International

With a decision of the European Court of Justice in what has come to be known as the Ruffert case, a new attack has been launched on the validity of the Netherlands' Collective Labour Agreements (CAOs) and similar sectoral agreements in other EU member states. The minimum wage stipulated in one such agreement in Germany need not, according to the Court, be applied by foreign forms active in the Federal Republic. The decision opens the door to social dumping, the term given to the favouring of countries which impose no or low demands on employers in relation to workers' pay and conditions. Following previous ECJ rulings in the comparable Laval and Viking, this decision appears once again to bear out the warnings issued by campaigners against the EU's Services Directive - sometimes known as the Bolkestein Directive, after the right-wing Dutch European Commissioner who spawned it. "Social Europe" is being razed to the ground.

NATO is meeting this week to discuss Afghanistan, but the debate will focus for the most part on the organisation's own future. The alliance is faced with a conundrum. The old opposition between East and West has gone and new enemies have not as yet presented themselves. The traditional defence of its own territory is therefore no longer necessary and for this reason NATO has for more than ten years been active outside its area, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Success, however, has been evasive. NATO, with its large standing armies, has no idea how to win a guerrilla war against a rebel uprising.