Lisbon treaty | ukwatch.net

A dead end for the EU?

eddie — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:19:22 +0000

Since the 1980s the main strategy adopted by the leaders of the European Union has been to pursue market-based economic integration to the increasing exclusion of other, political or social, initiatives. The hope has been that the emergence of a powerful integrated economy would provide a foundation for eventual steps towards greater political unity.

At first this strategy seemed to enjoy considerable success – reforms aimed at consolidating Europe-wide markets and at reinforcing competition did give an important impetus to institutional development, especially with the successful introduction of the euro and the European Central Bank. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet bloc permitted an eastward expansion of the EU, which has helped bring its membership from 12 states at the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 up to 27 today. There are signs, however, that the drive for market-based integration is losing momentum. In particular, the Lisbon strategy, which set ambitious targets for economic growth through market-oriented reforms, is now widely seen as a failure. And the EU’s consistent sacrifice of social objectives to the overriding priority of market-led economic integration has tended to deprive it of popular support and political legitimacy. The rejection of the Reform Treaty in the Irish Referendum, which blocks institutional change in the EU, is the latest evidence of this.

It is argued here that it will be very difficult for the EU to change direction and to start to correct the democratic and social imbalances of its structures and policies. But such a correction is nevertheless indispensable, because if these imbalances are not corrected the whole integration project will become increasingly fragile and increasingly exposed to populist challenges.

The four freedoms

Many commentators have identified the key imbalances in the EU. Sometimes they have referred to ‘negative’ integration (the removal of barriers to market exchange) running ahead of ‘positive’ integration (common policies and institutional construction). The terminology used by Fritz Scharpf is more exact: he speaks of ‘market creation’ running ahead of ‘market correction’, because he recognises that many active, ‘positive’, measures are indeed necessary to integrate markets.[1] The point is that there seems to be little concern, at EU level, to prevent or compensate for the adverse social consequences of market processes.

Essentially the same point is often made in terms of a ‘social deficit’ in the EU. In the sphere of economics and market competition, hard and fast rules are laid down; clear legal entitlements and obligations are established; member state interventions are decisively constrained. In the social sphere, however, there are declarations of principle, and the non-binding ‘guidelines’ which emerge from the ‘open method of coordination’, but few effective initiatives. The imbalance is structural and guaranteed by the EU’s budget, which is so small as to rule out any effective redistributive measures.

To many observers, the frequently mentioned ‘democratic deficit’ is closely related to the same imbalances. The way decisions are made in the EU strengthens executive power as against the power of legislatures. This is because the Commission, the EU’s executive, controls the policy agenda; and the Council of Ministers, the key decision-making body, represents member state governments. The European Parliament, although it has been more ready recently to challenge the Council and the Commission, cannot counterbalance their power. It has legitimacy problems of its own because most voters choose candidates in terms of national, not European, politics and because turnout in European elections is now very low, having fallen continuously from 63 per cent in the first European elections in 1979 to 46 per cent in 2004. In the absence of effective Europe-wide political parties and social movements, business lobbies have even more influence on EU-level decisions than on those taken by member states.

The clearest and most convincing explanation for these imbalances and ‘deficits’ is that put forward by Phillipe Schmitter.[2] The main features of the EU as it actually exists, although they do not inspire any strong allegiance from European citizens, are in fact tremendously advantageous to corporations active in Europe. As the basis for market integration the EU confers four rights, the ‘four freedoms’, on all economic agents: rights to move goods, services, capital and labour anywhere in its territory, without obstacles at the frontiers between member states and without hindrance from member state authorities.

These are justiciable rights, which will be upheld not only by the EU’s Court of Justice but by national courts as well, so that if a corporation is prevented from exercising its economic rights it can usually obtain a remedy from the courts in its home country, even against its own overnment. At the same time, a central responsibility of the Commission, as the EU’s executive, is to safeguard the integrity of the markets based on these four freedoms, and to propose legislation to remove any remaining obstacles to free exchange and any new barriers which may emerge. These policies and legislation on the internal market are completely within the competence of the EU; decisions are by majority voting in Council and Parliament; member states cannot veto these decisions.

Of course it is normally corporations rather than individuals which exercise these freedoms; essentially they guarantee that corporations are free to do business throughout the territory of the Union. One way to understand the ‘four freedoms’ is to refer to Marx’s account of the capitalist process. This begins with money in the form of capital, which is then exchanged for the goods or commodities that constitute the means of production, and for labour power; the production process then follows, in which labour services are performed, giving rise to the outputs which constitute the commodity product; finally, the sale of these outputs restores the original money capital, now augmented by profit. The four freedoms mean that no barriers to any phase of this process can be erected by any member state or at any national frontier.

After nearly sixty years of increasing economic interdependence, the commercial, industrial and financial interests linked to market integration are immense. These interests are by no means all opposed to those of ordinary citizens; on the contrary, they usually serve the interests of citizens as consumers and employees. But it is crucial to note that the four freedoms are in practice exercised by corporations, and generally by the larger corporations, which are most likely to be active in more than one member state. This means that corporate Europe is deeply committed to the EU and to its continuation in its present form.

Social Europe

The positive assertion of economic rights is indispensable to the Europe of the corporations. But the absence of positive social rights and of integrated regulations and interventions, together with the absence of a unified tax structure, is almost as crucial. Most of these issues remain firmly within the competence of the member states: each of them is free to determine its own social policies, to finance them with its own taxes, and to regulate business activity in order to protect consumers, workers and the environment (although economic interventions at national level tend to be either inhibited or prohibited by the competition rules of the EU).

This state of affairs establishes regime competition among the member states and makes possible regime shopping by the corporations. And it should be noted here that the EU is, at least for corporations, an open economic space: US, Japanese and indeed virtually all corporations in the world are free to establish themselves in any member state and then to conduct business on the same basis as European corporations. Thus the regime competition associated with the EU is global in character – member state governments strive to attract investment and employment onto their own territories by cutting corporate taxation, deregulating business activities and making labour markets and employment law as ‘flexible’ as possible. This process does not always become a ‘race to the bottom’ – there is usually significant resistance within the member states – but it limits redistributive policies and impairs the social control of business activity.

It was not always thus. In the early years of the European project some powerful employers, particularly in Germany, sought to tighten regulatory standards and improve working conditions in other member states. They were concerned to avoid ‘social dumping’, competition from other member states based on lower employment standards or looser regulation. Today, the larger German corporations take a different view – they are much more likely to use their increasing presence in other countries to press for lower standards in Germany rather than the other way round. A dramatic example last year was a demand by Siemens for a longer work week from its German employees, without any increase in weekly wages, under the threat of a move to Hungary. Today the trade unions still sometimes contest social dumping but the theme is no longer of interest to employers.

The suggestion here, that the absence of any real social Europe is essential to the way the EU functions, contradicts the rhetoric of EU leaders, which makes much of the ‘European Social Model’ and continues to insist that there are profound differences between European and US varieties of capitalism.

There has indeed been a ‘social dimension’ to European integration from the very start in the 1950s. But the social content of integration has been considerably attenuated over the years since the Maastricht Treaty. The refusal of the largest and richest member states to expand the EU budget is one reason for this: although the accession of new member states formerly in the Soviet bloc has greatly widened the disparities in income within the EU, there are no significant resources available for redistribution. In the early 1950s the European Social Fund had the realistic aim of compensating those who lost out from the integration of coal and steel industries: in the event, mostly Belgian miners, who received reasonable pensions and severance payments. Today the Fund is little more than symbolic.

