Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to have been invited here today to address the EPSU Congress. I welcome the timely focus of your Congress on public services in Europe which link to policy responses on employment, sustainability, access issues and service quality. I consider it very appropriate that I should come to speak to you as we reach the end of Ireland’s EU Presidency term which has had as its theme, ‘Europeans working together for quality of life’. Public services, of course, play a key role in shaping the quality of life experienced by the people of Europe. As such, the question of whether public services represent Europe’s strength has a bearing on a series of current policy priorities, ranging from the Lisbon Agenda to the draft Constitutional Treaty. As requested in your original invitation, I propose to outline our Presidency approach to the Lisbon Agenda, including with regard to employment. I will then give you an update on the draft Constitutional Treaty.

Lisbon Agenda

As you may be aware, the Irish Presidency has attached priority to the Lisbon Agenda of social, economic and environmental renewal. We considered it important to use our Presidency term to re-inject momentum into the Lisbon Agenda. I am pleased that we were successful in getting broad-based agreement on our Presidency approach of focusing the Lisbon Agenda more closely on critical areas. The overarching themes that we selected for consideration at the Spring European Council were sustainable growth and employment.

With regard to employment, the Spring European Council concentrated on four main themes, reflecting the priorities identified by the Employment Taskforce, chaired by Wim Kok, which reported last year. The Council agreed that Member States should give urgent attention to four particular structural challenges, namely adaptability, attracting more people into the labour market, investing in human capital and improving the quality of employment. The Lisbon objective of delivering better jobs for Europe’s workers and improving the quality of jobs available has been a particular interest of Ireland’s Presidency. The latter issue has, of course, particular resonances with regard to services where the challenge is to maintain high quality standards without diminishing workers’ conditions.

The policy approach recommended by the Employment Taskforce has been carried through into European Employment Guidelines which will be endorsed by the European Council this week. These aim to develop a European strategy of full employment and better jobs for all. The Guidelines’ specific priorities include the development and implementation of measures to prevent long-term unemployment, to address change and promote adaptability and mobility in the labour market and to support the development of human capital through an increased focus on education, training and lifelong learning. They also seek to combat discrimination in the labour market, to promote gender equality and to make work pay for lower-paid workers by increasing the attractiveness of the jobs available. Each of these measures should support our interest in promoting better quality services in the interests of all. The Guidelines recognise that employment policy can play a key role in harnessing the job creation potential of services. They adopt a two-pronged approach to this issue, focusing on simplifying the regulatory burden for business start-ups and small and medium sized enterprises and on promoting a more entrepreneurial culture through education and training for entrepreneurs.

The Lisbon Agenda provides for action in a balanced fashion across its social, environmental and economic pillars. As such, it recognises the interlinkage between economic, social and environmental concerns. The Irish Presidency sought to reflect the balanced nature of the Lisbon Agenda by developing an approach to sustainable growth that reflected its social and environmental implications. Consequently, the Spring European Council agreed that a high degree of social cohesion was central to the Lisbon Agenda. It was also agreed that strategies making a decisive impact on social inclusion and the eradication of poverty should be reinforced.

Similarly, the Spring European Council recognised that growth, to be sustainable, should be environmentally sound. It agreed, in this regard, that growth should be decoupled from negative impacts on the environment through better policy integration and more sustainable consumption and production patterns.

In addition, the economic areas on which we sought to focus include those where progress can be to the benefit of workers and society more generally as well as business. One of the areas which we identified as requiring urgent attention is that of innovation. If we succeed in changing Europe’s business culture to make it more innovative, we have a much better chance of securing better jobs for Europe’s workers, even in the teeth of tough global competition. As you are all aware, Scandinavia provides a model of how technological development can be used to create good quality, sustainable jobs that ensure a better standard of living for workers. Technological development can directly feed into the aim, furthermore, of providing high quality public services for our people.

However, notwithstanding the potential benefits of innovation, progress in this area has been slower than we had hoped. We have much to do if we are to succeed in meeting the target originally set in 2000 that, by 2010, the EU should devote 3% of its GDP to investment in R&D. According to the European Commission in this year’s Spring Report, we had reached only 2% by 2001. While higher levels of public sector investment in R&D will improve this percentage, and the European Commission plans to devote a significant element of funding to this area in the next financial round, interestingly, our most serious challenge is to boost private sector investment. When you look at private sector investment in education and training or human capital generally in the EU, you can see a serious gap between the EU and its leading global competitors. The proportion of EU expenditure on education is roughly comparable to that in the US, 4.9% of GDP being spent in the EU and 4.8% in the US. However, the private sector contributes three times more in Japan than in the EU and a staggering five times more in the US.

