Draft Services Directive remains unacceptable - 14 February in Strasbourg !
Let us mobilise for a social Europe - against social dumping!
For quality public services - quality of life!
Let us demonstrate our opposition to the Bolkestein Directive on 14 February at 12.00 in Strasbourg!
The draft services directive will enter a critical stage with the first plenary reading in the European Parliament now fixed for the 14 and 15 February 2006 in Strasbourg. Within the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee - IMCO - the majority voted in favour of maintaining the ‘country of origin’ principle, meaning that 25 different legal systems would be competing against each other with potentially dangerous dumping effects for quality provision, collective agreements, social protection and taxation systems.
Together with the ETUC, EPSU is calling upon all its affiliates to massively demonstrate our continued opposition against this draft directive in its present form on 14 February at 12.00 (details have to be confirmed) in Strasbourg. The call for this demonstration is aimed in particular at our member organisations in France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands. Still, it is also important that unions from other EU countries aim to participate in this very important demonstration.
We will keep all registered participants (delegations) informed of practical arrangements, so please complete and return the attached participation form by 11 January at the latest.
Please be aware that it is very difficult to find hotel rooms in Strasbourg during an EP plenary session. We therefore recommend the following websites to assist you in finding a hotel room if necessary: http://www.accorhotels.com, http://www.ratestogo.com, http://www.bookings.net, http://www.book-a-hotel-in-strasbourg.com.
Affiliated unions that are not able to participate in the demonstration in Strasbourg are urged to take protest action at national level. This can take various forms: public meetings or work place assemblies, demonstrations or picket lines in front of the national EU representations or the embassies of the Austrian Presidency. We also invite you to directly contact your MEPs asking them to state their positions. If your organisation intends to carry out such an action, please inform the secretariat by completing the attached report form (if possible in time before the demonstration).
Dear Colleagues, a lot is at stake! We cannot miss this opportunity to strongly voice our opposition to the Bolkestein directive. We cannot allow the European Union to degenerate into a free trade zone putting the social dimension into utter disarray. We need to act together.
Declaration of the EPSU Executive Committee of 30 November
Participation and report forms
- PARTICIPATION FORM
- Report form
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
programme of the day, definitive map of the itinerary, list of leaders, order of the groups in the demonstration (for more see ETUC website http://www.etuc.org/a/1965)
- PROGRAMME
- ORDER
- LIST
- ROUTE
Critical analysis of the services directive by Wolfgang Kowalsky, ETUC policy advisor available in European Economic and Employment Policy Brief, No. 8-2005 on the ETUI-REHS website: www.etui-rehs
EPSU Note on the report adopted on 22 November by IMCO and SGEI
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