International

On June 1st yet another ‘European Business Summit’ will be held, at which almost the entire European Commission will be meeting with – principally - multinationals. The Commission always finds this a high point. Today is Labour Day, the Workers' Day. On this matter the Commission is a lot quieter. Not a single comment on their website. This shows how in Brussels it's multinationals who run the show. Real involvement of workers and the unemployed doesn't exist for the time being except as fairly empty words such as the 'social pillar'.

It's almost two years ago that I had an exceptionally constructive meeting with European Commissioner Frans Timmermans' cabinet – which is to say his immediate advisors – on the European Social Charter, an existing Council of Europe treaty which clearly lays out a range of social rights. It was the committee charged with overseeing this treaty that for example concluded that the austerity policies imposed on Greece by the infamous Troika were in contravention of social rights. My proposal that every legislative proposal from the Commission should be tested for its effects in the framework of the European Social Charter was in principle received positively.

After that, however, nothing. When I wrote directly to the Commissioner I believed responsible for employment and social affairs, Marianne Thyssen, she directed me to Timmermans, saying it was not in her portfolio. Meanwhile Thyssen was busy with her own version of the Charter, her 'social pillar', in which social rights would be once again ennumerated, but in Brussels' own fashion.

As things stand it's still too early to give a definitive verdict on Thyssen's intended proposals. She is in particular still occupied with a public consultation, to be completed before she presents her final text. But I don't have a good feeling about it: a perfectly good Charter is available to them, but the Council of Europe is not an EU body, and the EU is determined therefore to re-invent the wheel. That can only mean that Thyssen's social rights will be a pale shadow of those contained in the European Social Charter. Of course, if you think the European Business Summit of more importance than Mayday, the Workers' Day, you're clearly not going to concern yourself with providing sound employment or with the struggle against poverty.