EPSU took two important initiatives at the end of November to boost its lobbying activity. A special session of the Executive Committee heard from three key speakers about lobbying the European Parliament. Later that day EC members were joined by 16 MEPs from 15 different countries for a dinner to begin informal discussions about improving links between EPSU and the Parliament.

In the afternoon session two guest speakers, Dutch MEP Ieke van den Burg and European Transportworkers Federation general secretary Doro Zinke, joined EPSU deputy general secretary Jan Willem Goudriaan in a wide-ranging discussion about lobbying strategy and tactics.

I. van den Burg, MEP, chairing the special session on lobbying

This was then followed by a more focused debate about the services directive where the key issues and challenges were set out by Belgian MEP Anne van Lancker.

A fuller report of the lobbying session appears below.

In a short speech to welcome MEPs to the evening dinner, EPSU general secretary Carola Fischbach-Pyttel underlined the importance of improving links with MEPs at an early stage in the current Parliament. The dinner was a first informal step, she said, that would hopefully lead to the setting up of a network of MEPs across the political spectrum, who would work with EPSU in defending public services.

Luigi Cocilovo, vice president of the Parliament and former general secretary of the CISL Italian union federation, closed the dinner with a speech welcoming the EPSU initiative and looking forward to a closer working relationship.

Establishing a voice for public services - the lobbying session

The special session of the EPSU Executive Committee 29 November was introduced by EPSU president Anna Salfi. She stressed the importance of making the most of the organisation’s limited resources and the need for close co-ordination between the activities of the secretariat and what affiliates were able to do through their national political networks.

Anna then handed over to Dutch MEP Ieke van den Burg who with previous experience working for trade unions in the Netherlands and for the ETUC was able to look at the lobbying issue from both sides.

Ieke is a member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (EMAC). Formerly a member of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee (ESAC), she explained that while many of the issues that concerned her were tackled by ESAC this was not necessarily where the key decisions were made.

Ieke stressed that with thousands of lobbyists in Brussels and Strasbourg and particularly large numbers of well-resourced employers, it was important for trade unions to make themselves known and establish links with the Parliament.

Ieke then welcomed Doro Zinke, general secretary of the European Transportworkers’ Federation (ETF) , who explained how the ETF had successfully campaigned against the Ports Directive. The directive threatened to return European ports to the old days of deregulation and casualisation. However, it was rejected the European Parliament in November 2003 following a combination of campaigning and lobbying by the ETF, its affiliates and other supporting organisations.

Doro said that it was important to get the most from national affiliates while recognising that not all could deliver the same level of activity. She also pointed out that even in countries where the ports issue was insignificant it was possible to get affiliates to influence their MEPs in terms of the general threat of deregulation and casualisation spreading to other transport sectors.

Other key points from Doro’s presentation covered:

• Information - and the need to ensure that during the campaign information was being fed back from local organisations about their activity and not just handed down from Brussels;
• Resources - a special co-ordinator was taken on by the ETF secretariat to work solely on the ports campaign; and
• Demonstrations - as well as lobbying MEPs Doro said it was important to mobilise at the right time and a big demonstration to coincide with the vote in Parliament was a particular success.

see the presentation

Jan Willem Goudriaan picked up a number of Doro’s points in this analysis of recent EPSU experience with lobbying. He focussed in particular on the work the Federation did around the Information and Consultation and the Procurement directives.

However, before looking at these in detail Jan Willem pointed out that EPSU had been successful at an early stage in getting public services on the EU agenda and that lobbying wasn’t just about responding to initiatives from the Commission.

The Information and Consultation directive doesn’t cover employees in public administration. Although the Parliament backed the EPSU in both readings of the directive the Council of Ministers remained opposed to including public administration. Jan Willem thought that in a better co-ordinated campaign national affiliates could have had more of an impact at the conciliation stage and influenced their government ministers during negotations with Parliament.

EPSU was active from the earliest stage in lobbying around the Procurement Directive and the relevant Green and White Papers. There were regular contacts with public services employers through the CEEP and CEMR associations and a broad alliance was formed bringing together social and environmental groups such as Greenpeace, Oxfam, the European Disability Forum and the Social Platform.

