Brian Denny | ukwatch.net

Wave goodbye to democracy

Alex Doherty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:34:01 +0000

The Irish voters’ rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on June 12 was a victory for democracy in Europe.Working people voted No to the renamed EU constitution because it represents a direct attack on their hard-won democracy and decent public services and creates the conditions for a race to the bottom in wages and conditions.

Trade unionists across Europe have seen what the treaty promises, with a number of recent judgements from the European Court of Justice effectively outlawing strike action.

The ECJ, a core EU institution, has ruled in the Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxembourg cases that, in different ways, business rights trump trade union rights to take industrial action and bargain collectively for their members.

Highly political ECJ rulings are also being used to open up health services to competition and to create a single market for health care across the EU, which would have huge implications for the National Health Service.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, this court for capital would become the supreme court of the EU over and above national courts and would have the power to act like the US Supreme Court.

As one of the architects of the EU project Jean Monnet said back in December 1952 at the inaugural meeting of the first EU court, “I greet you not only as the court of the European Coal and Steel Community but also as the precursor of a supreme European federal court.”

To make this a reality, Lisbon is the first treaty to enshrine the superiority of European law over the law of its member states by referring in Declaration 17 to the primacy of ECJ case law.

Over the years, this court has already asserted the superiority of EU law, its direct effect on member states, regardless of national parliaments and the constitutional character of the legal order from which European law emanates.

One ECJ judge once characterised the ECJ as “a court with a mission,” that mission being to extend the powers of the EU as widely as possible by means of the case law of a court that is notorious for “competency creep.”

If Lisbon comes into being, the Council of Ministers would no longer be an intergovernmental body responsible to national governments but, instead, an EU government in its own right. The European Commission would become the executive in this new set-up, charged with drawing up and implementing EU law.

And, if either of these unelected bodies does not further EU goals as laid down in the treaty, it could be taken to the ECJ, which would make decisions on the basis of deepening the EU, without a democratic mandate.

The Lisbon Treaty would also make the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding on the member states and their citizens in all areas of European law.

This would give the twenty-seven ECJ judges in Luxembourg the final decision on the wide range of human rights issues covered by the charter, as against national constitutions, supreme courts or the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is not an EU body.

The ECHR makes its rulings based on the European Convention on Human Rights alone. It does not have to take account of other rights set out in EU treaties, such as business’s right to “freedom of establishment,” in the way that the ECJ does. However, the ECJ has legal power to enforce its rulings on EU member states, whereas the ECHR does not.

Some trade unionists have supported the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the mistaken belief that it would strengthen their rights to collective bargaining and strike action, thinking that European law would override national law in such areas to their advantage.

However, the new treaty states that the charter is to be interpreted in the light of the ‘Explanations’, which state that “the modalities and limits for the exercise of collective action, including strike action, come under national law and practices.”

Moreover, the exercise of the rights and freedoms recognised by the charter may be limited “to meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union.”

In the Kjell Karlsson case, the ECJ also claimed: “It is well established in the case law of the court that restrictions may be imposed on the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular in the context of a common organisation of the market.”

It is clear from these precedents that these “fundamental rights” are not fundamental at all, but could be varied or restricted in the interests of a “common organisation of the market” or to advance “objectives of general interest pursued by the community.”

In this post-democratic nightmare, the market in effect becomes the substitute for democracy and human rights become marketised.

Giving unaccountable European court judges the final competence to decide on a large area of public policy covered by the EU is more about power than rights.

Human rights standards in the EU member states are not so defective that they require a supranational EU court heavily influenced by corporate power to lay down laws on over 500 million people. In fact, it is often the other way round, as recent ECJ cases have shown.

It is generally agreed that recent ECJ rulings have already found in favour of business interests. The illegal imposition of the discredited Lisbon Treaty would make matters considerably worse and should be resisted by all democrats and trade unionists.

Brian Denny is spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution. This article first appeared in the Morning Star

The EU Empire

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:54:03 +0000

It will not surprise readers to learn that the European Parliament recently approved the Lisbon Treaty – the repackaged EU constitution already rejected by French and the Dutch voters.

What is perhaps shocking is the fact that MEPs also rejected a simple amendment asking that the European Parliament “undertake to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland” to be held in June. The amendment was rejected by 499 MEPs. Only 129 voted in favour and 33 abstained, meaning that the vast majority could not give a damn about what the Irish people say about the Lisbon Treaty.

Among those voting not to respect the referendum result in Ireland was Irish MEP Proinsias de Rossa, who revealed that his loyalties lay with the EU and not with the Irish people.

The hypocrisy of these latter-day empire loyalists was also revealed by European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering, who declared solemnly that the vote “was an expression of the free will of the peoples you represent.”

As long, of course, as you don’t actually ask them.

