Brussels, 29/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Saturday 9 April the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and six of its Hungarian organisations will demonstrate in Budapest. This demonstration will take place against a backdrop of the informal Ecofin Council meeting and will say no to austerity and demand a more social Europe with fairer wages and quality jobs (EUROPE 10338).
An ETUC press release underlined that governing Europe should mean something other than attacks on a social Europe. The unions are critical of the fact that “the policies that the European institutions and national governments are pushing through in the aftermath of the financial collapse, when the crisis is hitting harder the real economy and the life of millions of workers in Europe, are based on major and widespread austerity measures and fiscal consolidation plans that focus only on cutting public expenditure, public services, wages with very dangerous interferences with the collective bargaining processes and the social dialogue at national level. This happens while bankers and CEOs are continuing to receive huge and scandalous bonuses and pay and very little has been done to remove what really causes the crisis”.
A demonstration called by the ETUC brought together between 20,000 and 30,000 demonstrators on 24 March in a backdrop to the European Council in Brussels (EUROPE 10344). On Saturday 26 March, at least 250,000 British demonstrators marched through the streets of London. The press agency Agence France Presse notes that the demonstration of such a scale is rare in a country that does not have a strong tradition of socially motivated demonstrations. Many social protest movements have recently developed in Europe (Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Latvia and elsewhere) to express workers' anger against austerity measures and to demand greater social justice, explained the ETUC in its press release. (G.B./transl.fl)