Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-16-Speech-3-155"
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"en.20051116.16.3-155"2
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"It is not enough simply to note that there are social problems in the EU and around the world. As my group said at the informal meeting held at the end of October, it is crucial that we analyse these problems and change the policies that are at the root of this problem.
The truth of the matter is that what we have heard here offers no assurances that policies will be changed, even though it is widely acknowledged that there is growing discontent among the citizens and that there are serious social tensions in a number of countries, right here in the EU.
Rather than much-needed proposals to provide an adequate response to these serious social problems, the Council puts the accent on the all too familiar neoliberal blueprint, namely the Lisbon Strategy, with its liberalisations and privatisations of public services, along with even more precarious working conditions. The infamous proposal for a directive creating an internal market for services is one such example, as, in some cases, is the Stability and Growth Pact, hammering a further nail in the coffin of the workers and the small and medium-sized enterprises.
As competition is seen as the be-all-and-end-all, precedence is always given to measures aimed at creating competition between workers in order to try to drive salaries and other social benefits further and further down. Hence the emphasis on greater labour flexibility, mobility and support for relocations, which shed jobs and lead to greater unemployment and a more precarious labour market.
As demonstrated by the huge growth in the profit margins of the major economic and financial groups in the EU, current policies are essentially geared towards pandering to the wishes of the Union of Industrial and Employers Confederations of Europe (UNICE). What we have heard today follows the same script. Even when people talk of creating a favourable environment for companies, we all know that the companies in question are only the large ones.
Mr Mandelson made this perfectly clear here yesterday in the answers he gave regarding concerns about the consequences of the liberalisation of international trade in industrial sectors that are vitally important to the countries of Southern Europe, such as textiles, clothing and footwear, which are being used as a bargaining chip in World Trade Organisation negotiations to obtain benefits for high-tech sectors and services. This is a trend that must be reversed."@en1
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