You may not be surprised to learn that this is not the first time that EU institutions have given mendacity a bad name. Lisbon is a revamped version of the treaty which gave the EU its own constitution superior to the constitutions of its member states, but rejected in referendums in 2005. Instead of accepting that decision, EU politicians decided to impose the EU constitution indirectly rather than directly, by not calling it a constitution, and on no account to hold referendums on it for fear people would reject it again.

Former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing even told us how it would be done.

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly. All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”

However, the Irish constitution maintains that sovereignty rests with the Irish people and that only they can surrender sovereignty to the EU by referendum or not, as the case may be. Lisbon would make the EU constitution and laws superior to the Irish constitution and laws in all areas covered by the treaty, so the Dublin government must hold a referendum, much to the chagrin of the EU.

What is not commonly understood in this country – including the many MPs who recently opposed a referendum call on the constitution – is that, if the treaty is passed, EU institutions will have superior powers to the member states. The European Commission, which consists of nominated public servants, has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws. They are then imposed by the Council of Ministers mostly on the basis of qualified majority voting. The European Parliament, which is the only directly elected EU body, cannot propose any law. This so-called parliament can propose amendments to these laws, but cannot impose them unless the Commission and Council of Ministers agree.

The European Court of Justice interprets the treaties in specific court cases in a manner which tends to extend EU powers ever further over more than 500 million people. This unaccountable court has recently ruled in two cases that trade unions do not, after all, have a fundamental right to take strike action if it impedes business interests, which is the main point of organised labour.

Lisbon is also a clear power grab by the big states, as the constitution would bring in a new population-based voting system, giving larger members like France and Germany more power. It is also a self-amending treaty with escalator clauses to allow EU institutions to abolish further vetoes without recourse to asking member states.

Crucially, the treaty would further militarise the EU, something which would have a huge impact on Ireland, which has hitherto been a neutral state. When promoting the renamed EU constitution, European Commission president Jose Barroso said:

“Sometimes, I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire. We have the dimensions of empire.”

And empires, of course, need armies. The common EU foreign and security policy contained in the Lisbon Treaty provides that “the union’s competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the union’s security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy that might lead to a common defence.” The last phrase, a “common defence,” means a common EU army and military forces.

The driving force behind this constitution is the big corporations, organised in groups like the European Round Table of Industrialists. They are pushing the colonial and militarist agenda, along with privatisation and the removal of all forms of democracy from citizens.
The Irish people are at a crossroads. They can choose to remain a relatively young democratic nation or become a province of an empire once again.

Brian Denny is a spokesman for the UK group Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution and writes regularly for the Morning Star, where this article first appeared.

Flexicurity, False Promises, and the EU's Renamed Constitution

Ellie Keen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:40:33 +0000

A number of recent events have clarified the true nature of the European Union and probably shattered many illusions. At the end of last year, the European Commission adopted a draft health services directive designed to create a “market” in healthcare. This followed numerous judgements on the subject at the European Court of Justice. It constitutes a direct attack on the principles of the National Health Service.

The directive was introduced after healthcare was removed from the services directive, which is designed to remove all barriers in service provision and speed up the creation of an internal market within the EU. Britain’s railways suffered a similar fate when they were privatised by the Tories according to EU Directive 91/440. This stipulated the separation of track and operations in order to create a “market”.

In early December, the European Court of Justice ruled in the Viking and Vaxholm cases that taking strike action was not, after all, a fundamental right under EU rules. Also in December, the renamed EU constitution was rubber-stamped to great fanfare in Portugal with the new title of the “Lisbon treaty”. EU leaders also adopted the curious word “flexicurity” as a concept.

Combined, these events represent the greatest threat to trade unionism, democracy and social progress since the Second World War.

“Flexicurity” makes the false promise that, if workers embrace “flexibility”, job “security” will follow. Surely this is a contradiction in terms.

The architects of “flexicurity” consist of the European Commission and corporate lobbyists such as the European Round Table of industrialists. The concept is designed to fatally undermine collective bargaining.

It demands the abolition of “overtly protective terms and conditions” in contracts which supposedly “deter employers from hiring during economic upturns”. In plain language, this would mean an end to workers’ collective rights. According to the EU: “Stringent employment protection tends to reduce the dynamism of the labour market.” So, presumably, without unions there would be a permanent economic boom.

Unite (1) joint general secretary Derek Simpson was right when he said that the concept of flexicurity “hides behind the language of equality to propose measures to force exploitation and insecurity on to every worker in Europe.” As the biggest trade union in Cyprus, PEO, recently declared, flexicurity represents “a very dangerous attempt to smash existing labour laws and gains”, increasing the trend towards “casual uninsured jobs”.

PEO’s view is that: “The changes being sought are aimed in reality at easing labour protection rules, the abolition of full and steady employment as well as the marginalisation of collective agreements.”

