The participation of the European Union in Global Value Chains (GVCs) is significantly higher compared to North America and Asia and it has steadily increased with the creation of the Single Market and the launching of the euro. We provide empirical evidence on the consequences of GVC participation on aggregate unemployment. Using data for EU countries and impulse response functions derived from local projections, we show that a higher participation reduces the unemployment rate in less advanced EU economies while it increases it in core countries. Our results also show that unemployment is particularly sensitive to GVCs when the labour cost is low.