EU Constitution | ukwatch.net

What Part of ‘No’ Don’t They Understand?

Ellie Keen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:51:17 +0000

Some of the 27 member states of the European Union may soon find themselves subject to institutions their people have rejected: 1 January 2009 is the final date for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by the heads of state and government in December 2007 and already ratified by Hungary, Malta, Slovenia, Romania and France.

Nicolas Sarkozy once said that no true European and responsible politician could carry on as if nothing had happened after the French said no to the European constitution, that it was a message from the French people and must be heeded. But that was back in June 2006. Once he was president, he felt entitled to disregard this expression of the people’s will. He has just persuaded more than 75% of French MPs to adopt a treaty that is almost identical to the Constitutional Treaty that 54.68% of French voters rejected on 29 May 2005. The Socialist Party could have demanded another referendum; it had undertaken to do so, but abandoned the idea.

In an attempt to outmanoeuvre the many British eurosceptics before the 2004 European elections, Tony Blair also promised that the people would have an opportunity to vote directly on the new basic law for the EU. But his successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, preferred to leave it to parliament to ratify the Lisbon Treaty (1) .

The Constitutional Treaty was rejected by 62% of the Netherlands electorate in June 2005. Here too the task of ratifying the treaty approved by the European Council in December is to be entrusted to parliament, to avoid the danger of consulting voters who may not come up with the right answer. In Portugal, the Socialist Party announced during the parliamentary elections in February 2005 that the people would have a chance to vote on the draft Constitutional Treaty. But the prime minister, José Socrates, has now changed tack, on the pretext that circumstances have changed. This is a different treaty. A simplified one (2).

This casual brush-off is surprising when, in France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing admits that the Lisbon Treaty is based entirely on the draft Constitutional Treaty rejected in 2005: “The tools are largely the same. Only the order in which they are arranged in the tool-box has been changed” (3). A view confirmed in Britain where the Labour-dominated Foreign Affairs Committee noted that “there is no material difference between the two texts”. Only the Irish will be allowed a referendum, in May or June.

François Mitterrand said in 1983 that he had two ambitions, the construction of Europe and social justice. Is democracy preventing us from achieving the first ambition? The members of parliament who voted against the decision taken by universal suffrage are drawn more and more from privileged social classes, but the message from ordinary voters in France and the Netherlands was a resounding no. Is this significant? Jack Lang, former minister and expert in public law, may have the answer. In his view, there is no point in getting agitated about legal provisions that even the lawyers don’t understand. After all, he said, a treaty is only a treaty.

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.

A Voice for a Different Europe

Tim Holmes — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 04:37:27 +0000

EOIN Ó BROIN speaks to writer and social activist SUSAN GEORGE about how important the Irish referendum on the EU Treaty is for democrats and progressives across Europe. With her satirical political novel, The Lugano Report, acclaimed by no lesser figures than Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and George Monbiot, Susan George’s is a voice that should be heard.

“IT MAKES me feel as though I have been spat on. It makes me feel that they have nothing but contempt for the voters. It is as if we didn’t vote, our votes don’t count, our opinions don’t count and we are being told, ‘Just shut up and let the technocrats get on with it.’”

Susan George is not known to exaggerate. Her writing is careful and considered, well-researched and internationally respected. But the decision to repackage the defeated EU Constitution as the Reform Treaty has angered her. She feels “spat on”. That people in France will be denied the right to vote on the new treaty indicates, in her opinion, that EU political elites “have nothing but contempt for the voters”. Of course, she is “not totally surprised” because in, her view, “the EU is not a democratic organisation”.

Invited to Dublin by the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, Susan George spoke to a meeting of political activists in Liberty Hall in November. The meeting was the first in a series of events being organised by the campaign to highlight their concerns about the content of the Treaty and its implications for Ireland and the EU.

Although maybe not a household name in Ireland, Susan George is well-known in political and academic circles across the world. For three decades she has written and campaigned on issues of debt, global poverty, environmental protection and neo-liberalism.

Greenpeace International

From 1990 to 1994, George sat on the board of Greenpeace International. From 1999 to 2006 she was-vice president of ATTAC France (Association for Taxation of Financial Transaction to Aid Citizens). ATTAC promotes the taxation of international financial transactions in order to curb stock market speculation and provide revenue for development projects in the developing world.

She is currently chair of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, an international network of writers whose work seeks to contribute to social justice and who are active in various social movements.

Author of 14 books, translated into many languages, Susan George is best-known for her ground-breaking studies of global poverty, food insecurity and the impact of debt on the developing world. Since the publication of How The Other Half Dies (1976), she has been a trenchant critic of the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. More recently she has focused much of her attention on the World Trade Organisation and the impact of trade liberalisation on the world’s poor.