An EU green paper promoting flexicurity said that contractor obligations to monitor employment law among sub-contractors “may serve to restrain sub-contracting by foreign firms and present an obstacle to the free provision of services in the internal market”.

It is no coincidence that both the Viking and Vaxholm judgements in the European Court of Justice attack trade union collective bargaining rights in Scandinavian countries, where they are enshrined both in law and in the constitution. This is the social model which is most at odds with the EU where the “smooth operation of the market” overrides any other rights or considerations.

In the Viking and Vaxholm cases, Swedish and Finnish unions sought to prevent companies paying foreign labour up to 60 per cent lower wages.

According to the European Court ruling, while there is a “fundamental” right to take collective industrial action, such action represents a restriction on the right of freedom of establishment where it makes the exercise of that right “less attractive”.

But industrial action is, by its very nature, an obstacle to the activities of a company and free movement. However, the European Court has now declared in that EU rules on the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour gives private firms protection against collective action by trade unions. In other words, an employer’s right to “freedom of establishment” trumps the right to strike. Richard Arthur of Thompson’s, the trade union solicitors, described the European Court’s rulings as “absurd” and “ludicrous” ones which would run roughshod over universally recognised union rights. In fact, Arthur says this is worse than the anti-union laws Britain already has. “Tory anti-union legislation only restricted the right to strike by introducing stringent procedures in order to carry out industrial action. However, the European Court of Justice has now given itself the opportunity to scrutinise the legitimacy and the proportionality of any given dispute and the effect on the employer.”

No one should be surprised. Many years ago, in another ruling, the European Court of Justice stated that: “It is well established in the case law of the court that restrictions may be imposed on the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular in the context of a common organisation of the market.”

So the human right of withdrawing your labour must not interfere with the “common organisation of the market”. Such rulings are reminiscent of the infamous judgment in 1901 in favour of the Taff Vale Railway against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for having the audacity to go on strike. The “crime” then was known as being “in restraint of trade”. Today, it is called “freedom of establishment”.

Under the renamed EU constitution, currently being scrutinised in Parliament, an EU institution – the European Court of Justice – would gain huge new powers over member states.

The constitution also gives the EU a permanent neo-liberal orientation, while Brussels will gain the power to privatise – the main reason for the “No” votes on the constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands. This was also the reason why TUC delegates voted against the constitution in 2005 and why the TUC renewed its call for a referendum on in 2007.

Under Article III-147 of the old constitution, the EU would be given powers to enforce privatisation in any area of economic activity. “A European framework law shall establish the measures in order to achieve the liberalisation of a specific service”. This provision remains under the reform treaty – which is basically the constitution with another name.

That is why flexicurity, EU court judgments and EU rules on “free movement” – all enshrined in the renamed EU constitution – represent the most fundamental attacks on working people for a generation.

If there is a European social model it is enshrined in flexicurity, European Court rulings and mass privatisation. It should be rejected along with the renamed constitution.

Brian Denny is spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution. This article first appeared in the British weekly Tribune.

(1)Unite is a major UK trade union.

Flexicurity is Insecurity

Ellie Keen — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:58:46 +0000

“Absurd” and “ludicrous” is how leading British trade union law firm Thompsons described recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgments in two test cases which claimed that strike action offended European Union rules.

According to Richard Arthur, head of trade union law at Thompsons, the cases – known as Viking and Vaxholm respectively – are far more restrictive than even the anti-union laws brought in by successive Tory governments in the 1980s.

The first case involved Finnish ferry company Viking Line, which attempted to reflag one of its ships to Estonia and replace Finnish seafarers with cheaper Estonian labour.

Protesting against this clear social dumping, Finnish workers attempted to launch strike action. Viking then began legal proceedings and the European Court of Justice has sat on the case for over three years.

The Vaxholm case similarly began after Swedish trade unionists attempted to prevent Latvian firm Laval paying poverty wages to Latvian builders working in the Swedish town of Vaxholm .

The ECJ has now declared in both cases that EU rules on the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour give private firms protection against collective action by trade unions. In other words an employers’ right to “freedom of establishment” trumps the right to strike.

Richard Arthur of Thompsons says that the ECJ rulings ran roughshod over trade union rights which have been almost universally recognised in numerous international treaties for many decades.

“Tory anti-union legislation only restricted the right to strike by introducing stringent procedures in order to carry out industrial action. However, the European Court of Justice has now given itself the opportunity to scrutinize the legitimacy and the proportionality of any given dispute and the effect on the employer,” he says.

Furthermore, in the Vaxholm case, the right to strike is superseded where an employer complains that the union is seeking terms and conditions in excess of the minimum provided by the EU’s Posted Workers Directive.

This highlights the fact that the Posted Workers Directive is designed to remove obstacles to the freedom of firms to provide services abroad – not to provide social protection for workers. In fact, it is a mechanism for exporting low pay to other member states.

You may say, well at least the right to strike is enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, right? Wrong.

Article 28 of the Charter, appended to the renamed EU constitution, says workers may ‘take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action’. But an Explanation in Declaration 12 also qualifies this by stating: ‘The limits for the exercise of collective action, including strike action, come under national laws and practices’.

Moreover, the entire Charter can be suspended at any time to protect the ‘general interests’ of the EU or, of course, if it interferes with ‘the smooth operation of the market’. This means that draconian labour legislation already existing in a member state can be preserved while, on the other hand, Brussels can limit trade union rights in order to satisfy ‘objectives of general interest’ of the EU.

The renamed EU Constitution provides that the Charter of Fundamental Rights would be made binding in EU law and become superior to national law in the event of any conflict.

On December 13 2007 EU leaders rubberstamped the renamed EU constitution to great fanfare in Portugal while over a quarter of a million Portuguese workers protested outside to almost no media interest.

One of the reasons for the protest was the fact that officially and for the first time, the term ‘flexicurity’ and its basic principles were also adopted by EU leaders in Lisbon.

So what is ‘flexicurity’ and why has it upset so many trade unionists?

Well, the first thing to say is that there is no such word. It has been made up by the European commission to suggest that if a worker accepts flexibility, job security at work will follow.

That is a complete contradiction, of course. As Derek Simpson, general secretary of the major British trade union Unite told The Times last year, flexicurity “hides behind the language of equality to propose measures to force exploitation and insecurity on to every worker in Europe “.

In essence it is a policy designed to remove collective bargaining rights from workers in order to facilitate further EU integration and deepen the so-called internal market.

A passage from Lewis Carroll’s book, “Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There,” comes to mind:

“‘When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” says Humpty Dumpty.

“The question is,’ replies Alice , “whether you can make words mean so many different things”.

“The question is,” replies Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all”.

Clearly the EU – and their judges – operate with this mentality, considering themselves the “master” of words and a law unto themselves.

However, this has not gone unnoticed by labour movements across Europe. The Cypriot Federation of Labour, the PEO, the oldest and biggest trade union in Cyprus , has said that ‘flexicurity’ represents “a very dangerous attempt to completely smash existing labour laws and gains” increasing the trend towards “casual uninsured jobs”.

“The changes being sought are aimed in reality at easing labour protection rules, the abolition of full and steady employment as well as the marginalisation of collective agreements,” it said.

Ultimately, flexicurity, EU court judgments and EU rules on ‘free movement’ – all enshrined inthe renamed EU constitution – represent the most fundamental attack on trade union rights since the end of World War Two.

In order to achieve this, the principles of effective and democratic trade unionism are being actively undermined by EU institutions and those who promote its policies and agenda.

In order to resist it, we should, in Britain, be loudly demanding the referendum on the constitution promised by the government at the last election.

Brian Denny is spokesman for the UK organisation Trade Unions Against the EU Constitution.

UK's Lies on EU Treaty

Tim Holmes — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 01:07:23 +0000

It will not surprise most readers that the new version of the EU constitution is almost exactly the same as the original constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago.

Only 10 out of 250 proposals in the new treaty are different from the proposals in the original constitution. In other words, 96 per cent of the text – which is only officially available in French – is the same.

Yet new Labour ministers are increasing acting like medieval obscurantist priests, first by denying this obvious fact and then refusing to produce an official English translation of the text until after Parliament rises for the summer in mid-October.

However, in recent weeks, almost all EU leaders have stressed that the “new” reform treaty is the same as the old EU constitution.

While Britain’s Europe Minister Jim Murphy claims that “the reform treaty will differ fundamentally from the constitutional treaty in its substance,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel says: “The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact.”

While the British government claims to have an “opt-out” from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Swedish Prime Minister Frederick Reinfeldt says: “It was important for the Swedish government to keep the charter legally binding, which now is the case. The UK accepted this. It should be stressed that the UK was given a clarification, not an opt-out.”

And so it goes on. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero admits: “We have not let a single substantial point of the constitutional treaty go.”

He says: “It is, without a doubt, much more than a treaty. This is a project of foundational character, a treaty for a new Europe.”

European communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom gaily admits: “It’s essentially the same proposal as the old constitution.”

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen says: “The good thing is that all the symbolic elements are gone and that which really matters – the core – is left.”

Czech President Vaclav Klaus says that “only cosmetic changes have been made and the basic document remains the same.”

Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says: “They haven’t changed the substance – 90 per cent of it is still there.”

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos Moratinos says: “I believe that 98 per cent of the content of what we consider the substance of the constitutional treaty, is to be found in the future EU treaty. The wrapping has been changed, but not the content.”

