International

Tuesday will see an extraordinary plenary session of the European Parliament in the wake of the Brexit referendum. The centre-right European People’s Party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats, the Liberal ALDI and the Greens have put forward a resolution which shows absolutely no respect for the British voter and includes no condemnation of the EU’s longstanding neoliberal policy. Instead these political groups call on the British to pack their bags as soon as they can and state that they should be heavily punished for their defiance. The masks have definitively fallen. The groups listed above have completely lost the plot. If they carry on like that, they will have no-one to blame but themselves for the collapse of the European Union.

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.

The countdown to the UK’s Brexit-referendum has begun. It’s striking how contradictory are the reactions to this here in Brussels. Last week the Polish president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, told a meeting of European Christian Democrat and other centre-right parties that we shouldn’t move too fast on European integration. A few days later the Belgian Liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt asserted that without the UK on board it would be easier to move towards a really federal Europe. This shows how divided the European Union is and how fragile. The SP saw this coming years ago. When we advocate a looser form of cooperation between member states, we are often accused of provincialism, yet it is precisely such a cautious approach which could prevent the whole thing from falling to bits.

On this occasion not so much attention was paid to the event, but on May 18th the European Commission published its so-called 'country recommendations'. The SP is opposed to all of this meddling, but the document remains an interesting read, especially now that in one of its three recommendations the Commission states unequivocally that the growth in the number of one-person businesses is a problem which must be addressed. Is this the same body which for years was advocating 'flexicurity' and flexible employment conditions?