WORLD RECESSION AND RECOVERY: Most European countries still persuing failed neo - liberal policies

A report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released Wednesday points to dramatic levels of unemployment in the developed countries.

”The number of unemployed in the (developed economies and European Union) region is estimated to have surged by more than 13.7 million between 2007 and 2009, with an increase of nearly 12 million unemployed in 2009 alone.” Despite comprising less than 16 percent of the global workforce, ”the developed economies and European Union region accounted for more than 40 percent of the increase in global unemployment since 2007,” the report says. ”Unemployment in the developed economies and European Union is expected to remain elevated, with a projected increase in the regional unemployment rate to 8.9 percent in 2010.”

The trend in Europe seems to be running counter to trends at the level of national policy. ”Unfortunately, most governments in Europe never really renounced the neo-liberal paradigm, despite the profound social and economic crisis that deregulation and radical free-market policies triggered in the continent,” Kerstin Sack, who tracks international financial institutions and economic solidarity at the German anti-globalization movement ATTAC, tells IPS.

Despite the negative effects of deregulated market economy policies, Sack says the conservative new German government in office since last September ”is acting the same as in the most dogmatic neo-liberal years of the 1980s.” Indeed, the German government - made up of the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party - has deepened the neo-liberal regime of the last 20 years, with tax cuts for high income sectors, reduction of social benefits for workers and low-income families, and a call for a further salary freeze for civil servants and employees of private enterprises. The reluctance of European governments to give up neo-liberal policies is hard to understand because the worst of the crisis may lie ahead, Xavier Timbeau, director of the French Economic Observatory (OFCE), tells IPS.

And the same goes with France, which appears determined not to learn lessons. ”The government is not ready to discuss a tax increase,” says Philippe Frémeaux, former director of the Agency for Economic Research and Forecast, and now chief editor of the monthly magazine Alternatives Economiques. ”On the contrary, (President Nicolas) Sarkozy's government has just approved yet another tax cut in favour of restaurants and hotels owners, and is paying additional subsidies to physicians.”


For the complete report: RECESSION AND RECOVERY: The Lucky Are Unemployed