Brussels, 24/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - The Unified European Left Group (GUE) held a meeting of the REALPE (Network of Local Elected Representatives of European Progressive Local Authorities) at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday 18 March to debate and determine action with progressive local elective representatives in the European Union. REALPE is an informal network, set up on 3 March 2005, to improve links between progressive local authority elected representatives across the EU and the Unified European Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Group in the European Parliament. A meeting with around 40 trade unions was also held on Thursday 19 March. Among the speakers at the first meeting were Francis Wurtz, GUE/NGL Group leader, Stavros Yerolatsites, elected representative for Strovolos, Cyprus, Frank Persike, Mayor of Bad Blankenburg, Germany, and Jean-Pierre Michiels, Communist communal councillor in La Louvière, Belgium.
Town and regional councillor for Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, Lysiane Alezard, chairing the REALPE meeting at the European Parliament, highlighted the importance of “debate among progressive elected representatives who each have to deal with the same realities” in the current economic crisis. The aim of the meeting was to hold a debate and exchange ideas in order to “better understand what is at stake, the problems and the action undertaken in each country to encourage joint action,” she said.
Francis Wurtz made a distinction between local and European elected representatives, the former being “close to everyday life” and the latter being “among the farthest removed”. The lack of interest in the European elections had to be tackled by showing the impact of European policies at local level. The network's major concerns were employment, purchasing power, the future of public services and social protection. Since the start of the crisis, “90,000 jobs have been lost in France, 200,000 in Spain, 160,000 in Poland and around 400,000 in Germany,” Wurtz said. “We have to react at the right level,” yet no one was talking about “wide-ranging change”, he pointed out. Job security had to be increased if social disaster is to be avoided, he said. What was needed was “real democratic supervision of the use of money, from every company right up to the European Central Bank,” Wurtz argued. The importance of services of general interest, which are not, for the moment, guaranteed, was highlighted by Frank Persike. He called for better account to be taken of local responsibilities and called for citizens to be “co-participants” in budgetary planning so that there could be a “genuine citizens' budget”. He also highlighted the importance of cooperation between neighbouring municipalities.
The role of local development would be central to the European elections in June 2009 with “the involvement of citizens at local level,” stated Stavros Yerolatsites. Society had to be organised with “more power for local government”, he said. Administrative structures would have to be improved to reduce red tape, he argued, too.
“Yes, we need Europe, but a new Europe,” stated Jean-Pierre Michiels, announcing a meeting of the REALPE on the issue of the defence and promotion of public services, to be held in December 2009. Cultural issues were just as important, but were often overlooked, he said. There was a “mixing of peoples”, so “'living-together' conditions had to be created”, and that was a local authority responsibility, he went on. “The cultural mix had to be allied to the defence of all our cultures”, since, it was through affirming one's own culture that one could accept those of others, he argued.
The meeting ended with the slogan, “Think local. Act global”. There would have to be deep changes through a Europe of coordination and cooperation, was Wurtz's conclusion. (E.M/transl.rt)