While EU leaders were meeting with social partners, civil society and several representatives of international organisations on Friday 7 May in Porto, the Party of the European Left and the Portuguese radical left-wing member party Bloco de Esquerda were organising their Porto counter-summit just a few steps away from the international event.
Present at the event, MEP Leïla Chaibi (The Left, France), told EUROPE she was disappointed by the level of ambition of the Social Summit (see EUROPE 12714/1), which she said amounted to “vague declarations of intent”.
The counter-summit organised by the forces of the left, she added, is an opportunity to address issues “deliberately left by the wayside by the European institutions” and also to assert the social emergency at the heart of European policies. “The market and competition can no longer be the alpha and omega of the EU”, she said.
For more information on the event: https://bit.ly/3uvqyMz; https://bit.ly/33rU1Ls (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)