ICTU Statement on NICE Referendum

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday October 03, 2002 12:54 by Pat C oliver.donohoe at ictu dot ie 8897777

Congress is today calling on all workers to vote ‘yes’ in the NICE Referendum in the belief that by doing so they will help to bring about a safer and fairer Europe. (I'm posting the ICTU statement on NICE for your information. I thought the exact text would be of interest & use to people. Please direct any comments towards ICTU; this is the ICTU position, not mine.)

ICTU Statement on NICE Referendum

Congress is today calling on all workers to vote ‘yes’ in the NICE Referendum in the belief that by doing so they will help to bring about a safer and fairer Europe.

We have avoided joining any other group or alliance advocating for a ‘yes’ vote because our analysis does not fit into a broad consensus. We would, for example, have quite a different perspective from that of the Government or employers.

Our approach is to consider the issue of the Nice Treaty in the context of the phenomenon of globalisation which is profoundly affecting the world and the future direction of which is of vital interest to workers.

Our objective is to bring about a Europe which:

 Combines economic efficiency with individual freedom and social justice;
 Reduces inequality of incomes to the maximum extent possible in a modern economy;
 Places a priority on the quality of life over mere financial wealth;
 Pursues an ethical foreign policy aimed at eliminating poverty and destitution in the Developing World.

These are values which are inherently European and which inspired Jean Monnet, Schuman and, in particular, the trade unionists who collaborated to initiate the European Project after the War. They are values which inspired the vision of Jacque Delors in later years when he advocated for the primacy of a political and social Europe and not just a common market. As we see it, this vision of Delor’s is now under considerable threat from a model of globalisation which is driven from the United States and which eschews all considerations other than maximising shareholder value. We are out to prevent the Americanisation of Europe.

There is a danger that in articulating this case one can come across as being anti-American. That is not our intention. There is a rich liberal social democratic tradition in the United States which we respect and admire. It is a tradition which found expression in Roosevelt's new deal, in Johnson's concept of the great society and in the writings of John Dewey. Nevertheless, there is also a conservative strain to politics in the United States which values private wealth and individualism at the expense of social solidarity and equality. It is a value system which is antipathetic to social provision and healthcare and very hostile to organised labour. It is that value system which is in the ascent at the present time and which aggressively seeks to universalise itself through the medium of globalisation. The awesome political, economic and military power of the United States needs to be balanced by a Europe securely located in the values of Monnet and Delors. The contrast between the continents is most starkly exemplified by attitudes to war with Iraq.

There are sixty million workers in Europe organised under the banner of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The ETUC transcends the borders of the existing EU to include also unions in the accession countries. It is our mission to ensure that the economic and social order in Europe accommodates the need of ordinary working people. Collective action is the basis of trade unionism. By definition, therefore, we are internationalist in outlook and by organising internationally we can best moderate the extremes of the modern variant of capitalism which is the engine of globalisation.

It follows logically from this that we favour enlargement of the European Union and we are pleased to welcome today our colleagues Mr Andrej Adamczyck (NSCC Solidarnesc) Poland, Ms Erika Koller, (LIGA) Hungary and Ms Hana Malkiova (CMKOS) Czech Republic to help us to present our case. We deprecate the actions of those who would split the labour movement by opposing enlargement.

It has been said by some of the people in the ‘No’ Campaign that they are in favour of enlargement but opposed to NICE. We do not believe that. The arguments deployed against the NICE Treaty are very clearly arguments against enlargement. I now wish to deal with some of those arguments:

Immigration
It has been suggested that the accession of Central and Eastern European countries and the immediate opening of Ireland to migration from these countries would lead to a flood of people coming here to undermine wages and conditions of employment. We do not believe that this will happen.

In the research literature available there are some ten studies of this subject. Half of them are based on empirical data extrapolated from what happened when Greece, Portugal and Spain entered the EU and on migration flows within the US. The other half are based on surveys of the intentions of people in the accession countries as regards migration.

Using the empirical data approach the projections envisage the Central and Eastern European populations of Germany and Austria expanding to 2.5 million and 0.5 million respectively by 2030. In Ireland the forecast is that the population rise will be negligible.

More than a third of all interviewed persons (37 per cent) would choose Germany as their prime destination and about a fourth (24 per cent) would like to go to Austria. The strongest preference for Germany is in the Czech Republic. In Hungary there is a very distinct preference for Austria.