The notion of a ‘European Social Model’ is an abstraction from the specific social models of individual (Western European) countries. There are indeed some family resemblances among these models, but they are also very different, and the EU has little influence over them, since most aspects of social policy remain very firmly in the hands of the member states. This situation is in part a response to the success of the EU in the economic sphere; the member states have given up most of their responsibility for economic policy – the competition rules and the four freedoms prevent most interventions to strengthen their economies; and, for those that use the euro, monetary policy is centralised in the ECB and there are tight limits on taxation and public spending. This makes member states guard their control over social policies very jealously. In an economic emergency these are the only instruments available to them.

In recent years the EU has sought to influence, without controlling, these member state social policies through the ‘open method of coordination’ – a series of discussions among policy communities resulting in non-binding recommendations to governments. This does not seem to have had much effect on policy practice, but it is interesting that one theme pushed by the Commission in such debates is the ‘modernisation of the European Social Model’. This is code for the partial privatisation of pension systems, which has for some time been a priority of the Commission, as of the OECD and other international bodies.

In fact the national character of Europe’s social models calls into question the Commission’s claim that the social situation in the EU is preferable to that in the US. It is certainly true that there is much less inequality in the EU than in the US, if we make the comparison with the US one country at a time. But if we take the EU as a whole the reverse is the case: the US is much more egalitarian than the EU: although there are sharp regional disparities in the US, there is nothing that begins to compare with the gap between, say, Lithuania and the Netherlands, or between Slovakia and Denmark. The US has limited but effective mechanisms for regional redistribution in the working of the Federal income tax and the social security system; there is nothing comparable in the EU. While most Europeans take their own country as their frame of reference, it is logical to make comparisons between the US and individual countries; but if one ceased to do so and started to take a Europe-wide view, then the EU would be seen to be marked by extreme inequalities. Thus the claims made for ‘Social Europe’ depend on the non-existence of a European society.[3]

‘Flexicurity’ and the retreat from labour market regulation

The account of the EU given here so far is of a simple dichotomy: the economy and the rules of the market are controlled by the Union; social policy by the member states. The sphere of employment regulation and labour market policies is an intermediate zone – member states defi ne their own positions, but subject to some general standards promulgated through EU directives, and to non-binding recommendations. This probably corresponds to the market logic of the integration project: if member states had a completely free hand they might use labour market policies to interfere with the working of competition; on the other hand, a centralised labour market policy at EU level would be very unwelcome to the big employers, who much prefer regime competition.

In any case, an important body of EU labour law has gradually emerged, and, although stronger measures might be desirable, it has worked to strengthen employee rights and to sustain working conditions in member states where national employment law is weak. The main fields concerned are health and safety, gender equality and the rights of workers on ‘atypical contracts’ – such as agency workers, part-time workers or those on fixed-term contracts.

However, the Commission seems recently to have changed its position on labour market regulation.[4] Several recent initiatives indicate that, under pressure from the employers, it is now seeking to dilute existing employment regulations and to intensify cross-border competition in labour markets. Examples of this shift include proposals to weaken the working time directive and the posted workers directive (which accords workers temporarily sent by their employer to another member state at least some of the employment rights which have been established in that state); and there has also been an attempt – so far blocked by the European Parliament – to deregulate employment conditions in enterprises providing services in other member states (this was one aspect of the Bolkestein draft directive which was strongly resisted by trade unions).

This general change in position is confirmed by recent policy documents from the Commission, on the ‘modernisation’ of labour law and on ‘flexicurity’. This last term denotes in principle a supposed reconciliation of ‘flexible’ labour markets and economic security for employees, but its main practical implication seems to be a drive to weaken standard labour contracts, in place of previous attempts to strengthen the protection of employees with non-standard, ‘atypical’ contracts.

Thus in employment regulation – one of the few spheres where a genuine European level social policy might be said to exist – the current trend is to reduce standards and to intensify competition among workers.

The Lisbon agenda

The priority given to economic objectives by EU leaders, however, is very far from achieving the dynamic economic results which they promised. Although the Lisbon Agenda – which was meant to guide the EU through the first decade of the new century – took as its slogan ‘the knowledge-based economy’, it was essentially a business oriented programme, heavily influenced by the dot.com boom in the US, which was at its height at the time. A generally deregulatory approach could, it was believed, permit Europe to match or surpass American performance in business start-ups and productivity. The absurd objective was to make the EU ‘the easiest and cheapest place to do business in the world’.

The Lisbon Agenda did make a nod towards the ‘European Social Model’, but social policy was clearly subordinated to market-led integration; the contributions of social policy would be to promote skills and increase employment. A central thrust of the strategy was to build integrated financial markets in Europe, which would resemble their US models as closely as possible. Financial integration was not in itself an irrational goal, but the uncritical enthusiasm with which it was pursued threatened to replicate the worst features of the US financial system without significantly accelerating European economic development. (The recent preoccupation of the branch of the Commission responsible for the internal market has been to argue for an integrated EU mortgage market – again along US lines; this policy at least seems unlikely to survive the current fi nancial turmoil, which is rooted in US mortgages.)

Very soon it became clear that there was no chance of achieving the ambitious targets of the Lisbon agenda for output and employment growth.[5] On the one hand the conservative macroeconomic stance of the European Central Bank, and of several member state governments, especially that of Germany, did not permit the kind of expansion which was envisaged. On the other, the collapse of the dot.com bubble made it clear that the immediate potential of the new technologies to accelerate economic development had been greatly exaggerated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thus the priority given to corporate interests in the EU by no means ensures rapid development even in the private sector: the public investments and interventions needed to reduce uncertainties, lower external costs and ensure sustainability are neglected in its key strategy. And in their absence, its largest economies have been close to stagnation for over ten years.

Treaties, constitutional and otherwise

The failure of the EU to secure the relatively minor changes to its rules and functioning which were included in the draft Constitutional Treaty illustrate its continuing loss of legitimacy. The two electorates who rejected the treaty in referendums were those of France and the Netherlands, countries which participated in European construction from the start, and where there was in general considerable support for it. Objections to the Treaty were of two types, although they often overlapped.

Firstly, there were political concerns about the lack of democracy in EU structures, both as regards the balance between EU powers and those at member state level, and regarding the preponderance of the executive in EU decision making. (There are sharp differences, however, among those with such objections: for some, often but by no means only on the right, the necessary response is to decentralise power to the member states; others believe that a larger measure of centralised power would be acceptable on the condition that it be exercised in a more democratic way.)

The second main objection – by those most concerned with the subordination of social needs to economic objectives, usually on the left – was that the Treaty gave constitutional status to the present economic rules of the EU – that is, to the four freedoms, as well as to the extremely narrow and restrictive macroeconomic regime centred on the European Central Bank. Repeatedly the Treaty called for ‘free and undistorted competition’ – limiting the scope for interventionist economic policies at both EU and national level. It gave only the most minimal and grudging recognition of the need to exempt public services from the rule of market forces, and required, wherever possible, open competition to provide such services, as well as stating that EU interests must not be seriously affected by public service provision. It eliminated long-standing safeguard clauses that have allowed member states to control capital flows in emergency situations.

When ratifi cation of the Constitutional Treaty was blocked by the Dutch and French referendums, the EU faced technical diffi culties, in that it had included certain changes to its procedures that were necessary to deal with the big increase in the number of member states. Some minimal, essentially uncontroversial, revisions to the existing Treaties would always have been necessary to deal with this issue, and with the need to organise common actions on emerging issues such as global warming.

But the ‘Reform Treaty’ that is proposed as a replacement (sometimes known as the Lisbon Treaty) goes far beyond such revisions. Its takes a different form from the Constitutional Treaty, in that it amends rather than replaces previous EU Treaties.[6] But the content of the two Treaties is – in the view of those who drafted them – virtually identical. The hope was that, by presenting things in this way and by giving up the expression ‘constitution’ (as well as by dropping reference to a few symbols such as the twelve-star flag and the Ode to Joy), the Treaty could be presented as a relatively minor change, hardly needing to be endorsed by referendum. In many member states (including the UK) this seems to have been the outcome, but this tactic failed when the Irish referendum rejected the Treaty.

This situation reflects the political problems of the EU in two ways: firstly in the dogmatic refusal to alter the substantive policies of the Union in the face of both policy failure and popular discontent; secondly in the attempt to evade that discontent by procedural methods which narrow and restrict public debate.

Strength and fragility of the EU

An early head of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein, remarked that the European Union (or at that stage, Economic Community) was a creature of law. He spoke truer than he knew, for in the 1950s European law was only certain to prevail when all six of the then member states were agreed that it should do so. Thus the law would be enforced against corporations or individuals, but when states had serious differences these were nearly always resolved by political negotiations rather than by litigation.

This situation changed only slowly up to the 1980s. But then member states became increasingly sceptical about economic interventions at national level, and increasingly willing to accept market outcomes. This meant that they were ready to accept a much more legalistic version of European construction, in which the competition rules of the EU nearly always prevailed, even when this required changes in member state policies. This strengthening of EU law, which relates above all to the four freedoms, is, as pointed out above, very much in the interests of the large corporations, since it means that they can buy, sell, produce and invest wherever in the EU they choose to do so; and that if any member state government tries to prevent them they will have an effective remedy not just in the EU Court of Justice, but usually in the national courts, including those of the member state concerned.[7]

This situation is the basis of the strong support given to the EU by corporate Europe; and the wealth and influence of the corporations in turn strengthen the EU. The same interests, however, tend to discourage any strong initiatives beyond competition and market integration, since centralised policies on taxation, employment conditions or social provision would be very unwelcome to the corporations. It is not suggested here that there is a complete opposition between the interests of the corporations and those of the citizens; but the interests of citizens, both collective and individual, are often much wider than those of the big enterprises. Yet the way the EU is presently organised, and the way it functions, work against these wider interests and prevent their effective expression.

This dominance of corporate interests and of the competition rules which underpin them, is, however, extremely fragile. There are now twenty-seven member states, and only consistent good behaviour by every branch of government in each of them preserves the smooth working of the EU. If one member state court refused to enforce EU law, if one member state parliament refused to write an EU directive into national law, or if one government defied the EU rules in a determined way, the Union would be faced with a political crisis. Obviously some such challenges could be overcome by putting pressure on the country concerned, but this would be more difficult if the issue mobilised public opinion against the EU, if the country concerned was a large one, or if more than one country was involved. And the working of EU rules, both as regards open markets and competition and as regards interest rates and often tight constraints on public spending, is often so harsh as to make this kind of revolt always possible, and in the long run probably unavoidable.

Indeed there are already cases where EU law has reached its limits and solutions have had to be sought in political compromise. Germany, for example, repeatedly violated the expenditure limits of the Stability Pact. In legal principle the Commission could have imposed a fine on the German government; in political practice this was and is inconceivable. Again, Sweden refuses to adopt the euro although, unlike Denmark, it does not have a legal opt-out permitting it to do so. But it is impossible to enforce Sweden’s Treaty obligations in this case because it is clear that the Swedes would throw out any government that proposed to take them into the monetary union. Here again the model of integration by law reaches a political limit.

It would be desirable if opposition to the present direction of European construction and the assertion of different priorities, were to take a rational and unified form – if social movements, progressive governments and European electors successfully contested the actual integration model and imposed a wider and more balanced one. In practice, however, effective challenges to the EU seem likely to take the more negative form of national revolts, with a populist character, involving right-wing as well as left-wing political forces. These revolts might be in many respects highly dysfunctional, but they would still be a consequence of the persistent imbalances in European construction, and of the persistent refusal of EU leaderships to make a necessary change in course.

It still seems possible, however, that a change in course can come about in a more constructive way than through a series of revolts in particular member states; that leaderships will respond to the drastic loss of legitimacy signalled by falling turnouts in European elections and repeated defeats in national referendums. But in any case the present path of the EU – reinforcing inequalities, rendering employment ever more precarious and undermining the provision of public goods and social services – is eroding the political basis for European integration, and seems only to lead to a dead end.

Notes

1. Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic?, Oxford University Press 1999.

2. Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union and Why Bother Lanham 2000.

3. See for example the Commission’s own annual report, The Social Situation in the European Union.

4. Commission of the European Communities, Green Paper: Modernising Labour Law to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century, COM (2006) 708 final.

5. In spite of this virtually complete failure, the Commission, in its usual Brezhnevite way, reaffi rms the essence of the strategy. See Working Together for growth and Jobs – next steps in implementing the revised Lisbon strategy, SEC 2005.

6. For this reason it is somewhat harder to study, since the Reform Treaty merely lists amendments, and one has to compare the existing and amended articles to see what is meant. The consolidated text of the
EU Treaties as amended can be found at http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20080205132101/www.fco.gov.uk/Fi….

7. For the role of law in European integration, see the writings of J.J. Weiler, especially The Constitution of Europe – do the New Clothes have an Emperor? Cambridge University Press 1998.

EDA: Arms for War and Profit

eddie — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:30:13 +0000

One of the many surprises thrown up by the Lisbon Treaty debate was that the European arms industry had managed to set up shop within the EU. Not only were we being obliged to spend more on armaments [“Art. 28(3): Member States shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities”], but an entire EU agency dedicated to bolstering the defence sector and the arms trade was being brought into an EU Treaty.

How had this happened? Where had this European Defence Agency (EDA) come from? And what was the attitude of the Irish Government to all of this?

There are a number of excellent reports by the human rights group, Statewatch, and the Transnational Institute outlining how the European arms merchants got into the EU shop: it was via the EU Commission ‘kitchen’. There are over 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels, mostly representing business interests, and many of them are invited by the Commission to sit on special policy committees. One such group was the EU Advisory Group on Aerospace. Nearly half its members were aerospace industry chairmen, including those from Europe’s four largest arms companies. Their ‘Strategic Aerospace Review for the 21st Century’, published in July 2002, called for the creation of a ‘level playing field so Europe’s industry can compete fairly in world markets’. Ultimately, what was required was the establishment of a: “European armaments policy to provide structure for European defence and security equipment markets, and to allow a sustainable and competitive technological and industrial base”.

