The neo-liberal competition policy of the European Union serves to create the best possible conditions for the profitable investment of globalised capital. Liberalisation, deregulation and the privatisation of public services are opening up new markets for the profitable use of sur-plus capital.
Deregulation and privatisation have affected all public services as well as utilities serving the common good, such as water supply, waste and sewage disposal, energy sup-ply, transport services, telecommunications, postal services, education, health and social security.

Deregulation and privatisation policies are eroding public services and diminishing their qual-ity. Blanket provision of services of public interest is coming under increasing threat. More-over, the price of such services is rising. The result is that not everyone can afford life's es-sential services.

Where public services are privatised, jobs are shed and employees' wage rates are cut. At the present time in Germany the Telekom employees are fighting the proposed transfer of 55,000 employees from their original companies and the halving of incomes that would re-sult.

The EU Services Directive is another step towards the full liberalisation of the single Euro-pean market in services. The forces behind this policy include expansionist businesses and investment companies as well as their lobbyists. According to data from the employers' or-ganisation UNICE, the Union of the Industries of the European Community, the service sec-tor accounts for 75% of jobs and 66% of GDP in the European Union.

The Services Directive was promulgated in the Official Journal of the European Union on 27 December 2006 and must now be transposed into the national law of the various Member States. They have until 28 December 2009 to do so.

The Services Directive regulates freedom to provide services, which means that the Member States must guarantee free access to the right to provide services within their territory and freedom to exercise that right. Foreign providers can only be bound by domestic laws and standards governing the provision of services if these are non-discriminatory, necessary and proportionate.
These laws and regulations are only deemed to be necessary if they relate to public order, public safety, protection of the environment or public health. The criteria for as-sessing whether the Member States' laws relating to freedom to provide services are propor-tionate remain vague and have never actually been defined. This means that it is left to the European Court of Justice to decide which national laws are permissible and which are not.
Moreover, individual Member States can no longer require companies wishing to do business in their territory to establish a branch office there. This will severely restrict the scope of the government in the country of employment to check on companies with a view to enforcing minimum standards in terms of pay levels, working hours, leave allowances and health and safety on the basis of the Directive on the posting of workers. The effects of the rules govern-ing freedom to provide services, for their part, are very largely based on the country-of-origin principle.
As an alternative to neo-liberal policies, the following action needs to be taken and the follow-ing requirements need to be met to create a socially responsible Europe:
• Public services and public assets must be enshrined in European legislation as an entity in their own right and exempted from the rules governing the internal market. To this end, the EU must adopt a clearly formulated framework directive. Public ser-vices must not be subject to competition law. Services of general interest and ser-vices of general economic interest must be treated as an indivisible whole on the ba-sis of the public good and must be excluded from the EU Services Directive.
Services of general public interest must be available to all people in Europe and not only to those who can afford to buy the service as a commercial product.

An EU framework directive for public services must be designed to ensure that the social functions of these services are performed effectively.

The aim is harmonisation at a high level. To this end, a common set of minimum standards must be prescribed for all Member States, and at the same time there must be a provision prohibiting any lowering of higher standards that already exist in indi-vidual Member States.
• The European Trade Union Confederation's petition to the European Commission, calling for high-quality public services, accessible to all, must be supported.
• Working conditions and terms of employment in the Member States must be safe-guarded by means of laws and administrative regulations and through universally binding collective agreements or arbitration awards, as defined in the Directive on the posting of workers, for all industries and professions.
A European minimum wage must be introduced at a rate not less than 50% of the na-tional average wage.
• The members of parties affiliated to the European Left and of parties with observer status must work through their trade unions for the fulfilment of their political mandate and the intensification of the struggle for responsible corporate governance, fair pay and social justice.
• A European campaign must be mounted against the privatisation of public utilities and for the restoration of privatised entities to public ownership and the mobilisation of local resistance to further privatisations. In an alliance between employees and the general public, it must be made clear that the market, competition and the profit mo-tive cannot be allowed to play any part in public services.
Shrewdly conducted anti-privatisation campaigns must be waged, using national and international networks.
• We must counteract the neo-liberal policy of letting market forces, unbridled competi-tion and the profit motive reign supreme in the European Union by presenting alterna-tives based on social justice. As far as we are concerned, the Bolkestein Directive is not a fait accompli.
• We have not only do defend what´s left of the public sector. We need to re-establish a new public sector on the needs and wishes of the people.