He went on to say: “Legal primacy has been saved with a declaration. The Charter of Fundamental Rights has a binding character and, if one goes over all the essential points, it’s all still there.”

EU commissioner Louis Michel also wrote that the new treaty is “an indispensable instrument for the pursuit of the European project and certainly not an end in itself.” The treaty, he wrote, “takes up the essence of the constitutional project.”

In order to help Gordon Brown out of this jam, former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato admits that EU leaders had “decided that the document should be unreadable,” explaining that this would allow Brown to present the text to Parliament and say: “Look, you see, it’s absolutely unreadable, it’s the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.”

The other ploy that the British government is using is to claim that the new “treaty” contains a gaggle of opt-outs, opt-ins, emergency brakes and other “safeguards.”

However, most of these are not new and were in the original version of the constitution, on which the government promised a referendum.

These “safeguards” are designed to distract from the really big change in the home affairs field proposed by the constitution, which is to give the European Union’s own European Court of Justice full jurisdiction over justice, policing and other areas.

Labour MP Gisela Stuart, who was involved in the commission that drew up the constitution, is among the many MPs demanding a referendum.

“Given that Gordon Brown is committed to the even greater participation of people in decision-making, I think the case is even stronger now,” she says.

The GMB has recently come out in favour of a referendum, while RMT, the T&G section of UNITE and UNISON are among the unions which oppose the treaty.

This constitution is designed to give the EU the constitutional form of a state, owing obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority. It would transfer more powers to the EU and establish law-making powers over 50 new areas of policy.

The non-elected commission would get the monopoly of proposing EU laws in these new areas. In other words, an oligarchy made up of faceless Eurocrats and the Council of Ministers would make binding laws for over 500 million people without a mandate to do so.

Such measures would represent a significant shift back to the pre-democratic ideas of feudalism, which fell out of favour following the enlightenment and the rise of rationalism. Now who voted for that?

Brian Denny is active in Trade Unions Against the EU Constitution. TUAEUC produces a regular round-up with links to press stories on EU affairs. He can be contacted at this email This article first appeared in the Morning Star. The full English translation of the “new” EU constitution can be read at this website.

Dangerous Future

Alex Doherty — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:40:09 +0000

Tens of thousands of French rail workers supported by trade unionists from Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain descended on Paris on 7th February to protest against European Union directives demanding the “liberalisation” of rail networks across the bloc. They were saying No to privatisation and No to the death and mayhem witnessed on Britain’s rail network since the British Rail sell-off 10 years ago.

The significance of this international protest called by French rail unions is that it will be the first major protest directly against EU diktats. Previously, protests across the EU have only targeted national governments meekly implementing EU so-called “rail liberalisation packages” and attempting to turn the rail sector over to market forces.

There is a growing awareness that the architects of the disastrous EU rail privatisation model, which first saw the light of day in Britain, sit anonymously in offices in Brussels under the direction of the European Commission. For years, Europhile pundits have denied that the Tory privatisation of British Rail in 1996 was directly based on the notorious EU directive 91/440 published five years earlier. However, since then, an avalanche of directives and rail packages have poured out from the European Commission establishing a market in rail provision by splitting train operations from the ownership of infrastructure.

Yet, in a sign of increasing opposition, the commission’s rail liberalisation plans were derailed last month after the so-called “third EU rail liberalisation package” failed to get enough votes in the European Parliament. Over 200 MEPs failed to turn up to rubber-stamp the package, which would have enforced competition within and between national EU rail networks. As a result, proposals to “liberalise” domestic railways did not gain the required majority of 393 votes and will be put on ice indefinitely.
The EU parliamentary report on the third rail package authored by German MEP Georg Jarzembowski demanded “liberalisation” of rail passenger transport in the form of “open access” for international rail transport from 2010 and national rail passenger transport from 2017. Jarzembowski complained that MEPs from France and the Netherlands had not voted for the liberalisation deadline, although “the proposal was based on a compromise between the conservatives and the socialists.”

He ranted: “France and the Netherlands protect their state-owned operators and favour market shares over citizens’ interests.”

French and Dutch citizens also voted overwhelmingly in 2005 against the EU constitution, which Brussels is currently trying to resurrect, this time without referendums.

The third rail package was originally proposed by the commission in March 2004 and focused on international services and problems related to cross-border operation – so-called “interoperability.” These diktats extend to suburban and regional railways and, according to rail and public transport operators, could severely hinder the development of such domestic short-distance operations. A new study by the International Association for Public Transport (UITP) released last month revealed that nine times more passengers use commuter and regional rail services, for short journeys of around 15 miles on average, than international or long-distance trips.

UITP regional railway committee chairman Michel Quidort said that these “bureaucratic” rules could hinder the development of a transport sector crucial to helping European cities deal with congestion and pollution. RMT general secretary Bob Crow wrote to British MEPs urging them to reject the proposals for the further privatisation of rail passenger services.
“Rail workers and the travelling public have considerable experience of the devastating failures of rail privatisation and these proposals will make matters even worse in the UK,” he wrote. Crow pointed out that “open access” competition introduces fragmentation and the cherry-picking of lucrative intercity services by privateers, resulting in a loss of cross-subsidy for rural and urban domestic rail services.

Political pressure from the European Central Bank on member states to restrict public expenditure also hinders the development of decently funded public rail services.
“These proposals entrench the disastrous separation of rail infrastructure from train operations and perpetuate the system where private train operators will seek to maximise profits on the backs of direct public subsidy or the indirect subsidies that states provide for railway infrastructure,” said Crow. He also warned that “liberalisation” of rail passenger services would force smaller, poorer member states to sell off national assets to virtual monopolies based in larger states. “Before Brussels decides how member states should run their railways why not ask what rail workers and the travelling public think of these plans which only benefit corporate interests?” Crow said.

The Hungarian Railway Workers Union (VSZ) postponed a strike last Thursday aimed at forcing the government to halt the planned closure of hospitals for employees of Hungarian State Railways (MAV). Hungary’s 2006 budget deficit is expected to be around 10 per cent, which is the largest in the EU in percentage terms. The government wants to slash this to 3 per cent, the magic number for euro adoption, by 2009.

In Paris, rail workers united against “liberalisation” plans which seek to feed the voracious private-sector monopolies aiming to dominate the environmentally and economically strategic rail sector across the EU.
As deadly rail disasters like Hatfield and Potters Bar have demonstrated, privatisation not only costs the taxpayer an arm and a leg, it is downright dangerous.

The never-ending demands of greedy rail privateers for profits and corporate welfare largesse has created an unenviable reputation for cost-cutting on infrastructure investment and operational safety. Even former French railways SNCF president Louis Gallois has said that “the English experience is not a great reference,” but that has not yet put any brakes on the unelected commission’s privatisation express train.

That is why rail workers from across the continent are uniting today to say No to EU diktats and No to rail privatisation.

Brian Denny is a spokesman for the Campaign Against Euro-Federalism An earlier version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star.

EU Steemroller

Alex Doherty — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:02:21 +0000

After the so-called “period of reflection” following the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution, Germany has announced that it will use its presidency of the EU to impose it anyway.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that her country’s presidency, which begins in January, will relaunch the discredited document.

“We need a constitutional treaty and we need it before the next European election,” she said. The election will be in 2009. Merkel will also work closely with Portugal and Slovenia, the next two nations to hold the EU presidency, to put the constitution in place after Berlin’s six-month stint ends in July.

Just to recap, this constitution would create a European army to carry out a single EU foreign policy, make euro membership compulsory, turn the EU into a single legal entity with its own unaccountable courts and police, enforce unfair trade deals and privatisation and abolish all powers associated with modern nation states.

After meeting European Commission president Jose Barroso, Merkel reiterated that the EU constitution should not be slimmed down to make it more acceptable to increasingly hostile EU voters. She has not specified how to sell the abolition of representative democracy, but is expected to produce some meaningless flam about the so-called “European social model.”

This relaunch has clearly emerged from a brainstorming session in Brussels. Former commission president Romano Prodi gave the game away when he grandly announced in the Financial Times this week that “last year was the year of mourning (for the constitution), this year is the year of reflection. Next year, will be the launching.”

To you and me, that is euro-speak for “last year, the constitution was rejected, this year, we ignored results and, in 2007, we will impose it anyway.”

EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom backed this deeply cynical strategy by confirming that “the commission would not like to depart too much from the constitutional treaty.”

However, the federalists are in a very difficult position amid divisions among themselves and growing public hostility to EU institutions and the synthetic single currency.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has described the constitution as a “grandiose project which didn’t come off,” in a clear sign that the British government is distancing itself from an unpopular project.

Wallstrom has demanded that the abolition of national vetoes be written into the text for the touchingly simple reason that, “if you start to open up, you open everything.”

Yet, even Germany’s own constitutional court has put off rubber-stamping the constitution after German MP Peter Gauweiler challenged parliamentary ratification on the grounds that it would deprive Berlin of its power. Moreover, Merkel’s cabinet approval last month of plans to turn the German conscript army into a global intervention force within the European Union also proved to be a disaster after a military scandal broke in the media the very next day.

Shocking photographs of Bundeswehr soldiers desecrating human skulls in Afghanistation, including an image of a soldier simulating oral sex, which were printed in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper has not endeared the German public to revanchist euro-militarism. Germany’s KSK special military forces are also facing a parliamentary investigation after being accused of torturing a German-born prisoner in Afghanistan and spiriting him away to spend over four years in Guantanamo Bay before being released.

