PES Manifesto

Catalonia in the New Social Europe

Published Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 22:41
by estherbcn326 (1803 views and 0 comments)

The debate on the economic and social model that Catalonia needs cannot be held without taking into account the political strategy of the European Union in this field. In fact, since some years ago, the globalized world in which we live has made necessary for the Catalan economy to add its weight to the total weight of the European countries that conforms the Union, so as to reinforce its participation in the world market.

For much of its recent history, the European Union has been a driving force of social and economic progress crucial for our development. Until 2000, Directives such as the Equal Pay Directive for men and women (1975), the Directive on the protection of workers' health and safety at the workplace (1989), the Directive protecting the rights of workers posted in another Member State (1996) and the antidiscrimination Directives for racial and employment equality (2000), brought big advances in cohesion and in the quality of life for Europe's citizens. However, from 2002 on, Europe has seen few significant social policy initiatives, and this passivity –both from the European Commission and the Members States- has concurred with an increase of the socioeconomic tensions caused by the impact of globalization in the labour market, with the massive introduction of new technology penetrating every part of our economies, and with some structural reforms implemented by the European Union, in a liberal sense. Such phenomena have demanded more of all workers, in different areas.

At a macro economical level, the labour market has fragmented. The gap between types of workers, modalities of contracts and between wages has increased, and a new sort of poverty has appeared, related to precarious jobs or to unemployment. Apart from the growing polarisation between high-skilled workers–competent in new technologies, foreign languages, employed and well paid- and unskilled workers –with indecent labour conditions or excluded of the labour market-, today, and because of the growing intensity of competition and the unpredictability of economic shifts, feelings of insecurity are more and more shared also by high-skilled, full-time, white-collar and even managerial or professional employees, which have led to a growing feeling of frustration, highly negative for the heath of our society.

At the same time, the Stability and Growth Pact adopted in 1997 by Member States, which limits the public deficit, has indeed restricted the Lisbon Strategy; and its main goals in labour, educative, social or environmental fields, foreseen by 2010, will not be achieved on time because of a lack of enough investment.

In this state of play, in which the enormous socioeconomic disparities in the European territory caused by the enlargement must be added, Europe has perceived the need to seriously redefine its economic and social model to face with guarantees the next years. The European Union has perceived, indeed, the urgency of offering answers to all these problems if it does not want to be seen by many of its citizens as part of the problem.

For the moment, and as it is unfortunately usual in the history of the European Union, the Union, the States, the regions and the municipalities have not acted together. This time some States have leaded the initiative to update its social and economic model, adapting it to their needs. In France, for example, the sarkozynian right has bet for a mix of liberal economic policy with interventionist measures which has started reducing the importance of the public sector in the national economy, reducing the social taxes of the companies and encouraging the extra working hours. In Germany, Angela Merkel has finished with quite a success the structural reforms that demanded the German economy to overcome the crisis, and has reassumed the exigencies imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact. In the United Kingdom, the labour government of the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has appealed to the economic responsibility of the European Union, and has highlighted the importance of incorporating the maximum of population in the labour market, and of reducing the social subsidies.

In this way, the new three leaders of the communitarian driving force -including the labourist Gordon Brown- have already pointed towards the right when focusing their challenges towards the future. And this direction -natural if we take into account the current representation of political forces in the continent- is not the best to achieve a full integration of Catalonia in the internationalized economy based on knowledge, excellence and high added-value of the production processes, because indeed, it gives priority to competitiveness in spite of to the investment in persons and in their training. However, this kind of investment is the one we need to improve our competence, quality and talent as a country, and well as to take action against the apathy, the unemployment and the social exclusion. Therefore, any of the directions indicated by Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown would let Catalonia continue advancing in this sense.

Certainly the needs of Catalonia are specific, and the characteristics of the Catalan economy as well as the problems of our society are not the same that suffer some French Regions, German Länder or British territories. But we are inevitably expecting the conjunction of winds that blow in the European Union, since the economic and social model of Catalonia cannot be different from the one that Europe is building as a world region.

In a highly competitive world like the one of our days, it is not worth to proceed in a non coordinated manner to defend the interest of the workers. On the contrary, growth and cohesion coordinated strategies are needed to determine both the direction of the communitarian efforts, and our position in the international market, as an economical and technological advanced region, and socially fair. And what Europe needs after these years of a certain pause is not to retrocede positions and neither loosing weight, but to dedicate even more resources to stimulate growth and to continue offering a high level of social protection, even though from a new approach more convenient to the current and future necessities.

This is why the European Union must look again at the presumptions which have underpinned the policymaking of recent years, and actively act to reverse the regressive social trends which are eroding the values and the European social model that the socialists and social democrats have contributed to consolidate in the whole continent. In particular, and taking into account that the European market is effectively suprastatal, it needs to reinforce the social dimension in the social sphere, adopting a social and environmental sustainable growth strategy based on macroeconomic common policies that not only control the inflation and the financial convergence, but also foment coordinated investments among the Member States in the main objectives of the Lisbon Strategy. Furthermore, it is important to take measures against the precarious work -which affects the 12% of the work of the Union- to prevent the social exclusion in all Member States and, if necessary, use the structural and cohesion funds as instruments to fight against this exclusion and poverty, promoting the economic and social cohesion. It is also important to act in a decisive manner against the fiscal competence inside the European Union, and against the social and environmental dumping, principal cause of the off-sourcing.

In fact, to advance towards a real European economic government which tends to equal the rights and welfare of the European citizens, the Economic and Monetary Union needs to assure labour, social and environmental minimum common standards, that should be reflected also in its international transactions as values of solidarity and of social justice, contributing to the design of global governance rules and institutions.

All this must not only be done with the open method of coordination and exchanging good practices, but with legislative tools necessary to advance and promote a basic common nucleus of rights.

On the other hand, flexicurity must be an opportunity to guarantee at the same time the flexibility and the dynamism of the work market, and the income security as well as of the workers. However, this flexibleness favourable to achieve the highly competitive, innovative and knowledge-based economy that all desire, cannot become a deregulatory force and neither an obstacle to achieve an inclusive society that we have always defended.

In 2010, a 50 percent of the new creation jobs will require a high qualification, the domination of foreign languages, and so on, while only a 15 percent could be occupied by theoretically low skilled workers. This is why is crucial to improve the European educative and training systems as well as the access to training -reducing the school failure and early school leaving, augmenting the participation of people to the lifelong learning and so on-, so as to increment the capacities of the people and their participation in the society. However, this implies inevitably to Europeanize the high education policy and to raise the European budget in this field. This proposal is not well seen by some countries more favourable to the private financing of education or which feel more comfortable in a framework of national policies.

In any case, apart from investing actively in education, Europe must work to achieve that its citizens can find quality jobs, with decent wages. Furthermore, the European Union needs to work urgently in the implementation of conciliation measures that make compatible the family and work life, improving the early education of the children, as well as the social assistance to aging and non autonomous population.

To sum up, these proposals are some of the ones defined by Jacques Delors and the president of the European Socialist Party, Poul-Nyrup Rasmussen, in the New Social Europe, the document published some months ago which must be a reference to define the European economic and social model from 2010 on. The European citizenship, and also the States and the regions as Catalonia must consider the opportunity to decide the configuration of the future European Parliament, in less than 2 years, to encourage this idea of a major economic and social governance of the European Union which takes into account the real necessities of all territories and persons that compose it. A proof of that is that now, and for some months, it is possible to contribute to the main document that the PES will approve and submit to vote in all European countries.

Find the article in Catalan at eFUTUR.

Tags: education, employment, equality, welfare

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