The EU Commission embraced this proposal: good for business, good for EU military ambitions. By the spring of 2003, it had produced Towards an EU Defence Equipment Policy, incorporating the Aerospace Review concepts and calling for the creation of an Agency to oversee these developments. The very first draft of the EU Constitution in 2003 contained provisions for a European Armaments, Research and Military Capabilities Agency, (later renamed the European Defence Agency). It was not surprising that such an agency would be part of the new EU Constitution, which was on track to boost the EU’s military dimension. Indeed, during the preparatory work for the Constitution by the EU Convention, thirteen ‘expert’ witnesses were called before the Working Group on Defence including a General, military reps from the EU and member-states, two reps from the arms industry, and President of the European Defence Industries Group. The working group never asked to hear from civil society representatives.

Measures to boost EU military capabilities pre-dated the EU Constitution. Member States in 2003 promised to develop their military capabilities to an agreed state of readiness by 2010 (the so-called Headline Goal), so the EU could ‘respond with rapid and decisive action ….to the whole spectrum of crisis management operations’ included in earlier EU Treaties. Under the 2004 Irish Presidency, the European Council gave its final blessings to these Goals, adding that the EU must consider pre-emptive actions and have the ‘ability to conduct concurrent operations … simultaneously at different levels of engagement’. This was all underpinned by the European Security Strategy authored by EU Foreign Affairs and Security chief, Javier Solana, in 2003.

The EU Constitution would have leant a helping hand to these military improvements. When it was defeated in 2005, its military provisions were fully incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty. Lisbon spells out the EDA’s role in ensuring that the EU is fighting fit. Not only will the Agency be responsible for supporting the defence sector and defence R&D, but it will identify operational requirements for the EU’s developing military force, assist in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy, and monitor the improvement of EU military capabilities. It has a special responsibility for the new Permanent Structured Cooperation provision in Lisbon, a mechanism allowing certain member states to form mini-military alliances within the EU’s structures for the EU’s ‘more demanding’ missions. The EDA is to ensure that these states are fully equipped to carry out these demanding missions.

The EDA has no misapprehensions about the importance of its role. It shouldn’t have. It already exists. So eager were the EU Powers That Be to have its services, that the EDA didn’t have to wait for the Constitution’s blessings. It was up and running from July 2004, when approved by the EU Foreign Ministers. In other words, with the Constitution defeated and Lisbon knocked down by Ireland, the EDA has still not been placed into the EU Treaties. The EU’s Foreign Affairs Supremo, Javier Solana, is head of the EDA. Its steering group consists of the EU defence ministers and the EU Commission.

The self-assured Agency even produced a Long Term Vision Statement in 2006, outlining some of the tasks it sees before it: “The Headline Goal and European Security Strategy envisage a broad and significantly challenging set of potential missions. These include separation of warring factions by force, on the sort of scale that would have been required had a ground invasion of Kosovo in 1999 turned out to be necessary. They may also encompass stabilising operations in a failed state …. So the demands of today’s European Security and Defence Policy are already potentially deep and comprehensive.”...“Future joint forces will need agility at the operational and tactical levels as well as the strategic. Once deployed, EU Member States’ joint forces may need to be able to operate at will within all domains and across the depth and breadth of the operational area, possessing combinations of stealth, speed, information superiority, connectivity, protection, and lethality. They may need to operate in complex terrain and inside cities.”

These EU joint forces are already under development, including a 60,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force capable of intervening far beyond the EU’s borders. The French Presidency next month hopes to speed up that process. Meanwhile, the EU is already in action with a number of rapidly deployable Battlegroups, consisting of up to 2500 troops, with capabilities for high intensity operations. NATO has described the Battlegroups as “providing the EU with ‘ready to go’ military capability to respond to crises around the world”. Ireland has been a member of the Nordic Battlegroup since 2006.

This Vision Statement was also written with the knowledge that the EU’s military tasks had been expanded by the EU Constitution (and now Lisbon). In addition to the humanitarian, peace-keeping/peace-enforcement tasks of previous treaties, there are new provisions for joint disarmament operations, post-conflict stabilization and combating terrorism in countries outside the EU. There are also mutual defence and solidarity clauses, with the latter dealing with joint actions against terrorism, including the need to counter perceived ‘threats’ as well as attacks.

Ireland: eager members of the EDA

Ireland joined the EDA immediately, in July 2004. There was no Dail debate and no vote. The decision was taken by the Government. Defence Minister Willie O’Dea stated the EDA was an intergovernmental agency within the framework of the EU’s European Security and Defence Policy and that membership didn’t oblige or commit Ireland to do anything other than contribute to the EDA’s budget. The fact that the EDA would be in the business of promoting armaments and boosting the arms trade didn’t seem to bother the Minister or the Irish Government.

It is within the Lisbon Treaty provisions concerning the EDA that Member States are obliged to improve their military capabilities. EDA Head Javier Solana has made it clear that there is an ‘absolute requirement for us to spend more, spend better and spend more together’. In 2008, Ireland will be making a financial contribution of €327,000 to the EDA. In addition, Ireland has, since 2007, been participating in the Joint Investment Programme on Force Protection. This has a budget of €55 million over 3 years, to which Ireland is committing €700,000. (Research areas include: Stand off detection of Chemical, Biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosives; Defence options for airborne threats; Scope spotting and sniper detection: Research on new materials for force protection).

There are basic questions which must be asked about Ireland’s involvement with the EDA. Historically, Irish Governments – in keeping with popular sentiment — have not been proponents of the arms industry. Ministers have invariably denied the existence of any indigenous Irish arms sector (despite evidence from Amnesty International and Afri to the contrary). Indeed, for over thirty years, Irish state boards promoting research and enterprise, such as Enterprise Ireland, have been bound by legislation stating they: “shall not engage in or promote any activity of a primarily military relevance without the prior approval of the Government”

The Department of Defence’s Strategy Statement, 2008-2010, extols the EDA as providing “opportunities of interest to Irish-based enterprises and researchers” and states: “We will work closely with Enterprise Ireland to exploit potential research and commercial opportunities arising”.

Ireland’s relations with the developing world have prompted concerns about arms spending and the global arms trade. But the EDA is focused on increasing global competitiveness for EU arms industries, particularly in relation to the United States, a direction reinforced by the EU Commission in its 2007 “A Strategy for a Stronger and More Competitive European Defence Industry”. Already, EU companies are responsible for over €80 billion a year in arms sales.

The EDA and Lisbon

Since the EDA already exists, one might ask: how has defeating Lisbon affected that organization? There are at least four implications.

1. Without Lisbon, Member States are not legally obliged to progressively improve their military capabilities;

2. The EDA has still not been placed into the EU Treaties;

3. The new expanded military tasks have not been given Treaty status and the EDA should not be promoting capabilities, etc. in these areas;

4. The provision of Permanent Structured Cooperation — in which the EDA was to have played a major role — has not been approved.

How Ireland ever joined the EDA without parliamentary debate or approval is incomprehensible. Maybe now, post-Lisbon, questions will begin to be asked about Ireland’s involvement in this agency and about the entire EU military project.

Carol Fox is Research Officer for PANA, the Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance.

