Carola Fischbach-Pyttel, General Secretary, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU)
In June of 2009, the European Parliament elections will take place. Over 300 million voters from 27 Member States will have the opportunity to vote. They will elect over 700 Members of Parliament (MEPs). One of the main concerns for the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) is how will these 700+ MEPS consider public services in the European Union ? In this article I will explain how EPSU intends to positively influence ALL candidates for the European elections, and to persuade them that the starting point for consideration of public services at EU level is just how significantly, strong public services, benefit society.
EPSU sees the European elections as a huge opportunity for public services for two reasons.
1. The time for a renewed belief in public services is now:
The global financial crisis has finally killed off the myth that capitalism can function without regulation. Public Services, through strong regulation, transparent national administration and efficient local government, provide a huge safety barrier for the citizen confronted by the ravages of an unregulated market. Now more than ever, strong democratic, accountable public services are needed to provide vital services. It cannot be forgotten that the financial system that so dramatically collapsed during autumn 2008, was also the system that advocated; draconian budgetary pressure on public services; “streamlined”, or more accurately under-funded, services; and a reform agenda driven by “financial savings”, which amounted to little more than offsetting costs to the next generation of taxpayers.
The European elections should be fought with the evidence of this failed system in mind, and with a renewed belief in the value of strong, well funded public services.
2. The European Parliament will have a greater say in how public services are defined:
The current European Parliament term 2004-2009 has not been a good one for public services. The European Commission under President José Manuel Barroso has pursued what has been described as an “ostrich policy” in relation to positively defining public services at the EU – instead constantly turning to the Internal Market as the answer. The European Parliament could only adopt a defensive strategy to ensure that proposals to liberalise public services were made ‘less bad’. The opportunity to seize the agenda and initiate a set of proposals to “celebrate” the role of public services did not exist. However, the term 2009-2014 will see new powers granted to European Parliament. Most significant of these will be the introduction of the so called ‘Lisbon Treaty’. When enacted, this treaty will see a new reference to public services. This will allow the European Parliament to consider initiatives from the European Commission from a social perspective.
Specifically, it gives the Parliament a more solid basis upon which to call for the adoption of a European legal framework for public services, long a central aim of EPSU. The Lisbon Treaty would provide for a legal basis (Article 14) to initiate legislation on public services (or, services of general economic interest in ‘eurospeak’). In practical terms this would be through what is known as the “co-decision procedure”, which is the EU decision making tool which gives Parliament the most power.
The issues of concrete mechanisms to evaluate the quality of public services, how these services are funded; how public service contracts are drawn up and decided upon; could all be addressed from the perspective of the value of the service in societal terms, rather than the blunt mechanism used before, which was to assess the service almost solely from an Internal Market perspective.
This may all sound distant and an example of European Union bureaucratic babble, but the value of this change in how public services are assed at EU level can be distilled into one phrase; it would greatly benefit the users of these services – the citizens.
How is this so? Throughout the history of the EU, the dominant yardstick for success has been commercial activity, i.e.; the internal market. Public Services have suffered from being assessed by this yardstick alone. Health services, energy supply, local government services such as waste collection, water supply, have been scrutinized not under criteria of quality of delivery, accessibility and transparency, but rather under criteria which coldly assess how accessible these services are to the internal market. This does not allow the raison d’etre for these services, namely to place equality and solidarity as cornerstones for essential services, to be assessed.
The Lisbon Treaty would allow the European Parliament to ‘start afresh’ in the European assessment of public services. It would allow those services to be seen as a balance to the market, a set of essential services from which all citizens of the EU should accrue benefit. And most importantly, to view the application of this ‘universality’ principle as a way of measuring the quality of the service.
EPSU as an organization has a wealth of material which shows how social exclusion has accelerated when public services have liberalized. In the energy sector and in the health sector in particular. The provisions in the Lisbon Treaty highlight territorial cohesion as a key objective of the EU. For EPSU this amounts to a ringing endorsement for public services. What other way than through well managed, responsive public services can territorial cohesion be maintained? In areas where the market has no interest in going, be it due to geographical or social isolation, public services are obliged to trek.
The EPSU ‘Public Service Pledge’ for the European Elections 2009
The provisions in the EU treaties and the policy direction of the EU over the period 2009-2014 largely depends on what kind of European Parliament we elect in June 2009. Will it be one which celebrates the European social model, and the fundamental principles which underpin this concept, or will it be a Parliament stocked with representatives who still cling to the ways of a discredited financial system – one where the market is all seeing and all knowing and regulation equals obstruction? EPSU has pledged to play its part in trying to elect representatives that are committed to the European social model, to progressive values, to solidarity and universality.
It is for this reason that we have launched the ‘EPSU public service pledge’ (www.epsu.org/publicservicepledge) . National public service unions throughout the European Union will ask candidates for the European Elections, scheduled for June 2009, to sign up to the EPSU demands. The pledge asks for candidates to support a set of framework laws which recognize the special role of essential services in the European Union, and specifically calls for initiatives to protect and promote quality for users of public services. The campaign was launched in November 2008 by Member of the European Parliament, Mr. Joel Hasse Ferreira (PSE, Portugal) and Ms. Jean Lambert (Greens, UK). Both the Party of European Socialists and the European Green Party
This pledge is an innovative idea to engage public service workers and users in the European Elections. Voters should be informed about the profound influence EU decisions have on the funding, management and delivery of public services. A recent example is the ‘directive on the provision of services in the internal market’. Although ostensibly most public services were excluded from the full scope of this directive (most notably healthcare), a large degree of ambiguity exists in terms of the implementation of the directive. Some experts are warning that the impact of the Services Directive on social services could be very significant, and yet public awareness or even knowledge of this is lacking.
This is why, for 2009, EPSU is focusing on our positive contribution to the European elections. Public service workers have a valuable role to play in June, to ensure that voters are talking about how the EU affects our essential services, and voting for candidates who are committed to EU policy that doesn’t just protect public services, but celebrates their central role in our society.
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