John Pilger described her 2003 book, The Lugano Report, as “an extraordinary, original book of exquisite irony, a kind of Catch-22 of capitalism”. Noam Chomsky said, “with acid wit and sombre truths, The Lugano Report brilliantly portrays, through the eyes of its imagined but all too realistic planners, a world that may be heading for deep trouble”. George Monbiot described the report as “a brilliant and innovative means of exposing a world order that serves only the strongest. A compelling satire, packed with information, this is the work of an author in complete control of her subject.”

The EU Constitution

In 2004, ATTAC France took a decision to oppose the EU Constitution. In their view, the treaty was promoting neo-liberalism, poverty, insecurity and mass-unemployment. On 29 May 2005, in the biggest ever turn-out for an EU-related poll, 55 per cent of French voters rejected the EU Constitution. The 70 per cent turn-out was in sharp contrast to the 45 per cent turn-out for the 2004 European parliamentary elections.

As vice-president of ATTAC France, Susan George played a central part in the campaign. Opinion polls had been indicating for some time that the ‘No’ side was gaining ground. There was widespread shock across Europe that France, one of the union’s founding members, rejected the Treaty. George explains the result as a consequence of “the spirit of the French Revolution”.

“It seemed to me to be in the long line of French movements on the left for human emancipation. Once people actually found out what was in the treaty it was quite natural to vote ‘No.’”

The French said ‘No’ because the treaty was “a blueprint for neo-liberal economics and privatisation, giving no protection to public services and very little protection for the environment”.

The Reform Treaty

Following the rejection of the treaty by the French and then the Dutch, the European Commission announced a “period of reflection”. Eighteen months later, the Council of Europe agreed the Reform Treaty, containing 96 per cent of the articles of the EU Constitution. George believes that, during the intervening period:

“The European Council and Commission were trying to figure out the best way to mask the fact that they were going to try and shove the same thing down our throats. You can’t just say that the French and the Dutch voted wrong so we’re going to hand them the same text again. They had to find a way to hide what they were doing.”

That the Reform Treaty is almost identical to the EU Constitution is not in doubt. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, speaking to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in July 2007, said:

“In terms of content, the proposals remain largely unchanged – they are simply presented in a different way.” Giscard d’Estaing, former President of France, was chair of the convention that drew up the Constitution.

As a life-long campaigner for trade justice, George is particularly concerned about the implications of the Reform Treaty for the developing world.

“The relationship between developed Europe and the global south is going to be profoundly changed,” she believes. Articles promoting unfettered international trade and transferring power for international trade negotiations to the EU “would enable the EU to push through exactly the kind of treaty that Peter Mandleson is negotiating right now with the African Caribbean and Pacific Countries, 78 of the poorest countries of the world”. The European Commission agenda of seeking to open up developing world markets to European corporations, irrespective of the impact of such policies on the world’s poor would be strengthened if the Reform Treaty is passed.

“The EU will use these new powers in the Reform Treaty to do exactly what he pleases,” says George, “and people from Trócaire and other development organisations can complain all they like to the Irish Government but the Irish Government is not going to be able to do anything about it.”

George is also dismissive of those who argue that the Reform Treaty is Europe’s best hope of defending the gains of Social Europe in the face of globalisation. “I don’t see how anybody can argue that,” George says in exasperation. “There is not a single word about Social Europe in the Treaty. On the contrary, this is a treaty to enrich the elites further. It is a treaty that is going to continue to crush democracy. And it is a treaty that is going to break down the capacity of the state to provide for its citizens.”

George contends that the motivations behind the drafters of the treaty are best summarised by liberal economist Adam Smith’s famous phrase: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.”

Despite strong opposition to the Reform Treaty, Susan George cannot be described as anti-European. In her 2004 book, Another World is Possible If… she argued the case for a strengthened Social Europe as a global counterweight to US-led corporate globalisation and militarisation.

Rejecting the Reform Treaty for George is a crucial aspect of her alternative.

“I want to open up some space. We have to keep saying no until they get the point and we can sit down and have a real discussion about the future of Europe, one which would include electing a convention which would draft a new treaty but only after a lot of debate.”

She adds:

“Europe ought to be an alternative model to the United States, promoting social solidarity, human development and peace.”

With opinion polls indicating that 62 per cent of the Southern Irish electorate is undecided on the Reform Treaty, Susan George’s arguments are a reminder that opposition to the EU and opposition to the Reform Treaty are not the same thing.

• Susan George’s new books, We The Peoples of Europe (Pluto) and Culture in Chains: How the Religious and Secular Right Captured America (Polity), will be published in 2008.