Conservatives and business are usually rather good in turning progressive concepts around into their policy priorities of deregulation and privatization. However, with the recently published Commission communication on the social dimension of monetary union, they have outperformed themselves. Here’s why.
aAcloser reading of the communication reveals that the Commission’s text is ambiguous. Every paragraph containing ‘social’ language is systematically accompanied by ideas and wording taken directly from economic governance’s conceptual framework.
It starts when the catastrophic figures on unemployment and social exclusion are being quoted. We have over 26 million unemployed in Europe and poverty is on the rise but still the communication manages to argue that “progress has been made”. The following sentence makes it clear exactly what the Commission means when it talks about ‘progress’: ‘Progress’ is “the reinforcement of the EU’s economic governance”.
In other words, while austerity and deregulation have unleashed a social disaster upon major parts of Europe, the Commission in its social dimension communication rejoices in the fact that the system of economic governance – a system which has even stricter austerity and tougher deregulation at its heart and is therefore likely to cause even more social disaster – has been strengthened! This is a major contradiction and a point of view that is out of place in a communication from the Commission’s social directorate.
Things get even worse when the Commission – in the communication’s conclusions – bluntly states that “a well functioning monetary union requires flexible markets”. This statement defies all imagination. In several member states, trade unions and workers are now being confronted with a European system of economic governance questioning key workers’ rights such as the right to collective bargaining, the right to a decent wage, and the right to a stable job. Interventions even go as far as cutting minimum wages and allowing bogus trade unions to undermine collective bargaining by representative social partners.
And what is the Commission’s social communication reply? That markets, and this includes the labour market as well, have to be flexible! One cannot avoid the impression that now the entire Commission has simply given up on workers’ rights and that, in answering the question whether to save the single currency or workers’ rights, has chosen the former.
Read more: A Trojan Horse For Social Europe
aAcloser reading of the communication reveals that the Commission’s text is ambiguous. Every paragraph containing ‘social’ language is systematically accompanied by ideas and wording taken directly from economic governance’s conceptual framework.
It starts when the catastrophic figures on unemployment and social exclusion are being quoted. We have over 26 million unemployed in Europe and poverty is on the rise but still the communication manages to argue that “progress has been made”. The following sentence makes it clear exactly what the Commission means when it talks about ‘progress’: ‘Progress’ is “the reinforcement of the EU’s economic governance”.
In other words, while austerity and deregulation have unleashed a social disaster upon major parts of Europe, the Commission in its social dimension communication rejoices in the fact that the system of economic governance – a system which has even stricter austerity and tougher deregulation at its heart and is therefore likely to cause even more social disaster – has been strengthened! This is a major contradiction and a point of view that is out of place in a communication from the Commission’s social directorate.
Things get even worse when the Commission – in the communication’s conclusions – bluntly states that “a well functioning monetary union requires flexible markets”. This statement defies all imagination. In several member states, trade unions and workers are now being confronted with a European system of economic governance questioning key workers’ rights such as the right to collective bargaining, the right to a decent wage, and the right to a stable job. Interventions even go as far as cutting minimum wages and allowing bogus trade unions to undermine collective bargaining by representative social partners.
And what is the Commission’s social communication reply? That markets, and this includes the labour market as well, have to be flexible! One cannot avoid the impression that now the entire Commission has simply given up on workers’ rights and that, in answering the question whether to save the single currency or workers’ rights, has chosen the former.
Read more: A Trojan Horse For Social Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment