In view of the international meeting “4 Hours against Precarity”, taking place in Brussels on 25 October, Graziella Mascia, vice president of the European Left, and Carmen Hilario and Christine Mendelsohn, members of the EL Executive Board, today held a press conference to inform journalists about the purpose of the upcoming event and present the objectives of the current “Campaign against Precarity”. The speakers also talked extensively about the financial crisis, which is enhancing the economic and social insecurity of the people in Europe, and outlined the proposals made during the last EL Executive Board meeting in this regard (see article “The European Left calls for the democratic re-regulation of the international financial and bank system”).
“Poverty is generated by politics” declared Christine Mendelsohn and explained how the continuous lowering of salaries, loss of social protection, require of total flexibility and contingent employment brought to the decision of launching a European campaign against precariousness. The wage dumping in Eastern Europe, and other measures causing the battle against workers and drawing the attention off the implications of the neoliberal system, are central topics for the creation of a cross-European and intergenerational solidarity. Along the EL campaign, activities in several European countries have taken place, as in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, France and Greece, where workers and people on the streets have been approached and invited to take action together with trade unions and social movements.
Carmen Hilario pointed out the repercussions of the international economic crisis that calls for an international and systemic response. At the meeting of the Executive Board, the European Left underlined that the international financial and bank system must be re-regulated. In particular, the statute of the European Central Bank must be changed and be submitted to public and democratic control. Transparency and the taxation of financial transactions are key elements for a just regulation of the system. “The European Union must adjust its fiscal policy and introduce minimum wages in order to support the working classes and sustain the internal demand” added Hilario.
Graziella Mascia explained that the neoliberal policy characterising global capitalism today operates in two different ways: On the one hand there is the loan policy in the United States, the EU monetary stability goal set by the Maastricht treaty and the deflationary policy of the ECB; on the other hand these policies have a comong ground, i.e. low wages and precarity.
We need an emergency policy that faces the issues of transparency and responsibility. But this is not enough, because the population has already paid for this crisis with low salaries, and an upcoming recession will again hit the workers at first. With the danger of a recession it is now fundamental to raise the salaries of workers and pensions in order to relaunch the internal demand. In this sense the option of the ECB to reduce the cost of money by 0.5 % is belated and absolutely insufficient. Also for this reason it is important to revise the independent nature of the ECB and put it under a large and democratic control. At the same time, the main strategies of the EU must be changed, starting from the transformation of the stability pact into a solidarity pact that focuses on social rights and full employment and aims for a different development model including ecological aspects.
In response to the question if Europeans would not rather see their economic and social problems being national and better solved internally, the speakers remarked that the idea of solving problems at a national level, as diffused by some right-wing protectionist propaganda, is a complete illusion. The crisis set some strategic matters that can be dealt only from a European perspective. For many years the neoliberal policies included in the European treaties have prevailed over the values of the national constitutional papers. Therefore the European Left fights for another Europe, and on 16 December we will join the trade unions in Brussels in a demonstration against the European directive on working time.
