International

This week the European heads of government are meeting to discuss the European budget. The European Commission wants, as always, more money, but a number of countries, amongst them the Netherlands, are trying to prevent this. The only question is: ‘where can the Commission make savings?’ For the SP it is always been vital that the numerous European funds be reformed, and that pumping money back and forth between national capitals and Brussels cease. This month is providing evidence once again of the inconsistent and sometimes completely asocial ways in which the funds are employed.

At the beginning of November the Commission did, it’s true, dish out money to help the redundant workers of the Ford Factory in Genk, Belgium, to find work, but at the same time the European Investment bank (EIB) gave €100 million to a Turkish Ford factory which had taken work from employees within the EU. Understandably, a lot of Belgian MEPs are annoyed about this idiotic policy, but it’s the British who have most to complain about, as there turns out to be a direct connection between Ford’s activities in Turkey and the closure of a Ford factory in Southampton. Production was simply relocated, wages in Turkey being lower.

It is still not so long ago that the same scenario played itself out at the Dutch postal service when TNT received on the one hand subsidies to assist redundant postal workers to find other work, and on the other was given moneys to bring in sorting office staff – on much lower wages.

If any consistency can be found in this inconsistency, it is that the Commission evidently finds it a fine thing if workers are paid ever lower wages. Workers who are allegedly too expensive are sacked using money from Brussels, and at the same time the Commission encourages contracts offering much lower salaries, whether that’s for postal workers in the Netherlands or Ford employees in Turkey. All the more reason to hope that the heads of government will not give way to the Commission’s desire for more money. As long as the net effect is that social rights are eroded, we have very little to gain from an increase in the European funds.