EPSU worked with the trade union group in the European Parliament, along with the co-ordinators of the political groups. Contacts were also made with Coreper, the committee that brings together the civil servants representing the member states. A number of social and environmental amendments were accepted by Parliament in the first reading but rejected by Council.

A massive lobby of MEPs at the second reading was successful again in getting some amendments through and this involved getting some MEPs to vote against their party line. In the end the Council rejected the key amendments although following conciliation some social and environmental issues were covered in recitals.

Jan Willem’s key points included:

• Resources - at the height of the campaign a member of the EPSU secretariat was effectively working full-time on the issue;
• Targetting MEPs - there were the key MEPs to work with - the co-ordinators and rapporteurs, but also there were MEPs to target particularly in the People’s Party and Liberal groupings who could be persuaded to vote against party recommendations;
• Commission - need to improve links with Commission and influence proposals at earliest stage;
• National lobbying - need to encourage affiliates to use national political networks to put pressure on governments and Coreper; and
• Members of the affiliated unions are a key resource and efforts should be made to include them in our work through delegations to MEPs, fax- or email campaigns, public demonstrations and other forms of trade union action.

see the presentation

Carola Fischbach-Pyttel summarised the main points of the discussion, returning firstly to Anna Salfi’s opening remarks and the idea that, as far as possible, lobbying by national affiliates should echo that being done by the secretariat in Brussels. With a major campaign it was vital to allocate the right level of resources to co-ordinating activity and in some instance this may involve committing a full-time member of staff to the task or taking on someone to do the job.

She added that lobbying and establishing links with MEPs had to be done on a broader base as possible and that there were centre-right and liberal politicians who were willing to listen and support certain arguments around public services.

Carola drew the debate to a close emphasising the need for EPSU to improve its links with the European Parliament. She said that she hoped that the dinner that evening would be the first step in establishing a network of MEPs that would help EPSU argue the case for public services in Parliament.

Discussing the Service Directive - C. Fischbach-Pyttel, A. van Lancker and A. Salfi

Services directive

Carola then introduced MEP Anne van Lancker who gave EC members a briefing on the state of play with the services directive. Anne, rapporteur on the directive for the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, explained that she was working closely with German MEP Evelyne Gebhardt, rapporteur for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee.

Both committees had agreed to take time to consider the directive in the light of it being such a complicated and controversial piece of legislation. They had had to resist pressure from the Dutch presidency to make quicker progress.

Anne said she thought there was plenty of scope to build widespread opposition to the directive through awareness-raising and that events like the recent demonstration at the Council were important for keeping the issue in the press.

The two rapporteurs were planning to produce a working document on the directive in January which they hoped would clarify what the key issues for the opposition campaign to focus on. She felt, at this stage, that it would not necessarily be very fruitful to work on specific amendments. Anne’s view was that the first reading in Parliament would not take place before June 2005.

Her initial thoughts on the main issues included the broad scope of the directive, the country of origin principle, the way that the directive overlaps other legislation and the inadequate provision for quality standards.

Anne’s opinion was that, despite the widespread criticisms from many different organisations, the Commission would not produce a revised document but would be open to key amendments such as the exclusion of the transport sector and temporary employment agencies.

After the lobbying discussion (from left to right): A. Salfi, EPSU President; C. Fischbach-Pyttel, EPSU General Secretary, A. van Lancker, Belgian MEP, I. van Den Burg, Dutch Mep and L. Cocilovo, Italian MEP

Anne emphasised that lobbying had to focus on the key people. She felt, for example, that while health ministers in many EU states might be persuaded to argue for the exclusion of health from the directive, it was important that those arguments were also won with other key ministers in national governments.

Carola thanked Anne for her contribution to the session and reminded EC members that a detailed discussion of strategy and tactics around the directive would take place at the Services and SGI working group on 9 December.

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svenssen talking to Dan Nielsen and Eva Nordmark from the EPSU Executive Committee

EPSU-MEP dinner - Czech MEP Zuzana Roithova chats with EPSU Vice President Anne-Marie Perret and EPSU Executive Committee member Jiri Schlanger