I believe that trades unions can play a useful role in working with governments and employers to develop an innovation culture in the EU. They can highlight to employers the benefits of greater investment in R&D and its potential to provide businesses with a vital competitive edge in a demanding global marketplace.

Similarly, we consider that much more can be done to maximise the potential of services as a motor for growth and job creation in the EU. The services sector has already accounted for 70% of the increase in the EU’s GDP over the past decade. However, the European Commission has found that the capacity of services to expand and enter new markets can be limited by barriers that do not serve the interests either of consumers, business or workers. The Irish Presidency has worked with Member States to advance a Commission proposal for a Directive on the Internal Market for Services. This Directive aims to eliminate inessential barriers blocking growth in services. It should also facilitate greater co-ordination of the responses of public authorities through the development of one-stop shop arrangements, making it easier for companies to access essential information on fulfilling regulatory requirements throughout the EU. Through our focus on more efficient supports for services and greater emphasis on innovation, we should be able to bring about real improvements in the quality and effectiveness of Europe’s services. We can also ensure, through better regulation, that high standards of service delivery in the public services can become a real strength for Europe.

The Irish Presidency has pressed forward with a range of legislative dossiers which should help to improve public services in Europe. These include agreement on the Second Railway Package which provides for better co-ordination between service operators and more stringent safety standards in the interests of consumers. We have also achieved agreement on a mobility package that will make it easier for Europe’s workers to avail of employment opportunities wherever they occur in the EU. Key features of this package include EU legislation making it easier for workers and their families to access social security entitlements and to have educational and professional qualifications recognised throughout the EU. You may also be aware of the European Health Insurance Card, launched on 1 June, which is intended to enable residents to access emergency health care more easily while on holiday in other EU Member States.

We have much to do if we are to achieve Lisbon targets by the 2010 deadline. What is important, at this stage, is to consider how we can improve implementation of Lisbon goals. The mid-term review of the Lisbon Agenda which will take place during the Luxembourg Presidency next year gives us the chance to review Lisbon and to see what needs to be changed in order to enable us to meet our targets. Obviously, if we are to have an effective mid-term review, it must be carefully prepared on the basis of independent and objective advice. The Irish Presidency proposed that a high-level group should be established to prepare an objective assessment of the Lisbon Agenda. I am pleased that we secured the services of Wim Kok to chair this group which has already begun its work and will report to the European Commission by November. We see Wim Kok as providing crucial continuity with the work of the Employment Taskforce, reflecting the importance that we attach to the employment aspects of the Lisbon Agenda.

One of the fundamental points about the Lisbon Agenda is that it emphasises the benefit of sharing information so that we can have the possibility of learning from best practice. Obviously, it is critical that we should provide the opportunities for effective exchange of information among a broad range of groups. Based on Ireland’s experience of social partnership which has been a key factor in our economic transformation, we believe firmly that reform must be built on the foundation of real engagement by representatives of stakeholders. Lisbon will not, and cannot, be delivered by governments alone. You too as trade unionists have a responsibility to advance Lisbon. I am pleased that we secured agreement at the Spring European Council on the establishment of Reform Partnerships. These Partnerships, involving social partners, civil society and the public authorities, in accordance with national arrangements and traditions, will have the responsibility to promote complementary strategies for change. We see such Partnerships as an important means of involving social partners, including trades unions, more closely, in implementing the Lisbon Agenda. Such Partnerships will have the possibility of addressing the broad range of policies - economic, social and environmental - encompassed by the Lisbon Agenda. As such, they can potentially make a positive contribution to improving Europe’s public services in the interests of consumers and workers.

IGC

As you are aware, the issue of services of general interest has been raised in the context of the IGC. We are now approaching the very final stages of the negotiations on the new Constitutional Treaty. The important role of services of general interest too will be recognised in the Treaty, including, a confirmation of the “competence of Member States, in accordance with the Constitution, to provide, to commission and to fund such services”.

Foreign Ministers earlier this week made great progress in finding agreement on the outstanding non-institutional issues leaving only a small number of the most sensitive political issues for Heads of State and Government tomorrow and Friday.

I do not intend to go into detail on the outstanding institutional issues. They will be familiar to you all and I am, in any case, confident that if partners continue to show the same level of political will that they have done to date, final agreement is well within reach.