European style: nobody loves it

Ellie Keen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:12:09 +0000

Imagine a man on trial for his life. The jury brings in a verdict of not guilty, so the judge immediately invites counsel for the prosecution to complete his closing speech, and then the accused is found guilty and sentenced to death. The Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty on 12 June by a large majority. The treaty cannot come into force unless it is adopted by all 27 member states of the European Union, but most European leaders immediately announced that the ratification process would continue, yet promised to “respect the will” of the Irish people (see “Ireland votes no”). Europe is used to attacks on the sovereign power of the people by their overlords. That is now its style, even if it likes to be seen as the kingdom of democracy on earth.

The Irish rejected a “simplified” treaty so big the prime minister, Brian Cowen, confessed he had not managed to read it cover to cover. A member of the European parliament said the Irish reminded him of a “people’s democracy”. Another remarked: “It’s no accident that dictators love a referendum” (1) and the president of the European parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, concluded: “The Irish no vote cannot be the last word” (2). So there will be a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and possibly a third. Voting in Dublin will continue until the result is a yes, because that is what the other states want, those states where the electorate has not been consulted at all.

Blame the Irish! Ungrateful, selfish, working-class militants, incapable of the generosity and unselfishness shown by their rulers. Except when they vote them in and give them a mandate to carry out “bold reforms”. No need for a second ballot then. The Irish are thoroughly European in that respect.

Something has gone wrong. The European style has been exported and sold on the strength of claims to peace, prosperity, justice and equality. It has produced charming posters with blue skies, loving mothers and happy babies; it has an army of journalists and artists campaigning for it; Europe is being created by symposiums and meetings. But nobody waves its flag. Its identity seems to be so insubstantial that all it can think of to put on its banknotes is the cost of living.

It talks about peace but prepares to join the US forces in dubious wars. It talks about progress but deregulates employment. It talks about culture but produces a television without frontiers directive that will result mainly in more advertising slots. It talks about ecology and safe food but lifts an 11-year ban on imports of US chickens washed in chlorine (3). It talks about freedom but adopts a shameful directive under which foreigners without the right papers may be held in detention centres for 18 months before being expelled, including minors and even unaccompanied minors.

Keeping Europe’s promise called for harmonisation at the highest level: freedom, employment law, progressive taxation, independence. Instead, the gains achieved by the most advanced states have been diminished in the name of unification and we are left with extended detention, free trade and Atlanticism. This has produced the beginnings of a social Europe, the Europe that says no. Noting that in Ireland a majority of women, people under 29, and workers firmly rejected the proposed text, a columnist in The Economist observed that: “A 19th-century-style electoral roll, restricted to older, male property-owners, would have produced a handsome yes for Lisbon” (4). But what kind of Europe can we hope to construct if we go back to the property qualification?

Another Treaty That Won't Lie Down

Ellie Keen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:37:53 +0000

The Irish government, obliged by its own national constitution to put the question of the Lisbon Treaty to the vote, will win little sympathy from its ‘partners’ in the European Union.

Those national leaders who did not dare to put the matter to the vote, and those who were bullied out of doing so by more powerful actors in the EU drama – the Commission and the big member states – will breathe a sigh of relief that they cannot be blamed for this farce.

When EU leaders gather for their regular summit meeting in Brussels at the end of this week, the Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is going to have some explaining to do.

The instructions from Brussels were quite clear.

A second round of ‘No’ votes must be avoided at all costs.

You might compare the Taoiseach’s position to that of a minor gang leader required to explain to a mafia boss why takings are down from his protection rackets.

He can whinge all he likes about constitutional obligations, but having caused this mess he will be expected to offer a feasible way out of the brown stuff into which the leaders gathered in Brussels find themselves sinking.

Of course, there is only one honest, democratic way out, and that is to abandon the whole project.

The constitutional position is quite clear.

The Lisbon Treaty, like the virtually identical Constitutional Treaty before it, is dead.

And yet what is almost certain to happen is that a set of clearly rejected constitutional arrangements will be imposed on the peoples of 27 countries.

Three countries which held popular votes have actually rejected one or the other version.

Only Spain and Luxembourg held referenda which resulted in approval, but what matters here is not the three-two scoreline.

The rules in the case of both the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty were simple.

If one country rejected either, it fell.

Modern European politics is, however, a game which can be halted at any time by one team, the ruling elite, which can then proceed to change the rules.

It also gets to appoint the referee.

People voted against these treaties for a variety of reasons.

If Lisbon is imposed, small countries will lose power.

National institutions under democratic control, or at least influence, will see their powers transferred to unelected and unanswerable bodies.

National vetoes will disappear across a range of policy areas, so that ever more laws can be imposed which have the assent of neither the government nor the parliament of the member state involved.

A European army will be born.

And neoliberal economic policies which are good for no-one but multinational corporations and international criminals will be reinforced.

The Irish in particular could see much to alarm them in a treaty which would jeopardise their military neutrality, undermine their agriculture and allow unprecedented interference in their system of taxation, until recently an unquestioned national preserve.

Their reasons for voting ‘no’ are, however, their own affair.

As in other contexts, no means no, whatever motives may lie behind it.

Yet the Taoiseach has said only that there is no “quick fix”.

He has also said that Ireland will do its best not to halt what he describes as “the ambitious project of EU reform”.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, meanwhile, has joined the leaders of many EU member states in refusing to declare the treaty dead.

The British government has said that the ratification process will continue.

So, you can vote Yes, you can vote No, but the process is more akin to a multiple choice test than an election, and don’t worry, if you don’t get the answer right the first time, you’ll likely be given a second chance.

Similarly, depending on where you live you can vote social democrat, Labour, Christian Democrat, Liberal, Communist or for the Man in the Moon, but don’t expect it to make any serious difference to the way in which your country is governed, the decisions your government takes, or life in general.

There are now only two sets of interests which really matter: those of multinational corporations and those, sometimes still slightly different, of the governments and political parties which now exist primarily to serve their interests.

This includes not just conservatives but Europe’s social democratic and labour parties, most Green parties – our own being an honourable exception – and the whole ragbag of centre-left, centrist and right wing groups which are increasingly indistinguishable at the level of policy.

So, viciously anti-trade union labour rulings by the European Court of Justice go unchallenged by parties which were created by those same trade unions.

And the EU’s ‘flexicurity’ proposals, which translate as flexibility for us, and security for them, are enthusiastically supported by parties built by working people to defend their interests

The European Union, which likes to present its opponents as narrow nationalists and backward-looking xenophobes, is dragging us back to a time before working people could demand, if nothing else, that they be treated with respect, paid a living wage, and allowed to organise in pursuit of their legitimate demands.

By imposing neoliberal economics on twenty-seven member states, the EU is making real international cooperation, of the kind needed to confront the crises facing us in a world increasingly spinning out of control, impossible.

The Irish people, like those of France and the Netherlands before them, have had the courage and good sense to vote to reject the heinous Lisbon Treaty and thereby give us a further chance to confront those who would deprive us of our rights and of our livelihoods.

This time we must seize it with both hands.

Ireland Shows the Way

Ellie Keen — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:42:52 +0000

Dublin

In the midst of a growing economic crisis, Ireland’s urban working class and struggling rural people have united to deliver a blow to Europe’s ruling elite.

The defeat of the Lisbon Treaty in yesterday’s Irish referendum has tossed out years of efforts by the European Union to come up with new, “streamlined” procedures, and to get the increasingly unitary EU an (unelected) president and foreign minister.

