International

It was revealed this week that the European Commission was taking Germany and France to court in connection with the introduction of a minimum wage for all truck drivers who take on loads within their countries. In the Commission’s view, this would distort competition. This is typical of the tunnel vision which invariably still prevails in Brussels. Now people in most member states have had enough of this marketisation, and Brussels is going to have to change course and curb these unbridled market forces.

It’s been twenty-five years now that the multinationals and neoliberalism have held the European Union in their grip. One of the multinationals’ leading forces, united in the European Roundtable of Industrialists, has consistently pushed the harmonisation by the member states of laws and rules affecting them, unless they themselves benefit from unequal laws and rules. In the social and fiscal policy areas they are happy not to see such harmonisation, because open borders mean that the member states can compete with each other on the social terrain and to offer tax advantages.

As things stand it’s principally the eastern member states who are using low social standards as a weapon of competition. By means of the free movement of services they can provide cheap labour in the form of ‘detached workers’. In road haulage they use - or rather abuse – the opportunity to couple a proportion of domestic journeys to international deliveries, a process known in the jargon as cabotage. This enables member states to compete with each other on the backs of their own citizens.

Some people think that harmonisation of social provision can reduce such competition. However, differences between member states are simply too great to allow this to work. The SP does indeed argue that social rights such as those laid down in the Council of Europe’s European Social Charter should be recognised by all EU member states. This would ensure a permanent upwards progression. The European Commission is not in favour of this, however, and neither is there a great deal of interest in it in the European Parliament. I remain active on the issue as part of a network of like-minded MEPs and won’t give this up, but it’s not going to be achieved overnight.

So there’s only one solution remaining, and that’s to give the member states sufficient space to deal with these issues. That means maintaining equal pay for equal work performed in the same place. For Germany and France it means that these countries should not be penalised but rather congratulated for introducing a minimum wage for all journeys taken by truck drivers. In the EP I’ll be working hard for this, but it would also be handy if our Social Affairs and Employment Minister Lodewijk Asscher would make a point of doing the same. He originally wanted to achieve a great deal in relation to this policy area, but in my view would do well to step it up. A letter of protest from Asscher to the European Commission on the steps it intends to take against Germany and France would not go amiss.