International

To see the social face of Europe, you will have to go tomorrow not to the ‘European Quarter’ of Brussels, but to the Atomium across town in Heysel. That’s where hundreds of lorry drivers will be protesting against the evasion of collective labour agreements (CAOs) in road transport, an action which symbolises the total absence of any social agenda in Europe. Imposing a six-day week in Greece, of course, but no sign of effective action against exploitation or the undermining of CAOs. I’ll be fighting for such action both inside and outside the European Parliament, including tomorrow with the truckers in Heysel.

The EU internal market can be employed in two ways. The right way is to use the enormous market of half-a-billion people to stimulate activity and offer the consumer a better product at a lower price. The wrong way is to use the market to systematically weaken conditions of employment. Unfortunately this latter is, as things stand, what is happening.

There have already been a number of European Court of Justice rulings restricting trade union rights and allowing ‘detached workers’ – people hired by a firm in their own country to work abroad - to be employed under the conditions fixed by the state in which the company in question is registered. Not only that, but if, as in Germany, CAOs are negotiated by region or by sector, these also cannot be enforced, while pension and social security rights prevailing in the company’s registered country of origin may be applied. So detached workers are always cheaper workers.

Also in the rules on economic governance and in the Troika’s plans for Eurozone countries which, like Greece, receive aid from the emergency fund, are criteria which put downward pressure on wages and weaken pension rights. If you look at this from a distance, you get the distinct impression that Brussels is trying to improve European competitiveness at the expense of working people, despite the fact that everyone knows that you can never win by trying to compete with emerging economies on wages. Europe must progress on the basis of innovation, for it is innovation which can raise productivity and thereby lower the relative price of labour.

There are many people in Brussels who continue to express astonishment at the EU’s lack of popularity. It would certainly help if working people knew that Brussels was looking to reinforce their rights rather than undermining them. A social project of this kind would improve Brussels’ standing, and would have the SP’s support. It would speak to far more people than Commission President Jose Barroso’s views on a ‘Federation of Nations’, the merger of national budgets advocated by Herman van Rompuy, or the European army favoured by Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle and his ‘allies’, amongst whom are the holder of the same office in the Netherlands. All of these proposals simply increase the distance from ordinary people in Europe still further. I can say with confidence on behalf of the SP that our actions do a lot more for a social Europe than all of these idiots put together.