There are already over 9,000 troops overseas in Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and Congo. The government argues that military capacity must be expanded to deploy 14,000 troops on at least five foreign imperialist adventures simultaneously. Ordinary Germans may see things differently.

The German political class is simply repeating what other EU elites are doing, ignoring domestic democratic aspirations in order to fulfil the euro-federalist agenda to build an anti-democratic superstate fit for corporate interests. But that is no easy task.

Just as the “liberal” proponents of military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere are increasingly bereft of any intellectual justification for endless war, while their leader George W Bush faces the wrath of the US public, so the federalists in Europe are being similarly exposed as they try to build an imperialist military empire in the image of the US.

For the left to confront these twin threats effectively, it could put forward a real alternative and argue for democracy, self-determination and peace not only in Iraq but across the EU as well.

Brian Denny is a member of The (UK) Campaign Against Euro-Federalism (CAEF) This article first appeared in the Morning Star.

Present Danger

eddie — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:56:15 +0000

It should come as no great surprise that Austrian Chancellor and current holder of the EU presidency Wolfgang Schuessel has ruled out making any “substantial” changes to the rejected EU constitution. He argues that the substance of the constitution, which was soundly trounced by French and Dutch voters last year, must remain unchanged, as “not a single head of state or government called into question the substance of the treaty.”

This mindset betrays the thinking within EU circles, which believes that EU elites must decide what is good for the people without actually asking anybody else. Schuessel claims that the “only way out” is to hold an EU-wide referendum on the constitution at the same time as the 2009 European Parliament elections. This would allow EU elites to confuse matters further and force member states into a nascent European superstate even if their electorates voted No.

In other words, as UK Prime Minister Tony Blair put it in the House of Commons last month, the EU constitution cannot proceed “unless there is an overturning of the French and Dutch No votes.” If the peoples of France and The Netherlands had proved more docile and backed the plans to create a deeply authoritarian country called Europe, all talk of “overturning” votes would have been quietly dropped.

Unfortunately, this open contempt for democracy is not new or confined to the failed EU constitution. On May 29 – exactly a year after the French had rejected the EU constitution – EU institutions agreed a new text for a controversial services directive, which promises an orgy of privatisation. The original text, first presented by commissioner Frits Bolkstein back in 2001, contained the so-called “country of origin” principle which exempted foreign companies from the laws of host countries that they operated in. Under these arrangements, minimum wage levels and health and safety standards could be ignored, allowing companies in member states with minimal labour laws to undercut national standards. In order to establish this new order, the directive gives the EU European Court of Justice (ECJ) the power to deem which national laws get in the way of service provision markets.

Despite the huge protests against this neoliberal charter which forced the removal of any mention of the offending country of origin principle, EU internal market commissioner Charles McCreevy has declared that the original intent of the directive remains. “Article 16 fully recognises the right to provide services on a cross-border basis and sets out clearly the kind of requirements on incoming service providers that have to be abolished in line with ECJ case law,” he told the Council of Ministers.

McCreevy has also indicated that the European Commission is working on legislation for sectors exempted from the directive, including health care, to be opened up to competition as well as reinserting the country of origin principle. “The commission which produced the ‘country of origin’ principle, which was removed from the final text of the directive, will clearly return to it as a matter of course,” he said.

This directive is, quite simply, a mechanism for introducing “free-market” competition to all services within the EU, creating the conditions for a race to the bottom for wages and conditions. This would increase “social dumping,” displacing workers with cheap foreign labour, undermine standards and feed the racist far-right.

The text must be now translated into over 20 languages and there will be a period of three years for member states to comply, despite the fact that no electorate in Europe has voted for it. TUC¹ policy, which was decided overwhelmingly at the 2005 Congress, is to oppose the EU constitution, the services directive and other neoliberal EU diktats which demand the privatisation of the railways, the post office and other essential public services.

Instead of Congress House pretending that this pernicious directive has been “de-fanged,” it is time that TUC policy was acted upon for the sake of all those who rely on decent public services.

The services directive is not yet a reality and trade unionists across Europe must ensure that it stays that way.

Brian Denny is a spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution. This article was first published in the Morning Star

Notes

1. Trades Union Congress, the only significant federation of British trade unions.

Europe's Pay Attack

eddie — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:27:28 +0000

Following the accession of eastern European states to the European Union in May 2004, Ireland, Britain and Sweden allowed unrestricted access to their labour markets. As a result, migrant labour has been rapidly moving west, while east European countries are experiencing population falls and an inevitable brain drain.

In Latvia alone, over 50,000 migrants have left a country of less than two million people. This has led to a loss of skilled labour and young people and an uncertain future of underdevelopment. In the three western states, meanwhile, wages have been dragged downwards in a process known as “social dumping,” as cheap foreign labour replaces the indigenous workforce and trade union bargaining power is severely weakened.

