Pressure on European Commission to investigate trade union rights abuse
The ITUC and ETUC have repeated their call on the European Commission to open a formal investigation into trade union rights in Georgia under the procedure linked to the Commission’s trade preference scheme. The Confederations originally wrote to Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht in June but he responded in August to say that the Commission was using its contacts with the Georgian authorities to raise the issue of trade union rights and that an investigation was not appropriate. Since then the AFL-CIO confederation in the USA has convinced authorities there to examine the situation in Georgia