The Treaty was itself a modest rewrite of the European Constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

As the counts came in from around the country today, the Irish people’s decision was, in the end, not even close. The momentum for a No vote displayed in last week’s opinion polls continued right through polling day. With a turnout bigger than in any previous Irish Euro-referendum, the electorate smashed expectations that a big vote would boost the Yes side and defied the advice of 95% of the country’s elected politicians, who supported the Treaty.

The politically disparate No campaign had rained blows from left and right, defending workers’ rights and defending low corporation tax, against privatization and against abortion; the Yes side could scarcely defend itself, let alone fight back.

Former Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte today compared the plight of the Yes campaigner to playing a video game: “You pop the bad guy, two more pop up.”

The various No elements avoided arguing among themselves during the campaign, but the battle to claim the victory has now begun. All analysts agree, however, that as in the 2001 Nice Treaty referendum, Irish people’s concern about military neutrality and the growing militarization of the EU was crucial.

Many of the issues and energies in the Lisbon campaign have been addressed already in CounterPunch. The X factor in this result was the effect of the prevailing economic catastrophism: would voters take the conservative option of voting Yes to avoid the danger of deepening the crisis with political uncertainty? In the end it was the most at-risk sections of the population who delivered the most decisive No.

The problem for the Treaty was that it was all too easy for voters to connect Ireland’s present economic woes to its role in Europe. As unemployment leaps, it calls attention to all the east-European immigrants working here; as previously astronomic house prices collapse, the president of the European Central Bank announces a coming rise in interest rates; as farmers worry about their futures, the EU negotiates at the WTO to allow more South American beef into European markets; as fishermen despairing of high fuel prices stage protest blockades at key ports, they complain about EU-imposed fishing quotas that force them to dump tons of their catches.

A No vote does nothing to address any of these issues; indeed few of them even figured prominently in the campaign. But voting No was the means at hand to complain about them.

Much of the media credit for the No win is being given to conservative businessman Declan Ganley and his new Libertas organization, with its respectably neoliberal campaign focusing on taxation and voting weights in EU institutions. But the results so far indicate that better-off Irish voters, from the fat farming regions of the south midlands and the prosperous suburbs of south Dublin, stuck with their traditional Europhilia. The Yes side won solid victories in well-off areas and a near-draw in prosperous rural regions. The No victory came with unprecedented turnouts in poorer areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and other cities, and with large No margins in more marginal rural areas in the west of the island and around the Border with Northern Ireland. Fishing communities delivered an overwhelming No. Former prime minister Garret FitzGerald has described the result as the most class-divided in Irish history.

There is, without doubt, some space for the Left in Ireland and across Europe to exploit this huge victory in a tiny country against the European Union’s neoliberal elite, especially if EU leaders try to drive through yet another version of Lisbon. But the reasons that an uneasy Ireland voted No are not simple, and the complex and contradictory story here gives that elite the chance to shrug off the result and just live with the institutional status quo ante.

Is Europe a regulatory threat to business? A military threat to peace? A liberal threat to traditional morality? A driver of climate-change enlightenment? A hungry vulture in third-world markets? A counterweight to US power? Take your pick: unlike the US, the definition of institutional Europe is up for grabs, internally and globally.

I was speaking last night to a prominent left-wing politician and No campaigner. He spoke of hearing a No voter give her reasons: “If the Lisbon Treaty goes through, Europe will bring in abortion, gay marriage, legal prostitution, euthanasia…” The campaigner was glad to have another No vote, but conceded: “If I believed that myself, I would have voted Yes.”

Harry Browne lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology. His book, ‘Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares disabled a US war-plane – with Ireland’s blessing’, is forthcoming from Counterpunch Books. He can be reached at: harry.browne@gmail.com

Lisbon Treaty — dumping social Europe

Ellie Keen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:43:34 +0000

The Irish referendum on the European Union Lisbon Treaty will take place on June 12. The Dublin government, media and all the major political parties, with the exception of Sinn Fein, are calling for a “Yes” vote for “jobs, the economy and Ireland’s future in Europe”.

The Lisbon Treaty is virtually identical to the proposed EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, containing 96% of its articles. The treaty, if ratified, would consolidate and centralise the power of unelected EU institutions, further the militarisation of Europe in the framework of the NATO alliance and open the way for the accelerated privatisation of Europe’s public services.

The process of the drafting and ratification of the renamed constitution demonstrates its thoroughly undemocratic nature. The 500 million citizens of the EU have been excluded from having input into the content of the constitution, as well as being denied their right to approve or reject it through referenda.

Treaty’s fate in Irish hands

The southern Irish state is constitutionally bound to hold a referendum on the treaty — so those Irish people living in the 26 counties making up the Republic of Ireland are now in the ridiculous situation of having their vote count for all the people of Europe.

The treaty must be endorsed unanimously by all member states in order to come into effect in 2009. The EU’s other 26 member states plan to ratify the treaty by votes in their respective national parliaments.

On May 21, the executive council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which represents more than 600,000 workers, voted to support the campaign for a “Yes” vote, claiming that the treaty will be a step forward for workers’ rights as the “Charter of Fundamental Rights” seemingly enshrines the right to strike.

However, some of the individual unions affiliated to the ICTU are calling for a “No” vote, including Unite, one of the ICTU’s largest affiliates. The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union is recommending its 45,000 members vote no, and the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union — representing more than 200,000 workers — has yet to make a decision.

It is unclear which way the vote will go, as a recent poll found only 6% of respondents indicated they understood what the referendum was about, with 30% “vaguely aware” of its contents. Around 35% say will vote “Yes”, 18% “No” with 47% undecided.

The claim that the treaty provides new protection for workers’ rights is false. While article 28 states that workers may “take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action”, it immediately qualifies this “fundamental right” by explaining that “the limits for the exercise of collective action, including strike action, come under national laws and practices”.

The British Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution pamphlet, The Big EU Con Trick, quotes a British foreign office spokesperson as saying explicitly: “The Charter doesn’t create any new rights. We spent a very long time looking at this, in particular the disputed article. It does not create the right to strike.”

Lisbon pits the “fundamental right” of workers to take collective action against the apparently more fundamental right of capital to unrestricted movement, unbound by national industrial laws and agreements.

Race to the bottom

Conflicts between employers and workers will be ruled on by a strengthened European Court of Justice. The European Trade Union Confederation has described several recent ECJ rulings as an “open invitation to social dumping”, launching a race to the bottom for workers’ wages, conditions and rights.

Some of the recent ECJ rulings on disputes include the case of the German company Objekt und Bauregie, which employed a Polish subcontractor to employ Polish building workers posted to Germany, on less than half the minimum wage agreed by German trade unions and employer associations.

On April 3, the ECJ ruled that O&B should not be bound by the local law that states public building contractors must abide by the existing collective agreements. The court found that while member states may impose minimum pay on foreign companies posting workers in their state, the Lower Saxony law restricted the “freedom to provide services”.

In essence, this ruling outlaws a minimum wage and base conditions being included in public tender contracts.

In 2004, Latvian firm Laval posted Latvian construction workers to Sweden and refused to acknowledge the existing collective agreement with the Swedish Building Workers’ Union. Laval claimed that it was not obliged to pay the rates collectively agreed on in the building sector.