In Poland and Hungary, the United States, Canada and Australia are also popular destinations of would-be migrants. Some 9 per cent of all persons willing to migrate would choose Switzerland. Intentions to go to other European countries play only a minor role. France, Italy, Scandinavia and the Netherlands as well as other Central European countries are prime destinations for less than 5 per cent of all potential migrants. Ireland does not even feature.

The surveys also show that in Central Europe the wish for short and medium-term labour migration is much more common than the intention to emigrate for good. Two-thirds of all potential migrants declared that they did not want to leave their home country on a permanent basis. About 65 per cent of those persons surveyed who are potentially willing to migrate did not want to stay abroad for longer than five years. Of those, about 19 per cent would prefer to stay abroad for only one year; 26 per cent would like to stay abroad for up to two years. For many persons commuting on a daily or week basis would represent the ideal form of mobility between East and West. Working in the West and maintaining a household in Central Europe secures one the one hand a high Western wage level and at the same time allows one to profit from the lower costs of living in Central and Eastern Europe. For several regional labour markets this is a realistic perspective, particularly for the Bratislava-Vienna region or for western Poland and Berlin.

In light of this evidence Congress is satisfied that there is no significant threat to employment or to wages and conditions posed by inward migration from Central and Eastern Europe.

Change in Representation
If there is any case for complaint about representation changes in the NICE Treaty it is on the side of the larger countries. After NICE, Irish Ministers would still have five times more votes than their German counterparts in proportion to population at Council. In the Parliament we would have three times more MEPs per head than the Germans. The fact is that, in the history of the EU, there has never been a single example of any country having a disastrous decision foisted upon it.

Rapid Reaction Force
The position with regard to participation in the Rapid Reaction Force has been so circumscribed by the Saville Declaration that there can hardly be any serious objection to it. For our part we strongly support the RRF as a means to effect humanitarian interventions along the lines of the Petersburg Principles.

Even if we were to set aside the principled arguments in favour of accepting the NICE Treaty, which I hope we would not do, there are a number of practical issues we need to consider:

 If we reject the NICE Treaty for a second time we will force the EU to find an alternative route but we will not stop enlargement. They will find a way to make it happen and we will not be forgiven either by the existing European establishment or by the accession countries;
 Enlargement will put great pressures on the EU but if it happens by an alternative route then we will be blamed for the problems whether that blame is justified or not;
 If we do end up marginalised as a result of rejecting the Treaty it is clear that, as a matter of practical politics, it will be difficult for any Irish Government to win allies for any case we might wish to fight.
 As well as US sourced investment it is not generally realised there are also 600 European companies investing in Ireland. There must be a real risk that they would take a jaundiced view if we pull the rug from under the biggest European project ever attempted.

The great failure of organised labour in the last century was our inability to prevent the First World War. In Ireland the emphasis of our history has insulated us from the reality of the conflicts which claimed so many lives in Europe. For the working people of Europe the peace, which the EU has delivered, is not some kind of optional extra added on to the real business of commerce and free markets. And there is still much to do to guarantee the long-term stability of Central and Eastern Europe. By virtue of its past failures the Trade Union movement has a particular responsibility to support all political programmes that secure peace. For working people peace is a matter of life and death - their lives and their deaths. The Nice Treaty is another stop on the road to making Europe safer.

Congress believes that enlargement is the correct course for Europe to adopt because it reduces the risk of further destabilising conflict fuelled by extreme nationalism. It offers the people of the accession countries the prospect of economic development such as we have achieved ourselves. It consolidates the position of organised labour to advocate for an economic and social order that is an alternative to the free booting capitalism of the US and it creates a stronger block of countries capable of forcing the establishment of a global system of governance which has a better chance of bringing about sustainable development in the world at large.

Our disposition is to look beyond the ratification of the Nice Treaty to the outcome of the convention on the Future of Europe. Our key objective is to ensure that social policy objectives are given parity of esteem with those relating to economic policy. This, in our opinion, can best be done by giving legal status to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. To quote the former French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin; "Europe should be a market economy but not a market society".

We are asking workers and their families to vote YES because we believe that the Nice Treaty will make Europe a safer place to live and a fairer place to work. It will help to secure our future and that of our children.