UNITYAUTUMN 2010 BRIEFING

SPECIAL - EU2020 & MODE 4 ANALYSIS

A WARNING TO ALL WORKERS -THE EU IS COMING YOUR WAY The Communist Party says:

• Reject the EU Constitution• No to EU directives that privatise our public

services • Defend and develop British manufacturing • Repeal anti-trade union rulings • Scrap laws which promote super-exploitation and

undercutting of wages and conditions• Break with the Agricultural and Fisheries Policies• No to racism and fascism, Yes to international

solidarity • No to EU militarisation • Restore democracy to EU member states • Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade

that benefits Thirld World nations • Scrap EU rules that aim prevent member states

implementing progressive economic policies • Keep Britain out of the eurozone

CP anti -

EU and Popular

Sovereignty

Advisory

www.communist-party.org.uk

"Budget policies in European countries cannot be national policies any more" stated Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti, following an EU finance ministers meeting, which agreed sanctions for member states if their budgets do not conform to EU economic policies (September 6 2010).

See page two

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No to EU austerityThe European Union is using the current economic crisis, caused by unbridled ‘free market’ capitalism, to grab even more powers from member states and create an undemocratic EU ‘economic government’ based in Brussels.The European Commission is proposing that from next year the national budgets of member states will have to be agreed by EU institutions before they can be implemented. National budgets will be monitored “so as to detect any inconsistencies and emerging imbalances" which do not meet strict Thatcherite economic rules as written into various EU treaties. EU Finance ministers, including Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, agreed the need for “credible sanctions” for member states which do not comply with EU budget rules.Osborne agrees to such interference with national budgets because his Tory government is to announce cuts in public service provision of up to 30 per cent.EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn even claimed after the budget agreement was made that the EU was “a bit like a football game”. “It won’t work if the players start to discuss and argue the rules of the game with the referee every time they commit a foul,” he said.

This handing over of huge economic and political powers from elected governments to unelected EU institutions is part of a process which began with the 1957 Treaty of Rome. This document, like every treaty since, has demanded “ever closer union” largely without the knowledge of voters. The renamed EU Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty – rejected by millions of citizens allowed a vote – lays the basis for an unaccountable EU state in its own right created in the direct interests of monopoly finance capital ie big business.

This recipe for removing democracy and imposing mass privatisation on an unprecedented scale in Europe was drawn by the EU employers federation (UNICE) and the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT).The ERT wrote a paper that became the EU treaty known as the Single European Act in 1986 which, with the enthusiastic support of Margaret Thatcher, led to the internal market, the single currency and the beginnings of a European army. None of these matters were put to electorates. The weakening and total removal of political and economic levers to deal with the crises at a national level is simply intensifying the nature and depth of the malaise. Greece has been ordered to comply with European Central Bank austerity measures or lose control over its own taxation and expenditure altogether. If Greece fails to comply, unelected, unaccountable EU institutions will impose spending cuts on an elected government, under Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty. The overriding logic and purpose of the EU is to hollow out the democratic structures of nation states and incrementally to transfer law-making powers to unelected, supranational institutions in Brussels.

Progressive forces must respond to this anti democratic counterrevolution. National self government is required for democracy to flourish. The freedom of all nations to develop without external interference should be the touchstone for our understanding of Marxism in the modern context.

National independence and self government should, once again, play a decisive role in the defeat of the parasitic class, which has no interest in the fortunes of workers and their families than an economic army of occupation. As Marx said: “Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society” – by which he meant the state.

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EU smuggles in global super-exploitation and undercutting of wages and conditionsBy Brian Denny and Linda Kaucher

The EU is currently negotiating trade agreements that include provisions to allow transnational corporations (TNCs) to bring in their own labour in a process

known as Mode 4, hugely increasing the threat of undercutting wages and conditions established over generations by union struggle.

Mode 4 is cross border services trade in which workers are actually moved across borders. Its inclusion in the international trade agenda allows transnational corporations (TNCs) to profit from the cross border wage differentials, national insurance exemptions, tax juggling and other benefits of ‘flexible labour’.

Mode 1 is cross-border supply (known as outsourcing), Mode 2 is consumption abroad (eg foreign students, tourists), Mode 3 is a commercial presence (eg corporate subsidiaries) and Mode 4 is the

presence of workers moved across borders.

The EU is offering Mode 4 access in all the trade agreements it is negotiating. In the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the Doha Round, the EU revised GATS offer, tabled in June 2005, included Mode 4 offers across service sectors.

Ultimately, Mode 4 undermines workers’ abilities to maintain wages and conditions, loading the balance of power between labour and capital in favour of TNCs. It also reduces EU member states’ democratic

rights to control their own migration policies, in effect handing that power to TNCs.

As labour standards are lost in the few places they have been achieved, such as in some EU countries, it will become more difficult for workers elsewhere ever to achieve them.

Mode 4 is included in all of the trade agreements the EU is negotiating. It is a particularly secret part of the trade agenda, kept from those who will be negatively affected.

These EU offers on Mode 4 are without quotas or Economic Means Tests (ENT).

Defenders of Mode 4 argue that it is not immigration but temporary labour movement – yet this does

not lessen the detrimental effects on EU workers of an influx of temporary workers who will be prohibited from becoming unionised.

Once signed up, Mode 4 openings, like all trade commitments, become effectively permanent, due to the prohibitive cost of withdrawal.

Current EU ‘investor protection’ proposals increase this penalty, allowing not just other states but transnational corporations to challenge a country’s failure to fulfil its trade commitments. Successful challenges will lead to prohibitive

financial compensation claims for the loss of all potential profits, called ‘expropriation’.

So when workers feel the effects of the Mode 4 commitments that have been made on their behalf, it will be

too late to reverse them.

India, on behalf of its TNCs such as steel giant Tata, is demanding TNC Mode 4 access to the EU, and an EU/India Free Trade agreement is currently being fast tracked.

A recent report on the ongoing EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations said the “full ambition of the FTA can not be achieved without Mode 4 - which currently faces a range of barriers like wage-parity conditions”.

From the other side, the EU is demanding very significant investment concessions, including banking liberalisation. The indications are, therefore, that the movement of ‘intra corporate transferees’ (ICTs)

“ The TUC also accepts the parallels with recent anti-trade union ECJ judgments but offers little in the way of action to oppose either the EU rulings or the threat posed by Mode 4. ”

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will be used broadly, and with high expectations of megaprofits.

But bringing super exploited Indian workers into the EU displaces local workers and undermines established working conditions. A race to the bottom is inevitable across many sectors, as TNCs can bring in workers in whatever areas they are established, plus offer cheap, onshore outsourcing.

The Indian government is arguing that the minimum wage stipulations of EU member states undermine its cheap labour ‘comparative advantage’. Yet

even if minimum wage levels are maintained, wage competition for just the minimum wage represents intense downward pressure on labour standards for skilled EU workers.

For a set of reasons - historic, linguistic and related to the liberalised British economy – workers are likely

to be the most affected by EU commitments.

Notably, in terms of secrecy, a recent British delegation to India, led by Tory prime minister David Cameron, failed to even mention that an EU/India Free Trade Agreement is being rapidly negotiated, even though it was specifically focussed on trade.

Mode 4 is considered ‘sensitive’ and thus kept from attention because this dimension of trade – commodifying and moving labour to increase TNC profits at workers’ expense – cuts much deeper than trade in goods, or

even other aspects of services.

Mode 4 can be recognised as a continuum with the attacks on workers that stem from EU ‘freedom of movement of services’, which allows EU companies to move ‘posted workers’ across borders at cheaper rates. Similar language and concepts of “cross-border establishment” and

“movement of service suppliers” are used in both sets of rules.

This is what led to the EU court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), to make anti-trade union rulings in cases such as Laval, Viking, Rüffert which, in different ways, undermines the rights of workers’ to protect their wages and conditions.

ECJ decisions supporting firms’ rights within the EU suggest ‘built-in’ trade agreement protection in Mode 4.

Even the pro-EU TUC bureaucracy acknowledged in a recent report (An

EU Trade Policy For Decent Work) that Mode 4 threatens to undermine collective bargaining, local laws and the rights of migrant workers.

The TUC also accepts the parallels with recent anti-trade union ECJ judgments but offers little in the way of action to oppose either the EU rulings or the threat posed by Mode 4.

At the same time neo-colonial, unequal and neo-liberal EU trade policies continue to devastate Third World economies, forcing greater proportions of the world’s populations

abroad in a desperate search for employment and resources.

Mode 4 does not create a single job but hands further powers to unfettered global capital to decide who works, where and for how much.

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From the European of Building Workers and Woodworkers.

EU promotes false self-employmentLast week [August 2010] the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers took note of a deliberate action to circumvent binding EU-legislation on minimum conditions for posted workers.

The Enterprise Europe Network, which falls under the direct authority of the European Commmission, has advised a Czech company “Solara” that they would have a competitive advantage over local Germany and Austrian companies by registering workers as self-employed workers in Germany for installation works.

This practice would clearly be in breach of national and EU-legislation (Directive 96/71EG). In addition to this, the Network has also endangered the management and workers of the Czech company, who now could face criminal charges in Germany and Austria for circumventing the obligation to pay social security contributions.

In the Newsletter of the Network in May 2010, the following is stated about the advice of the Network to Solara:

“Since local hires in those countries would have been too costly, Solara wanted to dispatch Czech workers to install and deliver roof-windows to new clients. It sought the Network’s advice on work-permit requirements. (…) A member of the Network’s Services and Retail Sector Group, Jitka, is an expert on the topic. She told Solara that while it wouldn’t need permits for Austria it could get around the German permit restriction by registering

self-employed workers at the local Chamber of Crafts. Armed with this information, Solara sent Czech workers to Austria and Germany, where it has won new business.”

For many years the European construction labour market has been overflowed by false self-employed workers, a practice which also has been condemned by the European Employers of the Construction Industry (FIEC).

The EFBWW is aware that some opportunistic and fraudulent company managers (assisted by external consultants) are openly posting false self-employed workers from one country to another in order to circumvent the application of minimum wages, social protection and insurance, as well as working conditions in general.

These practices have largely contributed to wage dumping and social security evasion in the European Union.

Although several countries have over the years tightened their legislation and enforcement towards the practice of false self-employment, the EU has taken no initiative to solve this problem. Now we have experience that the EU, through its Network, is openly encouraging and promoting false self-employment. A practice which can only be described as scandalous!

As a European trade union federation we clearly state that immediate actions must be taken within the Enterprise Europe Network to restore and rectify the damage created, and that prompt and concrete actions are taken to avoid future cases.

Unfortunately, the problem of false self-employment is much broader. The epidemic problem of the false self-employed workers is spreading all over Europe as a “social disease”, as a means to cut wage costs and deprive workers of social rights. The EFBWW has nothing against genuine self-employment, but the practice of false self-employment should be combated also at EU level.

By tightening EU-legislation and strengthening enforcement the EU, together with the Member States, could contribute to a ”social market economy” and a level playing field of social rights and fair competition, as foreseen in the Lisbon Treaty.

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LONDON, JULY 29-30, 2010 Statement from the European seminar of Communist and Workers’ parties  The propaganda myth about a ’Social Europe’ lies in tatters as the great majority of EU member state governments are slashing and privatising public services, supporting labour flexibility, abolishing social security and labour rights, imposing austerity measures and destroying jobs. Through this attack they express the interests of the capitalist class of their countries and comply with EU Treaties from Rome to Lisbon. The Lisbon Treaty extends and consolidates the main features of the EU as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc opposed to workers’ and people’s interests. These harsh austerity measures are being imposed as monopoly capital aims to make the working class and the people generally pay to resolve a crisis they did not cause, a capitalist crisis of over-accumulation of capital. The real way out in favour of the people is to deal with its cause, that is with capitalism itself and not a variant of its management.  In many EU member states, too, anti-trade union laws and judgements are being used to try to restrict workers' resistance to this onslaught, to attack the right to strike, to sharpen anti-communism revealing the class character of bourgeois democracy. Nevertheless, workers across Europe are fighting back against the harsh cuts and privatisations being carried out by their governments. Claims about the existence of a ‘social Europe’ and the value of ‘social partnership’ have been exposed as a cruel lie, created to buy off sections of the working class movement and decisively promote the anti-working class plans of the monopolies.  The European Union is using the crisis to exercise additional powers over member states' finances, to boost capitalist profits and to attack the conditions of life of the working class and other strata of the population. Competition between the monopoly capitalists of the member states is sharpening while the disputes between them confirm the law of the uneven development of capitalism.  The terms imposed by the EU and its mechanisms benefit the monopolies at the expense of  workers, the self-employed, the poor and small and medium-sized farmers. We therefore support the calls for national and international initiatives by the working class movement in defence of jobs, public services and living standards against austerity measures. We believe the time has come for workers across Europe to launch a sustained campaign of mass protest - including industrial action - to defend their interests, paving the way for a more fundamental challenge to the EU. Through liberalisation and commercialisation, the EU seeks to impose flexible working relations and low pay, and hand over the public services to private monopoly capital in order to extract more profits at the expense of the working class.   Workers must demonstrate against EU-driven austerity measures, the dismantling of social security, the extension of labour flexibility and casualisation, the massive spread of unemployment and poverty. Objectively, this struggle is opposed to the power of the monopolies and to all the imperialist organisations such as EU, NATO and the IMF.   In this struggle, Communists urge workers to organise and mobilise:

 For permanent and stable employment with full rights

and dignity. For substantial  increases in salaries.For increased taxes on wealth and monopoly profits.For the people to take into social ownership the natural

resources and strategic sectors of the economies of their countries.

For all public services, including free and upgraded healthcare and education systems for all. 

For the reduction of retirement ages and substantial increases in pensions.

For full and equal rights for immigrant workers.For the support of small and medium sized farmers and

food security. For substantial protection of the environment which is sacrificed for the profits of monopoly capital.

For the right of the peoples to choose their own path of development for their country, including the right to disengagement from the EU and NATO as well as the right to opt for socialism.

For peace, for the withdrawal of NATO and US military bases, against ‘Partnership for Peace’ and the EU-army, against participation in wars and military interventions.

For solidarity with peoples in struggle: for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital; for the defence of socialist Cuba and the abolition of the ‘common position’ of the EU.

 We call for and support protests against the war on Afghanistan around the NATO summit in Lisbon on November 19-20.  We also reaffirm our view that the only alternative to capitalist exploitation, crisis, militarism and imperialist war is socialism. In a socialist society, natural and human resources will be nurtured and used in a planned way to benefit the working class, which will have the power, and society as a whole - rather than being exploited by the monopolies whose system generates capitalist crises such as that today.  Either it’s backwards to a social and economic wasteland in the interests of bankers and speculators, or forward to the democratic national control of natural resources and finances directed for the benefit of working people, their families and the mass of the population.  We therefore call upon trade union organisations and communist and workers' parties to intensify their cooperation, coordination and solidarity, not only against the current offensive of capital but also in the struggle for a revolutionary transformation of society, for socialism and communism. 

AKEL Progressive Party of Working People of CyprusWorkers Party of BelgiumCommunist Party of BritainYoung Communist League of BritainCommunist Party DenmarkGerman Communist PartyCommunist Party of Ireland

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Workers of All Lands, Unite!Robert Wilkinson considers the

issues raised in the CPB booklet

‘Workers of all lands – a Labour movement policy on migrant

labour and immigration’. He

argues that the policy of ‘open borders’, advocated by many sincere

and well-meaning individuals and organisations, is dangerously naïve

and is in fact welcomed by the BNP

as confirming their condemnation of the Left as unrealistic idealists, far

removed from the situation facing many sections of the working class

in Britain.

The formulation contained in some motions presented at union

conferences that all workers ‘whatever their background or

nationality’ are welcome in Britain,

distorts the reality behind the factors that give rise to migration

and the impact that it has upon both the donor and recipient societies.

The analysis contained in the CPB

booklet reveals a truth ‘that dare not speak its name’, that migration may

often act against the interests of the working class as a whole, regardless

of its apparent attractiveness for the

individuals concerned.

It is essential first of all, as the

booklet makes clear, that we distinguish between asylum seekers

and ‘economic’ migrants. Perhaps we

need to go even further by seeing a distinction between migrant workers,

who seek only temporary employment in any particular

country, and immigrants, who

endeavour to settle permanently in

their new country and become an

integral part of the society.

Former National Union of Teachers

President Bill Greenshields, in a speech that he made at their Annual

Conference, spoke of the phrase ‘the

free movement of labour’ as being a myth. The reality, he said, is more

often than not a coerced movement

of labour. Workers who leave their

family and community to seek work

elsewhere do not normally do so from a motivation of exercising their

‘freedom of choice’ but have been compelled by the economic, social

and political situation to migrate and

seek a better world elsewhere. Unfortunately the reality of the

‘Promised Land’ is not one that is ‘paved with gold’ and ‘flowing with

milk and honey’ for the vast majority

and, for some, it is paved with tombstones and flowing with blood.

I could go further than Bill Greenshields and characterise what

has been happening as a ‘Wage-Slave

Trade’ that has been similarly

destructive of the lives of millions of workers and other poverty stricken

populations, no less acceptable simply because it is supposedly ‘voluntary’.

The workers who drowned in

Steerage on the ‘Titanic’ in their vain hopes of reaching the ‘Land of

Opportunity’ are now matched every

single year by those whose boats sink

in the seas in their futile attempt to

reach Europe or North America. Both in Europe from the 17th to the

early 20th Century, and now in Australia, Latin America, Asia and

Africa, emigration acts as a ‘safety-

valve’ to relieve the pressure that might otherwise erupt into

revolution.

Since the 1980s, following the

imposition of neo-liberal economic

policies by the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation,

the situation for migrant workers has become much worse. The much

Available at www.communist-party.org.uk > shop > pamphlets

WEBSITE LINKS Organising migrant workers:

http://www.migrantsupport.eu/Welcome-to-the-TG-Section-of-Unite.html

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RESOURCES

REGISTER ONLINE FOR CP ENews & Views AT THE CP WEBSITE

GO TO THE CP WEBSITE FOR NEWS AND FEATURES ON EU FROM BRITAIN AND ABROAD

GO TO WEBSITE OF THE NO2EU -YES TO DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN AND REGISTER FOR UPDATES

READ THE STANDARD -RURAL RADICAL VOICE CAMPAIGNER AGAINST CAP AND CFP

vaunted ‘freedom’ of the worker to

migrate is pitiful in comparison with

the real freedom of the capitalist employer to seek cheaper workers

elsewhere.

Workers’ organisations on the

other hand have always sought to

regulate the ‘freedom’ of the employer in the labour market by

enforcing the rate for the job, demanding equal treatment for all

and opposing any attempts by the

employers to divide, and thereby weaken, the workers by gender,

race, religion or nationality. The key factor is the extent to which

the trade union movement can

exert its power to regulate the terms on which the new labour is

to be employed.

Such action is not anathema to

trade unionism at international

level. Indeed it was a cornerstone principle of the First International.

Some employers are employing migrant workers at wage rates not

acceptable to local workers, often

below the legal minimum wage, with inferior working conditions, longer

hours and much lower health and safety standards and social benefits.

This situation is made even worse

by the international rules on labour migration being promoted by the

EU under the General Agreement on Trade in Services at the World

Trade Organisation, establishing

legal structures that will allow migrant labour to undercut wages

and conditions everywhere.

Not surprisingly this has provoked

huge trade union protests across

Europe, raising concerns about ‘social dumping’ - an economic

term that means little more than

the super exploitation of migrant

labour - that could spark a ‘race to the bottom’ between different

groups of workers.

There are some who focussed on

what they regarded as a negative

aspect of the dispute at the Lindsey Oil Refinery and ignored the

extremely important issues raised by the workers and the trade

unions involved.

When construction workers fight to maintain the terms and

conditions of the Blue Book, they are engaged in a struggle as

fundamental as it would be for, say,

teachers to protect the Burgundy Book from employers in Academies

and Trust Schools who might seek to undermine it.

The blame for the attempted

misuse of the dispute by the BNP wrests with Gordon Brown’s raising

of the argument of ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ in his speech to

the Labour Party Conference in

2007. This was a blatantly hypocritical use of the slogan when

the Prime Minister was well aware that he had already agreed to the

EU directives on removing the

barriers to the use by offshore subcontractors of workers

employed on terms and conditions of employment of their home

country, a lot worse of course than

those here in Britain.

This is not only an issue that affects

industrial workers as was evident in the angry reaction of the public

service union PCS to a document

leaked in early 2006 on the possibilities of the Government

‘offshoring’ jobs in the Department

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of Work and Pensions. Mark

Serwotka, the General Secretary of

the PCS, commented that ‘the government now seems to be

embracing not only potential privatisation, but potentially public

sector jobs being shipped overseas’.

Mark Sewotka identified the need for ‘binding

national agreements negotiated by trade

unions, and equal legal

status for all, regardless of nationality’. The logic

of this position involves rejecting the European

Union and the World

Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on

Trade in Services (GATS).

He also said that ‘Every

worker will benefit from a

campaign to unionise overseas workers in

order to prevent employers from using them as a weapon

against fellow workers’ (my

emphasis). What do you do when someone is hitting you with a

weapon? The BNP solution is to vent

our anger against the weapon – but if we simply smash the weapon our

attacker will only go away and find another one. Sooner or later we

have to take the weapon from them

and ourselves use it against them. We need to recruit the migrant workers

on nationally negotiated wages and conditions to fight alongside the rest

of us against the employers.

The immigration and asylum laws and the organisations for their

implementation as they stand are not fit for purpose. They are too often

used in a blatantly discriminatory

manner against those in genuine

need. But criticism of the operation

of the asylum and immigration

procedures is misdirected against the workers who have the responsibility

for making the system work as best they can. It is the task of the trade

unions involved, and the TUC as a

whole, to ensure that these workers are not misused

by the Government to

enforce its own

agenda.

The

Government approach to the

‘Fight against

Terrorism’ has aimed to aggravate

mistrust and division between

workers from different backgrounds. Only the workers themselves, united

in struggle against those who would seek to divide us, can overcome this

challenge.

Workers everywhere have a responsibility to their own class that

must override the ‘rights’ of the employers to exploit workers

wherever they choose in pursuit of

maximum profits.

Workers also have a collective

responsibility to ensure that the exercise of their ‘rights’ as individuals

are not at the expense of the

conditions of the class as a whole. Those who ‘export’ their own

individual skills and education from their home country in the search for

better employment prospects in

another are in danger of damaging

the society that they leave by

denuding it of the services that are in greater need there than in the

country of their destination. That is why the Commonwealth Teachers’

Protocol agreed by Education

Ministers of the Commonwealth, on the initiative of former NUT General

Secretary Steve Sinnott, is a significant model for emulation in

other sectors. Indeed it has already

been emulated to protect the international ‘agency’ trade in nurses.

Employers must have their ability to recruit and employ workers

constrained as much as possible by

the workers themselves organised

collectively in trade unions and

enforcing agreements that insist on non-discriminatory terms and

conditions.

For years the international union

movement has been divided. But with

the formation of the International Trade Union Confederation and really

effective international secretariats in areas such as food and hotels, energy

and metallurgy, transport and the

media, it becomes possible to give our cross border class organisations

a cutting edge and a pro worker focus. And with coordinated

campaigns to raise wages within

companies across borders, the opportunity for employers to

undercut can be diminished.

Workers from all lands need to unite

- after all, we have a world to gain.

“...the Commonwealth Teachers’ Protocol agreed by Education Ministers of the Commonwealth, on the initiative of former NUT General Secretary Steve

Sinnott, is a significant model for emulation in other sectors. It has been followed with a similar agreement to protect nurses.”

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The ‘Europe 2020’ document subtitled ‘A European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ published by the European Commission is, on the contrary, more of a strategy for decline in the wages (both personal and ‘social’), pensions and job security of the bulk of society. It is a recipe for social exclusion and the uprooting of an increased proportion of the younger generation as they seek to respond to the demands of an increasingly volatile job market.

The current President of the European Commission, José Barroso, claims that ‘Significant progress has been made on dealing with bad banks, correcting the financial markets and recognising the need for strong policy coordination in the eurozone’. What this means of course is that the Governments have bailed out the banks and finance houses with public money that the peoples of Europe are now required to repay in the form of job losses, below-inflation increases in pay and returns on savings, made even worse by cuts in social services.

Barroso boasts that ‘We have powerful tools to hand in the shape of new economic governance, supported by….the disciplines and support of economic and monetary union’. The British economy will not be able to stand aside nor aloof from this process, no matter how much the ConDem Government pretend that sterling is still an independent currency. The Bank of England will be as independent as a Scottish banknote.

Recognising this reality, Barroso argues that ‘Our new agenda requires a coordinated European response, including with social partners and civil society’. This will mean that every effort will be made to incorporate the European trade unions in this endeavour and we shall no doubt see the amenable John Monks dancing to their tune.

Pay the Piper and Still Let Them Call the Tune

The Europe 2020 Strategy admits that ‘Europe faces a

moment of transformation. The crisis has wiped out years of economic and social progress and exposed structural weaknesses in Europe’s economy’. What it attempts to conceal is the reality that, in order to hide again the structural weaknesses of the capitalist economy, there will be no going back to restore the gains of economic and social progress achieved by the peoples of Europe since 1945.

Echoing Barroso, the Strategy insists that ‘Stronger

economic governance will be required to deliver results….helping Member States to return to sustainable growth and public finances’. Again the hidden agenda is to achieve the growth at the expense of public services.

The Strategy document admits that ‘The availability of easy credit, short-termism and excessive risk taking in financial markets around the world fuelled speculative behaviour, giving rise to bubble-driven growth and important imbalances’. Yet Marxists recognise that such things are inherent in the

capitalist system and exhortations to avoid a repetition are as useless as the Buddhist monk preaching to the tiger to become a vegetarian.

The scale of the problem is acknowledged: ‘The crisis has not just been a one-off hit, allowing us to resume “business as usual”. The challenges that our [European] Union faces are greater than before the recession, whilst our room for manoeuvre is

limited’. Limited to solutions that preserve the wealth of those already well endowed and oblige the common people to pay the price, of course.

There will be no escape, as this is something that Britain will not be able to ‘opt-out’. The 2020 Strategy makes it clear that ‘It will take strong leadership, commitment and an effective delivery mechanism….It will reinforce economic, social and territorial cohesion’. This sounds familiar – as if we are

returning to the United Europe of a previous generation: ‘One people, one empire, one leader!’

The Free Market has a Price

But this time around it will be the market that will be the undisputed master of our destinies. At the EU level, the Commission will work: ‘To mobilise EU financial instruments….as part of a consistent funding strategy, that pulls together public and private funding….To enhance a framework for the use of market-based instruments, e.g. emissions trading, revision of energy taxation….this should promote changes in consumption and production patterns….At national level, Member States will need:….To deploy market-based instruments such as fiscal incentives and procurement to adapt production and consumption methods….To use regulation…and market-based instruments such as taxation, subsidies and procurement…’ What this will mean in practice is that increases in taxation will fall upon consumption rather than income and wealth, further widening the division between rich and poor.

It is not just working people that have been hit hard by the recession. The 2020 Strategy acknowledges that ‘Industry and especially SMEs [small and medium enterprises] have been hard hit by the economic crisis and all sectors are facing the challenges of globalisation and adjusting their production processes and products…’ Yet all that the Strategy can offer is that ‘At the EU level, the Commission will work: ….To promote the internationalisation of SMEs’ (sic!) - no doubt by encouraging them to employ

A clear view of the European miasma

! ! 11

migrant labour at rock-bottom wages.

The Poor Have No Bread? Then Let Them Eat Cake

Yet it is not the exploitation of unskilled migrant workers that is at the heart of the 2020 Strategy. It identifies that ‘By 2020, 16 million more jobs will require high qualifications, while the demand for low skills will drop by 12 million jobs’. It is the enticement of an already skilled migrant workforce from countries that can ill-afford their loss that will be the key to success of the Eurocrats vision of the future.

The unskilled will be ‘enticed’ by the stick rather than the carrot. As part of the Flagship Initiative ‘Agenda for new skills and jobs’, the ‘Member States will need:…To review and regularly monitor the efficiency of tax and benefit systems so to make work pay with a particular focus on the low skilled, whilst removing measures that discourage self-employment’. It is the basic capitalist principle of remuneration: To encourage the well paid to work harder, they offer to pay them more. To encourage the low paid to work harder, they threaten to pay them less. Welfare benefits for the poor will be cut whilst bonuses for the affluent will be subject to less taxation than at present. The prospect is a judicious mixture of the attitudes of Marie Antoinette and the Victorian ‘Self Help’ philosophy of Samuel Smiles.

There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief

How will Europe emerge from the crisis? According to the 2020 Strategy ‘High levels of public debt cannot be sustained indefinitely. The pursuit of the Europe 2020 objectives must be based on a

credible exit strategy as regards budgetary and monetary policy on the one hand, and the direct support given by governments to economic sectors, in particular the financial sector, on the other’. Sounds like they are advocating throwing good money after bad as the

document itself acknowledges that ‘liquidity was provided to the financial sector in an unprecedented way. Governments gave massive support to banks, either through guarantees, recapitalization or through “cleaning” of balance sheets from impaired assets…’ This then becomes a new definition of risk for the financial entrepreneur: we make a profit and we pay ourselves a bonus, we make a loss and the rest of you are forced to bail us out. Heads we win, tails you lose.

But this apparent Keynesian pump-priming largesse will only go so far (only so far as

the rich). The rest of society will have to make do with the parsimony of Hayek. The Europe 2020 strategy for ‘smart budgetary consolidation’ spells out that ‘Fiscal consolidation and long-term financial sustainability will need to go hand in hand with important structural

reforms, in particular of pension, health care, social protection and education systems. Public administration should use the situation as an opportunity to enhance efficiency and the quality of service’. So it is not just those nasty Tories after all that are forcing the cuts upon the people. It comes from a much higher authority and we don’t mean the Holy Father.

Keep in Step, You Are Being Observed

Contrary to the possibility of any democratic demurring from this fate, the Europe 2020 strategy asserts that

‘This will require a strong governance framework that harnesses the instruments at its disposal to ensure timely and effective implementation’. During the Inquisition the heretics were shown the instruments of torture to encourage them to recant. Even if their nerve failed them

and they abjured their heresies, they would still be burnt but at least their souls would go to heaven.

And what will heaven look like? ‘….the onset of fiscal consolidation should normally occur in 2011. The process of bringing the deficits to below 3 per cent of GDP should be completed, as a rule, by 2013’. This is a recipe for the devastation of public services. They will make a desert and call it peace.

Nobody will be allowed to step out of line because the 2020 Strategy is ‘A framework for deeper and broader surveillance’.

And who is watching us?

‘These new guidelines will reflect the decisions of the European Council….For country surveillance, they will take the form of Opinions on stability/convergence

programmes under Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 accompanied by recommendations under the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPGs) Article 121.2….’

We must learn to love Big Brother.

12!

“The EU is a major issue facing workers in Britain and when the opportunity came to step up the campaign for popular sovereignty during

the Euro elections in 2009, the Communist Party made available significant funds to help support the No2EU-Yes to Democracy campaign”, says general secretary Robert

Griffiths.“ All serious campaigning costs

money and the CP has plans for growth and

the extension of its work to communities throughout England, Scotland and Wales. What’s more we are emerging as a Party with a voice

and following for radical solutions to rural issues where the weight of the EU is keenly felt. The response for example to the re launch of

Country Standard, which has taken an uncompromising class view on the EU Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, has been a

real eye opener.”A political party of workers - now in its

90th year - that has survived, by and large, on the voluntary and selfless effort of its ordinary

members, need not be embarrassed to ask supporters to make a financial contribution. One look at the CP website demonstrates

where the funds go: campaigns, education of members, new publications, Communist Universities, a 90th anniversary DVD and a new

range of pamphlets and posters with significant ongoing investment in a new website.

So, Robert asks supporters and especially those who

want to campaign against the EU,

“To make a financial contribution to

the CP National Appeal. We don’t take Euros as they seem to mess up the finances of anything

they get entangled with, but just about anything and everything else will be turned into action against capitalism and for socialism”

It is easy to donate, in person via a CP branch, by mail or, easier still, online.

DIG DEEP FOR SOCIALISM - 90TH ANNIVERSARY NATIONAL APPEAL THAT DESERVES YOUR SUPPORT

MANIFESTO PRESS

You can buy titles online - go to CP site> shop• Freedom From Tyranny - by Phil Katz

deals with the growth of historical revisionism, holocaust denial and anti communism in Europe.

ALSO• Killing No Murder - Robert Griffiths• The Education Revolution -Theo

MacDonald• Imperial Controversy - Andrew Murray

A CP BRANCH NEAR YOUGo to communist-party.org.uk

There will be a CP branch near you,

which you can join and where you can get

involved.

Opposing the EU and building

popular sovereignty is a core theme

of CP activity - JOIN US

EVERY PENNY YOU DONATE IS

USED FOR ACTION

Campaigning costs moneyCost of a round = 200 posters

Five pounds = 500 leaflets

Five give one days wage = 5000 pamphlets

Ten give one days wage = a general election contest

Send cheques made payable to CPB ‘90 Anniversary Appeal’ c/o CPB Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road, Croydon CR0 1BD or pay online.