I want instead to take the opportunity to examine what is already agreed in the Constitutional Treaty and to highlight some of its most positive and welcome features. I want in particular to talk a little about what the new Constitution will have to say about the social dimension.

We should remind ourselves first why the European Convention was established and ask ourselves whether it has achieved its aims. The Convention of course sought to answer the questions posed by the Laeken Declaration: how the Union could become more efficient, how it could play a more positive role in the world and, for me most critically, how to bring it Union closer to its citizens.

I think that what the Convention managed to produce surprised many. It reached agreement on a coherent and concise set of values and objectives, of which I will speak more a little later, it greatly simplifies decision-making and reduces the currently incomprehensible and seemingly innumerable decision-making mechanisms into a much smaller and more easily understandable number of instruments.

The Convention clarified the powers of Member States and of the Union, made absolutely clear that the Union operates on the basis of the principle of conferral of powers and not the other way around, and makes very clear that any powers not conferred on the Union remain with the Member State.

The Constitutional Treaty further strengthens the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality and gives an enhanced role to national parliaments in policing them. The role of the European Parliament has been enhanced through the further extension of QMV and through an equal role in all aspects of the annual budgetary procedure. These twin planks should help to greatly improve democratic oversight within the Union.

Significant as these developments are, and I firmly believe that they will all help address the sense of disconnection from the Union felt by many ordinary citizens, I feel that among the greatest achievements of the Convention, and of the IGC, has been its recognition of the tremendous importance of the social dimension.

I was very pleased and honoured to have been a Member of the Convention that drafted the articles on the Union’s values and objectives, and more especially to have been a Member of the Working Group on Social Europe, from which so many of the original proposals for these articles emerged.

The European Convention proposed draft Articles on the values and objectives of the Union. Those values include respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality tolerance justice and solidarity. These are values that we can all share and subscribe to, and it is particularly pleasing that the only questioning of these articles in the IGC has been a genuine attempt to improve them. While overall agreement on the remaining outstanding issues is set to be reached later this week, there already seems to be a broad consensus at the IGC in favour of the inclusion of a specific reference to gender equality, an agreement that had not proven possible to reach at the Convention.

The Union’s objectives also stem in large part from the work of the Social Europe Working Group. The objectives strike an appropriate balance between ensuring free and fair competition in the internal market and the needs of the Union’s citizens. The Union aims at a highly competitive social market economy, and at full employment and social progress. It aims to combat social exclusion and discrimination and to promote social justice and protection, economic, social and territorial cohesion. Again these are objectives that send a clear message as to what the European Union is and what is does, and why it is unique.

The IGC is also set to include a new horizontal clause linking the Union’s detailed policies more closely with the Union’s objectives. The Union is set to commit itself, in defining and implementing the policies set out in Part III to take into account requirements “linked to the promotion of a high level of employment, the guarantee of adequate social protection, the fight against social exclusion and a high level of education, training and protection of human health”.

There are a great many other areas where importance of the social dimension has been further recognised. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is set to be included as an integral part of the new Constitution. I want to stress that while there has been considerable discussion on this issue both at the Convention and at the IGC, the substantive articles themselves have not changed. What has been under discussion, rather, has been clarifying the scope and application of the Charter.

The importance of social dialogue has been emphasised and the role of the social partners has been recognised. The IGC is also set to include a specific reference enshrining the Tripartite Social Summit in the new Constitution.

These are all hugely positive and potentially hugely significant developments and there has been widespread support for these at the IGC, including from Foreign Ministers at their meeting earlier this week.

It is now, as I noted earlier, for Heads of State and Government to finalise negotiations on the outstanding questions. We all recognise the importance attached to agreement. There is much to be gained from success, not least, reconnecting the Union with its citizens. I believe that the political will is there to so do and that it will be possible to succeed, although all partners will have to continue to work in a spirit of constructive compromise.

Conclusion

The draft Constitutional Treaty aims to provide a legal framework within which Europe can define its future aspirations and current priorities. Many of our current priorities have implications for our definition of what Europe means for us. As I said earlier, I consider it timely that your Congress should have selected the theme of ‘public services - Europe’s strength’ since this issue encapsulates for many the essence of Europe. Your members will have a particular perspective on that question. Others may approach this issue differently. However, what unites all of us, I believe, is a recognition that policy decisions should take into consideration the full complexity of our particular choices. We are striving to achieve a balance of economic, social and environmental considerations that will serve the best interests of all and ensure better quality of life for our people. It is fair to say that the manner in which we strike that balance will have profound implications for the people of Europe.