Rome, celebrating the Rome Treaty 50th anniversary with 1 million signatures for quality public services
26 March 2007, Rome, on the 50th Anniversary of the European Union, the Italian public services trade unions affiliated to EPSU ( FP CGIL, FILCEM CGIL, CISL FPS, FLAEI CISL, CISL FEMCA, UILCEM- UIL) have presented the Campaign for the ETUC petition on public services and the EPSU Quality Public Services campaign (framework legal instrument).
The doyen of the EU parliament, Giovanni Berlinguer (PSE), the vice president of the Socialist Group in the EU Parliament, Pasqualina Napolitano and the chief of the Italian delegation in the GUE representative, Roberto Musacchio attended the Conference.
Rosa Pavanelli, EPSU campaign national coordinator presented the report. After the speeches of the Italian public sector General Secretaries, Carola Fischbach-Pyttel, EPSU General Secretary concluded the conference. She said "Our campaign is about access to schools, hospitals, kindergartens, homes for the elderly, transport, water, electricity, good public services for all citizens, independently of their capacity to pay. We strongly believe that the European Union cannot be reduced to a liberalised internal market, but it has to be about a shared vision of common prosperity and well-being. Our campaign is not only about protecting public services where they exist; it is about supporting their development across Europe. We cannot imagine a "social Europe" in which public services do no have a firm place.”
The conference highlighted that in Italy "The lack of a clear European legal framework for public services paradoxically puts public services, run at national or local level, at risk of interference from the European Court of Justice or European Commission."
We are sure, as the ETUC and the EPSU demands; that we need that the Commission must be persuaded, to bring forward European legislation to guarantee legal security for public services.
The conference decided to have a "Signature Day" to collect more signatures of the Petition.
You can find the texts of the speeches here
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