Economy & Trade, Europe, Headlines, Human Rights, Labour | Analysis

EU: For European People Too

Analysis by David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Sep 2 2008 (IPS) - Several events over the past year have raised fundamental questions about whether the European Union’s primary mission is to ensure the smooth operation of an economic bloc or to ensure a decent quality of life for its 490 million citizens.

First, the union’s court delivered a series of rulings indicating that a firm in one EU state wishing to do business in another should not have to respect the latter’s labour standards if they are higher than the ones applying to the firm at home.

Second, the European Commission told Germany that a minimum wage for postal workers of less than 10 euros (14.50 dollars) per hour may breach the principle of competition, as it could deter foreign companies from entering the liberalised mail delivery sector. And then, Irish voters rejected the EU’s Lisbon treaty, a move that has been interpreted as a rebuke for the perceived tendency of Brussels to favour free market principles over social policy.

Against this backdrop and the increasingly shrill warnings of a global economic downturn, the Commission has promised to “renew and reinvigorate” the social dimension of Europe. It proposed 19 initiatives to that effect, covering such topics as consultation with workers, the need for new anti-discrimination rules, and the plight of Roma gypsies.

The Commission’s paper offered a grim prognosis. About 78 million people in the EU – 19 million of them children or young adults – are at risk of poverty, it found. And while unemployment remains a major cause of hardship, having access to regular work often does not provide a sufficient livelihood. Some eight million people are at risk because of the rising phenomenon of ‘in-work’ poverty, it added.

The Commission’s proposals – known in Brussels as the ‘social package’ – have drawn a less than enthusiastic response from social policy activists. The European Anti-Poverty Network argues that much greater courage needs to be displayed in order to make the fight against hardship a core objective for the EU.

France, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, sought to go even further than the Commission Sep. 1. Xavier Betrand, the French labour minister, stated that 2008 would be the year of “Social Europe”.

His pledge was met with derision by many members of the European Parliament, who pointed out that social policy did not figure among the top priorities identified by France when it began its stint at the EU’s helm in July.

Martin Schulz, head of the assembly’s centre-left Socialist grouping, argued that 15 years ago employees looked towards EU institutions to provide them with protection denied to them at national level. “Now, many employees are afraid that this Europe is not guaranteeing them social protection,” he added. “That is why we have pessimism today.”

Schulz took issue with the economic policy options preferred by some of the EU’s most powerful figures, such as calls for wage restraint made by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank. “Mr Trichet tells us that wages in Europe are too high,” he said. “That might be the case for the head of the European Central Bank. But it is not for some people in Europe.”

Others pointed out that the Commission’s paper is thin on specific proposals and that it is unlikely that major breakthroughs can be achieved before the executive headed by José Manuel Barroso ends its mandate in 2009. With European Parliament elections also scheduled for next year, the chances of pushing new measures through the EU’s legislative machinery are limited.

Elisabeth Schroedter, a German Green MEP, said that the title of the social package is a “misnomer”. Since Barroso’s team took office in 2004, it has been driven more by a desire to serve the free market than to improve social legislation, she added. “At the end of the Commission’s term, the flaws of the previous years are now being recognised,” she said. “But when you look at the content, the Commission does not seem to have learned any lessons.”

Vladimir Spidla, the EU’s commissioner for social affairs, denied that the package is a response to the referendum in Ireland, the only country that put the Lisbon treaty to a vote.

“Social policy has not been marginalised,” he said. “This agenda puts social policy at the heart of European policy-making.”

But Viktória Mohácsi, a Hungarian Liberal MEP who belongs to the Roma community, insisted that not enough is being done to end the discrimination faced by her people. Several million Roma children, she said, have been denied a good quality education as they have been put in separate and inferior schools from the general population. “This question of segregation has been sidelined,” she commented. “That to me, is a crime.”