Brussels, 27/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Though the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) believes that the European Council of 28-29 June will be of crucial importance, it remains sceptical of what will be achieved. Among all the trade unions' demands, set out in their proposal for a “Social Compact for Europe”, stabilisation of the eurozone through direct intervention and broader action by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) stands out as the most urgent and most keenly awaited measure.
The proposals from the ETUC are not new. They were drafted in July 2011 and appear in the form of a “social contract” for the EU. The only really new component, as François Chérèque, Secretary General of the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), pointed out at an ETUC press conference in Brussels on Wednesday 27 June, is that, for the first time, all European trade unions are singing from the same hymn sheet in their support of greater European integration of social policies.
This has opened a window allowing the, at least partial, “reformulation” of the European social model, ETUC President Ignacio Fernandez Toxo stated. The aim is to retain certain basics which form the backbone of the “social contract”, with most member states seeing dismantling of labour market rules. Even though this is something the ETUC continues to criticise, it is, at present, one of the favoured ways to stimulating the economy, trying to increase the competitiveness of European markets.
These European social model basics are brought together in three points: free collective bargaining and the social dialogue must be preserved at both European and national levels; economic governance and policies to boost growth, developed with the social partners; application of economic and social justice (redistributive and graduated taxation on income and wealth, restricting financial speculation, equal pay for men and women).
The approach being taken at present is exactly the opposite of this, hence the call for a radical change of direction. The solutions proposed by European leaders to bring an exit to the crisis may, according to the ETUC, be summarised as the marriage of austerity measures with continuing lack of genuine joint governance of economic policy. This is nothing short of a “suicidal dynamic”, Toxo said. Furthermore, the remedies proposed by the European Commission are not only ineffective, they are even harmful.
Market deregulation is one of these remedies. Ireland is one of the countries which excels in this, and it is hardly a recipe for success, stated David Begg, Secretary General of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), who went on to highlight that unemployment is currently very high (14.2%) and prospects bleak. The situation in Greece is not dissimilar. A fall of almost 25% in GDP since 2009 cannot simply be explained away as a recession. We are in a “wartime recession”, said Yannis Panagoupoulos, leader of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE). Ireland and Greece are testing grounds. The policies being applied there form a model which the Commission would like to see transferred to other member states even though, after years of crisis, these same policies have proved, even in the best of cases, their ineffectiveness, the ETUC points out. (JK/transl.rt)