International

Yesterday tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets to protest against the terrorism of the markets in Europe. The demonstrators hit the nail on the head: the real debate on Europe concerns the question of whether we will allow a Europe of the markets to persist, or build a Europe of the people. This week the PvdA (Labour Party) group in the Dutch Parliament appeared to opt for the former. Labour doesn’t want to give collective labour agreements (CAOs, which fix wages and conditions after agreement between unions, employers and government) or the right to strike priority over the freedom of movement for firms and workers. This is the umpteenth time that the PvdA has proved that it still hasn’t renounced neoliberalism, doing not only ordinary people but also the EU no favours. It’s precisely this attitude which means people have had enough of Brussels, while a left alternative, a social Europe, is there for the taking.

For more than twenty years ago ‘European values’ have been, above all, market values. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled in a number of judgments that strikes at establishments of corporations from other member states may represent a hindrance to free movement, and that such firms can also ignore CAOs which are not negotiated nationally, but for a single firm or a single region. The trade union movement has fought against this for years. A people’s Europe would surely not undermine trade unions, would it? Because the current treaty evidently leaves room for such anti-social jurisprudence, the trade union movement wants to see a protocol added – dubbed the social progress clause - which would explicitly defend such rights.

During the annual State of the Union debate - held in the Dutch Parliament but to which MEPs are invited - I put forward a motion, together with SP national parliamentary group European affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel, supporting this social progress clause and calling on the government to work for its adoption. To my astonishment I heard this week that the Labour Party had voted against it. My Labour colleague in the European Parliament, Thijs Berman, tweeted in the wake of this ‘that the PvdA remains completely in favour of the social progress clause but recognises that in the European Parliament you have sometimes to make compromises in order to make other points.’ In other words, I’ll swap you a social Europe for something else. So, I ask myself, for what exactly? For cuts in care for the elderly, in health care, in support for the unemployed or for people with a disability? Fair exchange is no robbery, goes the saying, but this exchange is surely a betrayal of the trade unions and of everyone who is counting on the left.

For the SP the social progress clause is sacred. Just like Thijs Berman, in the run-up the European elections in 2009 I signed a solemn declaration in which I promised to fight for such a protocol and for a social Europe. My pledge still holds good. The PvdA’s pledge turns out to be exchangeable for ‘something else’.