Celebrate public services day! Change course, promote public services!

(23 June 2014) We celebrate International Public Services Day. Public services fulfil a key task in our societies, creating greater equality and making our societies fairer. They are something to celebrate. However, in recent times, and specially since the financial and economic crisis, those that caused the crisis are trying to downgrade them to profit at the expense of our societies. For the European Federation of Public Service Unions, EPSU, celebrating public services means fighting attempts to liberalise and privatise them across Europe to the detriment of citizens.
Thanks to several leaking websites we have come to known the dangers facing public services, in Europe and internationally, from current trade deals being negotiated behind closed doors. Fronting themselves as the Really Good Friends of Services,’ a group of 50 countries—representing an estimated 70 per cent share of the world’s trade in services—are secretly negotiating the TISA. This deal will open-up up a wide range of public services to be sold permanently for private profit.

This massive trade deal will put public health care, child care, postal, broadcasting, water, power, transport and other services at risk. It will also restrict a government’s right to regulate stronger standards in the public’s interest. For example, it will affect environmental regulations, licensing of health facilities and laboratories, waste disposal centers, power plants, school and university accreditation and broadcast licenses. The proposed deal will also restrict a government’s ability to regulate key sectors including financial, energy, telecommunications and cross-border data flows. Any new service will be from the start open to be liberalized and under pressure for privateers, leaving the local, regional or state power little chance to develop publicly funded public services. Trade agreements must not prevent citizens from deciding how they want their public services run.

Also in Europe the European Commission is negotiating in extreme secrecy a trade deal with the United States (TTIP). TTIP and other trade agreements are creating a maze of agreements that reign in governments and make it virtually impossible to reverse decisions made now or in the future on market opening. The offers on the table are comparable to those made in the negotiations between the EU and Canada (CETA). Such an EU liberalisation agenda should be publicly debated at national and EU level, including the guarantees and rights that would accompany this agenda.

EPSU believes that instead of focusing on liberalization governments should focus on improving citizens’ access to quality of public services. This needs fair taxation, with sufficient staff, more progressive policies and an investment plan to put back to work the 26 million Europeans that are unemployed. Implement a world-wide FTT now and change course of the current economic policies. There is plenty to celebrate about public services, but its defence today is of capital importance.