International

As a member of the European Parliament for the SP, I act as spokesman for the United Left Group/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), the international group to which we are affiliated, in the Internal Market Committee. In every report which we debate, three words come repeatedly around: ‘competitiveness’, and along with that ‘growth’ and ‘jobs’. It’s a new mantra for the market-thinkers: if Europe can compete against the rest of the world, economic growth, and employment, will follow. The European Commission even wants in the future to pass judgement on their performance, just as they already do with the budgetary deficit and the state debt. But the mantra ignores the cost of all this: less democracy, fewer good jobs, and an ever-growing gap between rich and poor. In my view we should replace this mantra as quickly as we can with our own SP principles: human dignity, equality and solidarity.

In the case of Portugal, we can see how the mantra is undermining national democracy: a left coalition is prepared to take on the responsibilities of government. They could do this too, because taken together the three left parties won a majority in the recent election. Yet the Portuguese president has given the task of forming a government to the right. His principle argument is that the left cannot be trusted and will undermine Portugal’s competitiveness by interfering with Brussels’ diktats. As things stand the left front has been agreed and a right-wing minority government can be voted out, occasioning fresh elections, which might be held after as long a period as eighteen months. This will lead to an impasse and to a government of technocrats: in Portugal, for the time being, the mantra takes priority over democracy.

For the SP it’s perfectly normal to speak simply of ‘decent’ work, the term used by the labour movement. No exploitation, no American conditions which mean you have to take on two or three jobs to make ends meet, good working conditions and so on. To be able to put the word ‘decent’ before ‘jobs’, you have to lobby vigorously in the EP, and still things don’t always go your way. In the mantra there’s nothing about decent jobs; instead, you have cheap labour. Competitiveness also means working with the gifted, so that people who for whatever reason – such as their having some kind of disability – do nothing to contribute to it. In fact, they undermine it. Inequality in society is no problem, as long as big corporations can make headway in the competitive struggle with the rest of the world.

Such a harsh society, where all that counts is competitiveness, is no society of mine. Fortunately our principles, the SP’s principles, point in another direction, towards a society where incomes are fairly distributed, work means decent work, and where we take back control over our own surroundings, where democracy really does give power to the people. But then there’d be less competitiveness for big business.