The union took collective action and Laval claimed to the ECJ that it was being discriminated against on the grounds of nationality, with the Swedish union infringing upon its right to provide services. The court found that while “service providers” from another EU state are obliged to abide by the host agreement, collective action must be “proportional”.

This means that the ECJ believes workers have the right to take industrial action only when the minimum wage or conditions of the host country, or the minimum working conditions set out in the EU’s Posting of Workers Directive, are being breached by the employer.

In order to cut costs, the Finnish shipping company, Viking Line, attempted to re-flag its ships as Estonian and operate out of Estonia. When two Finnish maritime unions organised a blockade of Viking Line, it took its case to the ECJ.

Again, the claim was that the company’s right to freedom of movement was being restricted by the industrial action of the workers. And again, in December, the court ruled that the unions had restricted Viking Line’s right of establishment.

‘Rights’ of capital

Three things are clear from these cases and from the text of the Lisbon Treaty. Firstly, the universal right to take collective industrial action is not guaranteed as it is subject to member states’ national laws.

Secondly, the right to take collective action to prevent the exploitation of posted workers by foreign service-providers is subject to the company’s right to freedom of movement and establishment under the EU Services Directive — a right that the ECJ has consistently upheld as being superior to workers’ rights.

Thirdly, the collective action of workers and unions taken against foreign service-providers is only deemed legitimate if it is in defence of the most basic minimum conditions agreed on by EU bodies or set in law by the host country. What happens if workers want to take collective action in order to improve their conditions?

These ECJ rulings, combined with the provisions for privatisation and the removal of “distortions” from the market contained in Lisbon, are a recipe for the “equalisation” downwards of the conditions for working people of Europe — while the corporations that played a key role in drafting the treaty increase their profit-making capacity.

The result will be the growing severe exploitation of eastern European workers, increased job displacement, de-unionisation and falling conditions in the West — with public services fought for and won through generations of struggle being put up for sale across the continent. It’s in the interests of all the working people of Europe for the “No” vote to win in the Irish referendum.

Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire

Ellie Keen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:55:10 +0000

Dublin

The more the Irish people know about the Lisbon Treaty, the less they like it. That’s the message of the opinion polls as we draw close to Ireland’s June 12th referendum, which is decisive for the future of European Union institutions.

It’s going to be close. The media panic about the possibility of a No vote on Thursday hasn’t dwelled on such details as polling-margin-of-error and the huge body of undecided voters. But there’s no doubt that the momentum toward the No side has been real, and Ireland could well force the EU governments back to the old drawing board—for a second time, after the rejections of the similar EU Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

The main problem faced by a virtually complete assortment of the Irish and EU powers-that-be is that there is no obvious positive reason to vote Yes. “To Make EU Institutions Function More Efficiently” is not a slogan to stir the blood, especially when folks suspect those institutions are up to no good to begin with.

What’s more, the ‘reforms’ envisioned by Lisbon—e.g. more majority voting instead of unanimity, fewer commissioners—were allegedly required after the expansion of the European Union to 25 countries in 2004 (it’s now 27). But no one has noticed Brussels and Strasbourg seizing up with legislative gridlock under the current arrangements—and again, most people think they wouldn’t much mind if they did.

The underlying issues, and the reason that Ireland alone is holding a referendum on this treaty, have been dealt with previously in CounterPunch. What is notable as the voting approaches— it has actually started already on a few offshore islands—is that the Yes side has moved its argument forward from “come on, we like Europe” to “we’ll make a terrible mess if we vote No and this is no time to be getting Europe annoyed”. Ireland’s always fragile self-esteem has already taken a blow over the last year or two as the Celtic Tiger limps off the scene; and new Taoiseach (prime minister) Brian Cowen seems to be shouting breathlessly every time he comes on TV, all about the trouble we’ll be in if No emerges victorious.

That shouting could yet work: if I were a betting man I’d stick a few euro on a narrow Yes victory. The main farmers’ lobby has joined the Yes side, after strong-arming the government into a commitment to veto any WTO agreement that isn’t favorable. Moreoever, the prime opinion-forming media outlets are amplifying the elite’s panic. (A couple of British-owned papers backing the No side have kept the press wars interesting, if not honest or well balanced.) Ad hominem attacks on the No side have been stepped up.

But the No side, which ranges right across the political spectrum, has kept throwing up objections to the Treaty and stayed on the offensive. Some of the objections are dubious—abortion will not be brought into Ireland thanks to Lisbon, however much this prospect seems to have engaged and enraged some conservative voters. And the fuss about keeping ‘our’ commissioner at the EU table and ensuring Ireland can continue to have the EU’s lowest corporation tax is neither very progressive nor based on a sound reading of how most Irish people’s interests have been served historically.

Sinn Fein, which had a terrible election last year, has virtually led the No campaign and deftly plucked arguments from left and right alike. But it would be fair to say that it has kept its emphasis to the left, and the party has helped to boost the left’s No voices, raising objections relating to workers’ rights, the possible privatization of public services and the militarization of the EU. It has made for an interesting month of debate: it’s rare, for instance, to hear so many, and contending, trade-union voices in the media.

And the popular energy is on the No side. While establishment politicians use the referendum campaign, and the accompanying relaxation of the litter laws, to stick up photos of themselves on lampposts across the State, sometimes beside the tiniest of “Yes” pleas, a motley assortment of No campaigners has plastered the island with slogans.

That energy, and a decision by the electorate that the burden of proof should be on those who wish us to change existing political arrangements and power structures, could yet yield a No victory when votes are counted on Friday. Whoever wins, the arguments about who wields power in Europe and to what purpose have only just begun.

<>Harry Browne lectures in Dublin Institute of Technology. His book, ‘Hammered by the Irish: How the Pitstop Ploughshares disabled a US war-plane – with Ireland’s blessing’, is forthcoming from Counterpunch Books. He can be reached at: harry.browne@gmail.com

Europe Deserves Much Better than the Lisbon Treaty

Ellie Keen — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:18:25 +0000

European history provides a showcase of human beings at their worst. Constant conflict, the two bloodiest wars ever waged, famine, brutal industrialisation, oppression of workers and women, religious strife, colonialism, fascism, communism – all these stain our past. But Europe also represents the best humankind has accomplished, giving the world the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, a constant struggle for emancipation, democracy and the separation of powers, the welfare state – not to mention universally recognised cultural contributions from Greek drama to Finnegans Wake , from the symphony orchestra to Irish folksong.

Born in the United States and a citizen of France, I am a fervent European. At this point in history, I believe only Europe can provide all its citizens with democratic government, dignified living standards, greater social equality, public services, universal healthcare and education. This small continent, with just 15 per cent of the world’s people, can lead the way towards ecological sanity and a liveable planet and prove nations can overcome even the most tenacious hatreds and live together in peace. Europe can be a counter-model to the myriad brutalities, affinity for war and stupendous inequalities on display elsewhere.

For these and other reasons, I voted no to the deeply flawed, undemocratic European constitution in May 2005. Had the French government not confiscated the people’s right to another referendum, I would have voted no again to the Lisbon (“Reform”) Treaty – a clone of the rejected constitution, except for “cosmetic changes” making it “easier to swallow”, as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, principal author of the constitution, said. No flag, no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there as Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso, Bertie Ahern and other relieved European notables all agreed.