A Swedish case that is currently before the EU European Court of Justice (ECJ), highlights how EU diktats use cheap foreign labour to batter down national standards. Latvian company Laval was refurbishing a school in Vaxholm, outside Stockholm, using its own workers. The Swedish Building Workers Union (SBWU) demanded a collective agreement with exactly the same conditions as those that Swedish building firms normally sign. Laval refused and referred to a Latvian collective agreement instead. Latvian workers were being paid about a third of the Swedish wage without adequate insurance. As this was a clear case of social dumping, the SBWU, with the support of other unions, began industrial action.

Laval argued that this action was not in compliance with EU law and brought the case to the Swedish labour court, which decided to ask for a preliminary ruling by the ardently eurofederalist European Court of Justice. The court is to decide if industrial action in support of demands for a collective agreement is in compliance with European law, notably Article 49 on freedom of movement to provide services as well as the posting of workers directive.
While visiting Stockholm, EU internal market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy made clear that the Commission fully backed the Latvian company and the “social dumping” that it had created. “If member states continue to shield themselves from foreign company takeovers and competition, then I fear that the internal market will begin to dissolve. The question here is whether or not Sweden has implemented Article 49 in the treaty on free movement,” he said.

Understandably, the main Swedish trade union federation (LO), which backed euro membership in a 2002 referendum when the people rejected it, has indicated that it would withdraw support for Swedish EU membership altogether if the court rules against collective bargaining legislation.

LO vice-president Wanja Lundby-Wedin points out that industrial action is, by its very nature, an obstacle to the activities of a company and free movement. “However, the right to collective action is, together with freedom of association and the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements, recognised as a fundamental right in international conventions,” she says.

As a result, if the ECJ finds that the industrial action taken in Vaxholm is against EU law, it would have serious consequences and not just for Nordic industrial relations systems. “What, until now, have been regarded as fundamental rights of workers in all democratic states would be undermined in the name of free movement,” says Lundby-Wedin.

These problems have also arisen in Ireland, most notably in the Irish Ferries dispute, when the company announced plans to replace nearly 600 Irish seafarers with sweated labour from eastern Europe at considerably lower rates of pay. This provoked huge protests across Ireland and even Irish premier Bertie Ahern was left wringing his hands about the injustice of the situation. Yet the Irish government is supporting the introduction of the EU services directive which would actually accelerate “social dumping.”
Around a quarter of a million migrants, mainly from Poland and Latvia, now work in Ireland. Often, this is for cash pay considerably below the legal minimum wage. Ireland is now facing the problems that arise from merging an Irish labour force of just two million with an east European labour force of over 70 million. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is demanding measures to protect particularly unskilled workers where social dumping is threatening jobs. “It is an iron law of economics that an abundant supply of labour pushes down its cost. It is insulting people’s intelligence to pretend otherwise,” it says in a statement.

This theme was a source of satisfaction for Bank of England governor Mervyn King last year, when he declared that immigration from eastern Europe had “reduced wage inflation” in Britain. “In an economy that can call on unlimited supplies of migrant labour, the concept of output gap is meaningless,” he said. This phenomenon will be exacerbated when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU in 2007 or 2008.

A recent US congressional budget report also triumphantly declared that increased immigration of low-skilled workers from Mexico and central America had pushed down wages.
Across Europe, it is clear that we are witnessing large movement of capital eastwards as labour heads west. This is happening in accordance to the principles of the single European market, which allow the free movement of goods, capital, services and people, regardless of the consequences. The single market is a mechanism to remove the powers of nation states to control the movement of capital and people in the pursuit of corporate profit. At the same time, it truncates all forms of democracy, including rights to fair wages, working conditions, social protection and collective bargaining by trade unions. These policies also ultimately feed the poison of racism and fascism, the last refuge of the corporate beast in crisis.

EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso also plans openly to “lure talent” from the South and to “capitalise on the lucrative international education market” by offering top African students instant EU citizenship. Leading South African MP Kader Asmal slammed the plans as “another form of discreet colonialism.”

“EU countries assist in developing higher education in the South and then wish to take the cream of the PhD students by seducing them with the offer of citizenship. This is not a brain drain, but a destruction of the intellectual capital of the South,” he said.

It is clear that, to reverse this increasingly perverse situation, all nation states must have democratic control over immigration policy and to apply national legislation over employment. This includes the right to introduce laws in defence of migrant and indigenous workers as well as the removal of legislation restricting trade unions taking solidarity action.

The need for these measures was very evident in the recent Gate Gourmet dispute, when British Airways baggage handlers struck in support of Gate Gourmet workers. In the end, hundreds of Gate Gourmet workers, mainly British Asian women, were made redundant and replaced by eastern European workers on much lower wages.

Brian Denny is a spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution.