Dear friends, colleagues, comrades,

The European Council – the heads of state and government of the EU member states – already approved conclusions on the Europe 2020 Strategy at its meeting on 17 June 2010 in Brussels.
Finally, the Council agreed on 5 headline targets for the Europe 2020 Strategy:

1.    an employment rate of 75 % for the population aged 20 to 64;

2.    an innovation target that investment in research and development shall rise to 3 % of GDP (Lisbon );

3.    a commitment to the already agreed EU 20/20/20 climate and energy targets , which means that greenhouse gas emissions shall be reduced by 20%, energy efficiency raised by 20% and the share of renewables in energy production raised to 20%;

4.    an education target to bring the secondary-school drop-out rate below 10% (Lisbon) and to achieve 40% of graduates from higher education (new);

5.    a social inclusion target to reduce the number of persons at risk of poverty by 20 million (25%),

I spoke about that in our last meeting.
The European Parliament had debated the Europe 2020 Strategy at its Plenary Session in May and approved a resolution on it – jointly put forward by Conservatives, Liberals, Social Democrats and Greens – at its Plenary Session in June 2010.

The European Council did not pick up anything important from Parliament's resolution, but took decisions on the Europe 2020 Strategy as prepared by the Council's services.
This is the reality in the European Union: on shaping the EU's major strategy on economic, social and employment policy, the European Parliament simply has no major role to play.

What about the positions of the political groups in the European Parliament on “ Europe 2020” ?

The right wing groups – Conservatives, Liberals, ECR – fully support the EU's austerity policy and demands a deepening of the single market, meaning more liberalisation and privatisation.
The centre groups – Social Democrats and Greens – fully accept that budget cuts are needed in order to comply with the Maastricht criteria on deficits and debt, but argue that fiscal consolidation should be achieved in a more cautious manner, avoiding too severe cuts in social spending. One might call this a more “compassionate austerity policy”.
The differences between the right wing and the centre groups are not based on opposite approaches on principal policy directions, but rather on putting a different emphasis regarding e.g. the role of "greening" the economy and innovation to overcome the crisis and its consequences on the proposed overall policy mix. This explains quite neatly why the right wing and the centre finally could agree on a compromise resolution on the Europe 2020 Strategy.
The GUE/NGL is the only political group within the European Parliament that opposes both the EU's austerity drive and the Europe 2020 Strategy.
It is true: within the Parliament we are isolated with that position. But we are not isolated as regards the massive protests in the streets – in the member states and also in Brussels on 29 September – by trade unions and social movements against that policy. In Brussels were more than 100.000 people demonstrating against austerity-policy and for public services.
Leaders from Social Democrats and Greens participated in the ETUC demonstration on 29 September in Brussels – but they are quite reluctant about supporting the ETUC's alternative policy approach in content. Not only the trade union rank and file, but also its leadership becomes more and more aware of this.
This is a political asset for the Left. We are the only group in the Parliament that uncompromisingly supports the key proposals of the trade union movement and the ETUC on how to tackle the crisis: further fiscal stimulus via a social and environmental European Recovery Programme over the next 3–5 years, new instruments for financing recovery such as a general EU Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), a bank levy etc., promoting “Good Work” instead of “flexicurity”, an new industrial policy geared towards ecologically and socially sustainable development and the like.
I do not have the time to explain our proposals in detail, but you can check the GUE/NGL resolution on the Europe 2020 Strategy for our alternative approach.

What will happen next with Europe 2020?

First of all, the European Council will approve the “Europe 2020 Integrated Guidelines” finally in October. As the earlier “Lisbon Strategy Integrated Guidelines”, these essentially cover a “Growth and Jobs” agenda. The major part of the guidelines deal with economic policy, setting austerity policies and a further liberalisation of the single market in stone. This part – the ‘Broad Economic Policy Guidelines’ – has already been approved by the Council. The Council didn't even have to ask Parliament for its opinion on this – the Lisbon Treaty doesn't provide for any rights of the Parliament to have a say on the Economic Policy part of the Guidelines.
At its July Plenary Session, the European Parliament adopted about 50 amendments on the Employment Policy part of the Integrated Guidelines. Again, according to the Lisbon Treaty the Parliament has no substantial rights to shape the EU's employment policies. The Council only formally has to wait until Parliament has given its opinion on the EMPL Guidelines, but finally the Council can decide alone on them (consultation procedure). So Parliament is still a ‘lame duck’ as regards the ‘Europe 2020’ Integrated Guidelines. Parliament's proposals on the employment part of the guidelines were approved by a grand coalition of Conservatives, Liberals, Social Democrats and Greens.
In content, Parliament's position was overall supportive of the Commission's position. Its ‘grand narrative’ is that overcoming the economic crisis will need a lot of restructuring in the economy, which must be assisted by growth policies based on deepening the European Single Market.
On several occasions Parliament's adopted position strongly argued for 'fully exploiting the potential of the internal market', removing the 'obstacles for growth arising from legislation, bureaucracy and national misallocation of resources' as well as 'high taxes and protectionist tendencies'. It also called for more labour market flexibility: 'External and internal flexicurity strategies to increase flexibility, to be able to react more efficiently to production cycles, should be better applied through active labour market policies and adequate social security systems available to workers under all forms of employment, so that changing jobs does not lead to disproportionate financial costs.'

Amongst other things such as ‘Good Work’, shorter working time without loss of pay etc. the GUE/NGL group had proposed a new guideline on promoting gender equality across the board in employment policy. This was voted down by the same ‘grand coalition’ including the Greens – in stark contrast to the ‘pro-feminist’ image that the Greens always claim for themselves.
In my view, working people in Europe do not have much positive things to expect from the Europe 2020 Strategy. After October 2010, member states will have to put up national “Europe 2020 Reform Programmes”, and ‘progress’ shall be annually monitored. This is more or less the same procedure – and also more or less the same political content – as with the failed Lisbon Strategy.
What might be more important than this non-binding Europe 2020 Strategy, are the European Commission's plans for new legislation. In his ‘State of the Union’ speech to the European Parliament on 7 September 2010, the President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso announced: “We will also act further on red tape. SMEs are being strangled in regulatory knots. 71% of CEOs say that the biggest barrier to their success is bureaucracy. The Commission has put proposals on the table to generate annual savings of €38 billion for European companies.”
To remove so called “administrative burdens” to industry – which often means to lower protection of workers or to lower standards – is one of the core agendas of the Commission. This is based on the mistaken belief, that a deepening of liberalisation policies will create more economic growth and thus pull the EU economy out of stagnation.
Barroso's focus is on “reviving” the Single Market along that approach: “At my request, Mario Monti presented an expert report and has identified 150 missing links and bottlenecks in the internal market. Next month we will set out how to deepen the Single Market in a comprehensive and ambitious Single Market Act.” 

Now I'll speak about postal services.
Gerald today already mentioned Cornelia Berger. At Parliament's September Plenary Session in Strasbourg, the European Commission had to answer critical questions on the liberalisation of postal services. The GUE/NGL group had managed to get this on Parliament's agenda. Outside Parliament, UNI-Europa and other unions from the postal sector held a protest action addressing the social dumping and the lowering of service quality that this liberalisation had brought about. They demanded a moratorium on the third step of postal service liberalisation. I asked the Commission during my 1.5 min. speech in European Parliament Plenary for this. But the answer of the Commission was “no moratorium” as I expected this.
Anyway, I hope, we'll soon get an impact assessment to social conditions of postal workers and the quality of universal services like we demanded from the Commission as it is foreseen in the Directive. Also in this issue we work together with Social Democrats and Greens. We asked for a Resolution in the Transport Committee but the Conservatives refused it.
The GUE/NGL closely cooperates with the trade unions on this, and will continue to do so.
So I would like to raise awareness not only about the anti-worker austerity policy of the European Union, but also about the results of liberalisation policies so far and the new attempts to further deepen them already in the pipeline. Against both we will do our utmost to develop and support broad resistance and put forward alternatives.

Thank you.