you could simply sign up to FedEE at fraction of the cost. That is perhaps why many HR departments around the World have relied on FedEE over the years since our foundation in 1988.

Examples of issues we have reviewed through our common, rather than individual,  support service:

❖ The facility now available, thanks to the Federal Labour Court in Germany, to charge departing employees for the cost of investigating their malpractices.

❖ Why the expenses reimbursed to employees for using their own cars for business purposes in Poland counts as taxable income.

❖How should companies prepare for the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

❖How ‘Resignation Agents’ operate in Japan and how their legality is likely to be severely limited.

❖ Why employers in Lithuania may now ask an employee, or prospective employee, for criminal record certification without having any stated need to do so.

❖ The fact that overtime work in Mexico beyond legal limits is now treated as a form of labour exploitation punishable by up to 12 years imprisonment.

❖ How employers can deal with the court ruling lifting employee whistleblowing protection in Denmark over internal reporting.

❖ The increasing difficulty in the European Union for an employer to sidestep liability for errors leading to a GDPR breach by their employees.

❖ Progress being made in the UAE over Emiratisation targets

❖ Why vacation days in the EU may not be forfeited at year end unless employers take specific actions.