The treaty contains no substantive changes. It’s just much harder to understand, worse even than the immensely complex constitution. Now we must deal with two European treaties (Rome, 1957, and Maastricht, 1992, with their subsequent revisions) to which Lisbon adds 145 pages of amendments plus 132 more pages of 12 protocols and 51 declarations, all legally binding, all superseding every law of the 27 member states.

There is no single text – you must cut, paste and collate the hundreds of pages for yourself. The very least one should require of a treaty that will dictate at least 80 per cent of all future legislation throughout Europe is that it be comprehensible. But complexity can be an effective weapon against democracy. Let us recall what commission vice-president Gunter Verheugen said after the French and Dutch No votes: “We must not give in to blackmail.” So much for universal suffrage and popular sovereignty.

There are a few beneficial changes to the defunct constitution. The new treaty gives the European Parliament, the only elected body, marginally more power to co-decide on legislation, although it still cannot initiate legislation.

However, the unelected European Commission remains all-powerful, particularly in crucial areas such as trade. A new article specifies the European goal of “integration of all countries into the world economy through the suppression of barriers to international trade”. Already trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is pushing for European corporate penetration in even the poorest countries, defining “barriers” as any government measure regulating foreign investment, public procurement, environmental or consumer protection.

The European Central Bank gets an even more iron-clad statute of independence from political supervision; its mandate remains control of inflation with no mention of full employment. The “market” (63 mentions in the text) remains the supreme good and “competition” (25 mentions) the overarching rule. Public services are specifically subjected to competition: government subsidies or other forms of support will become more precarious. European-wide social policies will require unanimous approval – this is a euphemism for a race to the bottom. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is inferior to most existing European constitutions.

Common security and defence policy places Europe firmly under the tutelage of Nato “which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its members”. We are signing on blindfolded for whatever Nato’s future policies may be – we only know for sure the US will remain in command. The treaty also obliges members to “progressively increase their military capacities”.

This Lisbon Treaty is a model of failed neo-liberal economic nostrums and misplaced confidence in the market and competition as universal panaceas. Europeans deserve better, beginning with an elected convention for drafting a constitution, time for full debate and a popular ratification process.

Europe has now surpassed the US as the wealthiest political entity. We can afford to retain and perfect the European social model, provide a decent livelihood for all and undertake a swift conversion to an ecological economy; we can afford to embody the ideal of the common good. Not to demand all this and more is a betrayal of whatever is best in our history. This may be Europe’s last chance.

Susan George is a Fellow and Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute. Her latest books are La Pensée enchaînée: Comment les droites laïque et religieuse se sont emparées de l’Amérique [Fayard, 2007], to be published in English as: Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think [Forthcoming, Polity Press 2008], and We the peoples of Europe [Pluto Press, 2008].

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.

Wrong Man, Wrong Europe

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:54 +0000

Europeans are becoming accustomed to both insult and injury. For many excellent and well-examined reasons, in mid-2005 French and Dutch voters rejected the European Constitution. In France, it had been 13 years since anyone had asked its citizens what they thought about Europe, and they replied 55 per cent strong that it was going in an entirely wrong, neoliberal, inequitable direction. Yes, there were some far-right ‘No’ votes, but most came from pro-Europeans who refused to see Europe reduced to the status of a marketplace.

This expression of popular sovereignty was intolerable to the elites. They have now remedied the situation by forcing through the Lisbon Treaty, a carbon copy of the constitution, with only ‘cosmetic changes’ to ‘make it easier to swallow’, as former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing phrased it. He should know, having drafted the original document.

No official flag and no Beethoven hymn, but the rest is there. Don’t believe me – listen to Giscard, Angela Merkel, Karel De Gucht, Giuliano Amato, José-Luis Zapatero, Bertie Aherne and Jose-Manuel Barroso, European leaders who all heaved huge, public sighs of relief to that effect. As for the thoroughly undemocratic process that brought forth the Lisbon Treaty, Gunther Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, put it best after the French-Dutch votes : ‘We must not give in to blackmail’. They didn’t. One thinks of Bertolt Brecht, who in 1951 said of the East German regime :

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writer’s Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another ?

So the text of the treaty will be pushed through parliaments with no time for discussion and debate. Nicolas Sarkozy himself told right-wing Euro MPs that if there were referendums on the Lisbon Treaty, they would be lost ; if the French voted, they would again vote ‘No’. Under no circumstances should citizens be allowed referendums (and Ireland made a huge mistake in making them compulsory).

Don’t make the mistake of letting people actually read a clear text. The Lisbon Treaty is what you get, like it or not, although we can’t actually give you a copy of it – just five or six separate documents, protocols and declarations that you can spend the next few years collating and cross-referencing to your heart’s content. Oh yes – and we’ve got just the man to lead the new Europe that this treaty intends to force upon you : Tony Blair.

He’s perfect for the job. We can count on him to promote ‘a more assertive Union role in security and defence matters [which] will contribute to the vitality of a renewed Atlantic Alliance’. And he will make sure that Europe ‘respects the obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which remains the foundation of the collective defence of its members’, according to Protocol 4 of the treaty (which, like the other protocols and declarations has the same legal force as the treaty and supersedes national law).

We don’t know what Nato’s future policies will be and are signing on blindfolded. But we do know that the US will continue to lead it and that the US president will be its de facto commander in chief. Who better than Blair to polish the commander’s medals and shine his [or her] shoes ?

The EU is terrific on market-oriented policies as well, and that can only be to Blair’s satisfaction. In the 410 treaty articles, the ‘market’ rates 63 references and ‘competition’ is cited 25 times. ‘Social progress’ gets three mentions, ‘full employment’ one and ‘unemployment’ none, but you can’t have everything.

What you can have is a downgrading of social policy and of public services. Any upwards harmonisation of EU social [or fiscal] policy will require unanimity of the 27 members, so the pressure will be to reduce taxes and social services. As for public services, they are specifically made subject to competition. The treaty doesn’t affect ‘the competence of member states to provide, commission and organise non-economic services of general interest’ and that may sound reassuring. The problem is that ‘non-economic services’ are nowhere defined and in some interpretations they could be reduced to the police and the courts. The European Court of Justice has not shown undue affection for public services and the Commission can also make members stop subsidising them, so Blair should feel quite at home.

Among the many provisions of the constitution, the treaty has also retained the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a meek and mild compendium granting fewer rights than most national constitutions. However meagre, this was still too much for Blair, who demanded – and received – an exemption for the UK, enshrined in the lengthy and detailed Protocol 7. All one can deduce from this is that in our brave new Europe, the rules concerning market freedom and competition are compulsory, whereas anything smacking of even limited human and social rights is optional. Why should Blair’s attitude as president of Europe reflect any other view ?

If Europe still seems remote to you and not worth getting excited about, you should know that 80 per cent or more of the laws that will apply to you and your country will come not from the seat of your national government but from Brussels. Let us hope that the petition against Blair’s presidency blazes its way through the 27 member states or that Tony himself may decide to be content with the putative 500,000 quid he will receive annually as a part-time advisor to the JP Morgan Chase investment bank. If he jumps out of the British frying pan into the Brussels fire, 450 million European citizens risk being severely burned.

Susan George is board chair of the Transnational Institute and honorary president of Attac France. Her two new books are We the Peoples of Europe (Pluto) and Hijacking America : How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think (Polity Press)

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.

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.