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This article analyzes the reforms of unemployment insurance in the 2000s in France and Germany, in terms of the power of unions. It poses the question of how and why unions have let reforms that weaken their role in management and their ability to guide reforms in this sector occur, while in both Bismarckian countries they were deemed veto players. This contribution highlights the explanatory, specific and common procedures in each country, and shows how political strategies combine with union divisions and new alliances between some social partners and governments explain the feasibility of such reforms. It points out that these structural reforms, also known as “constitutives”, which are infrequently submitted to examination, are a decisive factor in the “distributive” or allocative reforms (Lowi, 1972) that they allow to be introduced or developed at a later stage.