Major trade union campaign to put respect for public services at top of EU agenda
‘EU law to protect public services is the goal’
‘Quality public services - quality of life’ - this is the slogan of the first EU-wide campaign to promote public services. This autumn will see a series of co-ordinated events in each of the 25 EU member states to promote the need for quality public services as an integral part of the EU. The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) is coordinating the campaign.
The campaign aim is to force the European Commission and Member State Governments to recognise that quality public services are at the heart of citizens’ concerns. In concrete terms the aim is to get commitments from EU actors to pass legislation that will explicitly recognise that the European Union is about more than an internal market, and that public services must be promoted for the vital role they play in society.
A horizontal legal framework for all public services is essential to ensure that the Commission tactic of gradually eroding protected public services on a sector-by-sector basis is stopped. Health and social services, the water sector and even the education sector are all public services under consideration for liberalisation by the Commission. This erosion of public service provision will continue until a clear EU law says no to these sectors being considered only in market terms.
Focus on the European Parliament until October 2006
This is why the campaign will be intensely lobbying the European Parliament, and its 732 members, who are due to take a position on public services and the EU at the Strasbourg plenary session in October. It is essential, from the perspective of the campaign, that the Parliament sends the clearest, strongest message to the European Commission that now is the time for concrete legislative action on public services. Proponents of the campaign and the need for an EU law on public services assert that the European Commission has been pursuing a cynical strategy of ‘stalling and crawling’ for the last ten years. In other words, they have delayed taking concrete action preferring to stay on the sidelines while the European Court of Justice uses internal market legislation to erode public service provision. The Parliament must state clearly that this era of delay is definitely over.
The campaign will be implemented by over 200 public service trade unions across the EU. It will involve national and local events as well as intense lobbying on the Brussels stage. A ‘grand alliance’ is in the process of being built on the campaign to ensure the strongest possible momentum and political weight. The European Parliament, in particular the Socialist and the Green parties are behind the campaign. The European Trade Union Confederation has also committed to this being priority for the autumn. The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) is the co-ordinating organisation for the campaign, and has commitment significant resources to the call for an EU law for public services. “The European Union is imbalanced at the moment”, says EPSU campaign coordinator Brian Synnott. “Because of this imbalance, the Internal market is seeping into areas it should not go - such as the funding, management, and delivery of public services. What we want is to put a stop to this seepage and put strong visible boundaries between the market and public services”. He stated that an EU law that would articulate this would be a first significant step.
The campaign comes in the aftermath of the Services Directive debate - the so-called Bolkestein directive. This proposal was an attempt by the European Commission to push through radical market opening in the EU, which would have drastically reduced trade union rights. The directive was successfully countered in February of this year. However the question of the definition of public services under EU law is still undecided.
The issues that are at stake are whether public authorities have the right to decide whether their public service can be delivered in a democratically accountable and socially efficient way, or whether they will be forced by EU law to open up contracts to bidders from the private sector.
For more see our Campaign section
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