Brendan Barber
Yesterday I briefed the TUC General Council about a landmark agreement, signed today, between the TUC and the organisers of this summer’s 2012 London Olympics and Paralympic Games. I hope that what the chair of LOCOG - Seb Coe - and I have agreed will deliver better working conditions not just for the people making this year’s Olympic souvenirs, but also for the workers in the supply chains for Rio 2016 and all future Olympiads.
Owen Tudor
David Cameron has joined eleven other centre right heads of government around Europe in calling on the European Union to put growth before austerity. Yes, honestly, although this isn’t a road-to-Damascus conversion to Plan B for the British economy, but the emergence of a split on the European right about how to handle the crisis. It marks a division between liberals and neo-liberals. But is this just about political positioning and fine words for voters, or something deeper?
Owen Tudor
Stephen King, HSBC Group Chief Economist, has an excellent article (£) in the Financial Times today exposing the contradictions in the myth that the eurozone’s problems can be solved by bullying Greece into what Greek union confederations GSEE and ADEDY tell us is more and more economic misery. Whatever got Greece into the mess it’s in, harsher and harsher loan repayment terms won’t get it out of that mess.
The German-led governments of northern Europe are acting like the payday loan sharks that Stella Creasy MP is campaigning against, preying on precisely the poorest on the European estate, who are least able to pay them back. The troika – the ECB, Commission and IMF – are the thuggish enforcers sent to tell the recalcitrant Greeks to slash and burn their welfare state and indeed their entire economy. And where Greece goes, even France may follow (after Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, who are all in the same boat as Greece, but not yet the bit that’s sinking fastest.)
Owen Tudor
Well, he is the EU tax Commissioner, so I guess for Lithuanian Algirdas Semeta, tax never went away. But that’s pretty much where he started his speech on Friday morning (sorry, busy weekend) to the City lawyers and finance workers assembled to discuss the EU’s proposals for a Financial Transactions Tax. He and I were the only people on the panel who argued the case for an FTT, and I thought he was pretty polished (code, of course, for better than me!) He argued his corner, arguing for a tax which would help re-balance the economy, promote growth and development, and address climate change. And he nimbly rebutted the arguments of those who claimed London would lose its finance sector if an FTT was implemented, quipping:
“London is not a world financial centre because of tax breaks.”
But his main message – and mine too, because at the start I was in conciliatory mood, was that people from the financial sector who see faults in the current design of the EU’s proposal – like the British Government – should be helping to design it better rather than just attacking it. Or, he could have added, trying to walk away in the hopes that it will never happen, or that it won’t touch trading in London, because in both cases, it so will.
Owen Tudor
We held a seminar with the Foreign Policy Centre and the European Commission, assisted by Thompsons Solicitors on Friday, to launch a pamphlet called Single Market, Equal Rights? We’re holding further seminars on the same subject in Birmingham on 20 April and Cardiff on 11 May – contact the Foreign Policy Centre if you want to attend. Here are some thoughts about how inequality and labour law are key elements of the eurozone crisis.
Because that crisis is essentially a crisis of inequality between deficit countries and surplus countries. Not so much about public sector deficits, as trade deficits. If you look at the countries in deepest trouble now, they weren’t the countries with the greatest debt or budget deficits in the past decade. But they were the countries with the greatest current account deficits. Basically, they were importing themselves into crisis, fuelled by low interest rates. But what’s worse is a deeper inequality: inequality of incomes.
Adam Hug
The EU has taken a lot of flak in recent years on the delicate subject of employment and social rights from the right – who call for the return of powers to London citing increasing figures for the perceived costs to British industry - and from the left who see recent European Court of Justice decisions on the Posted Workers Directive and other matters as tilting the established balance of power in favour of employers rather than unions.
The new joint Foreign Policy Centre, TUC and EU Commission Representation in the UK pamphlet Single Market, Equal Rights? makes the case that as there is a framework of rules at a European level for capital, goods and services, the same should apply for labour. A common floor of minimum rights would provide consistency, facilitate the single market for labour and – perhaps most importantly – restrict opportunities for social dumping and a race to the bottom in employment rights.
Brendan Barber
This is arguably the most critical time for Europe since the end of the war. Despite some improvement, the euro remains on life support. The sovereign debt crisis continues to cripple many of Europe’s economies. Across the continent, governments are imposing austerity measures that are killing growth, destroying living standards, and undermining the social provisions that have long been a defining part of the European project.
With a new Treaty in prospect, Europe is headed down a very dangerous path. The treaty’s collective suicide pact of tight fiscal straightjackets, labour market deregulation, and diminished welfare states could put at risk the social model that is one of Europe’s crowning achievements.
More than ever, we need an EU run in the interests of its citizens and workers, not the bankers and bond market vigilantes.
Pierre Habbard
Sarkozy’s cabinet discussed this week its long-awaited Bill to create a French financial transaction tax. The announcement has been met with measured enthusiasm by FTT campaigners. And indeed – at last! – the French are putting words into action. Although reference to development and climate change financing is missing, the French bill could well become a first step toward a wider Eurozone FTT based on Barroso’s EU Directive. And extreme forms of speculative behaviour such as High Frequency Trading (HFT) are targeted explicitly by the project.
But this is electoral time inFrance. Sarkozy is a soon-to-be-declared candidate for his re-election, but he is trailing behind the socialist candidate and is feeling the heat from the far right. His “mini-Tobin” tax may be welcome from a strict FTT campaigning perspective, but it still needs to be contemplated within broader policy context.
Owen Tudor
UPDATE: we’ve now got hold of the letter written by the 9 Governments in English (thanks to Jas at Oxfam).
French newspaper Le Monde reported yesterday that nine EU governments had written to the current holder of the EU Presidency, Denmark – where there is a huge row in the coalition about whether to support a Financial Transaction Tax(FTT) - asking them “to accelerate the work of the Council” to complete the first reading of the EU draft FTT directive by July.
Although they pledged “full support” to the draft EU directive, the most interesting thing about this is that nine is the magic number of governments required to launch what’s called ‘enhanced cooperation’. This is a legal method of implementing a measure like an FTT without the unanimous support of the 27 EU member states required for an EU tax measure. So the nine governments calling for action at EU level are the nine governments who could, should such a measure fail to secure unanimity, go ahead anyway. The nine governments signing the letter are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Owen Tudor
Big Four accountancy giant Ernst & Young say that the Government is planning to give away more than £21bn a year in tax revenue to other EU governments. The Daily Mail must be apoplectic. Eurosceptic MPs must be foaming at the mouth. Have Cameron and Osborne gone stark, staring mad? What on earth is going on?
It’s all about Cameron’s ham-fisted attempt to opt out of EU regulation of the City of London. Many people have remarked upon his failed attempt to veto the Franco-German treaty proposal at the December European summit. Now, on top of the veto that wasn’t, here’s the opt-out that isn’t.
By refusing to take part in the Commission’s proposed financial transactions tax, Cameron thinks he has protected his pals in the City of London from paying the tax. But he hasn’t. All he will do by opting out is make sure that the British people don’t benefit from the tax when the rest of Europe goes ahead with it.
