International

  • International

    Euro-Parliament’s clear message to EU leaders: for growth’s sake, let’s have a Robin Hood Tax!

    23rd May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The European Parliament voted today – by a thumping 487 to 152 – for a Europe-wide Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) to be implemented by 2014, as part of a wider growth strategy. They couldn’t have sent a clearer message to the EU leaders who are meeting this evening in Brussels to discuss the Eurozone crisis, growth and possible solutions like an FTT. The Robin Hood Tax (as the FTT is called in some EU countries like Britain) has been placed on the EU Summit agenda by the new French President Francois Hollande. Having raised it this weekend at the G8 summit in the USA, Hollande has made it clear he is at least as committed as his predecessor, and it is a proposal backed by four of the five biggest economies in the EU – Germany, Italy and Spain as well as France. 

    David Cameron is a lone voice among the big five in opposing the tax. He told Hollande in Washington that an FTT would do nothing to stimulate growth which is staggering for a Prime Minister who has presided over the VAT increase , the pasty tax, the caravan tax… Apparently taxes on ordinary people are fine, but taxes on Cameron’s friends and funders in the City of London are unacceptable!

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  • International

    Economic inequality and social justice – lessons from Northern Europe

    21st May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Judy McKnight Judy McKnight

    Judy McKnight, former General Secretary of NAPO and Chair of the TUC Women’s Committee, is now a TUC nominee on the European Union’s Economic and Social Committee (EESC). In that capacity, she took part in the 2012 annual meeting of the European Economic Area (EEA) Consultative Committee, held in Iceland earlier this month. The Committee brings together representatives from civil society in both the EU and the EEA countries – Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Here’s a summary of her speech.

    There is a striking difference between the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe, including the UK, in terms of economic inequality and social justice, and interestingly, levels of growth. Nordic countries not only top OECD indices on economic inequality and social justice but are also recovering from the economic crisis quicker than those countries such as the UK. Since the mid 1970s we have had a greater increase in income inequality among working age people than any other wealthy country, we trail the Nordic countries on social justice and, having adopted austerity measures, are not finding a quick path to growth. And all these issues are connected.

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  • International

    G8: Facing both ways means facing the wrong way

    19th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The G8 summit in Camp David is over, and the statement agreed on the global economy is one of the most two-faced compromises imaginable. Yet again, world leaders have shown a colossal inability to lead, facing both ways rather than take the decisions necessary to tackle the continuing economic crisis. Just as EU leaders have kicked the can of the Eurozone debt crisis down the road time and time again, refusing to choose between two unpalatable directions, the leaders of the G8 nations have done exactly the same, backing both growth and austerity, despite the fact that all of them know they are incompatible. It’s a shabby compromise between those (Obama and Hollande) who favour growth, and those like Cameron and Merkel who favour austerity. And it will continue like this until electorates force their leaders to do what’s needed.

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  • International

    It’s just business. Is that the extent of our foreign policy?

    19th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Foreign Secretary William Hague spoke to the CBI on Thursday, and he devoted most of his speech to what the FCO, under his leadership, was doing for British business. He also spent some time justifying the current Government’s austerity policies. As he was playing so plainly to his audience, he did not repeat last week’s gaffe of telling businesses to stop complaining and work harder. But he did say something about human rights:

    “Support for human rights is in our core national interest and deep in our DNA as a nation. But our ability to promote freedom and democracy is strengthened by a strong economy and a global role. Foreign policy is not something that exists in a vacuum. … It is not the plaything or pastime of Ministers, to be channelled into utopian schemes to remake the world.”

    That was it. No mention of the Ruggie Principles, no mention of ethical sourcing, no mention of corporate social responsibility, compliance with the OECD guidelines on multinational enterprises, ILO core conventions on workers’ rights… It’s just business, as a mafia boss would say about butchering his brother.

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  • International

    Tackling the global jobs crisis: unions call for G20 action

    18th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Employment Ministers from around the G20 have been meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second city, for two days to thrash out a report on the continuing global jobs crisis for the G20 leaders summit in Los Cabos next month. In particular, they’re discussing the findings of an inter-governmental Youth Employment Task Force set up by the French G20 Presidency last year.

    Unions met with the Ministers and with employers for a tripartite social dialogue on the first morning, and I represented the TUC. Other trade unionists were there from Mexico of course, as well as fourteen other G20 nations, from South Africa to China, Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. We stressed the need for action as well as fine words, on job creation, tackling the youth jobs crisis and on green growth.

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  • International

    Robin Hood Tax global week of action: A big week for a tiny tax

    16th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    This week is a big one for the Robin Hood Tax, with major developments in the USA and Europe. Despite regular reports of its demise – the result of spinning by opponents in the finance industry – the prospects for a Robin Hood Tax being implemented are stronger than ever.

    In the UK, supporters of fair taxation, of rebalancing the manufacturing and finance sectors, and those worried about the Government’s commitment to overseas aid and tackling climate change will be redoubling their efforts to secure a Robin Hood Tax. And ahead of the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, US union National Nurses United will lead a demonstration to Daley Plaza to call on the US Government to tax Wall Street not Main Street. Unions and NGOs in the US are gearing up for the launch of a Robin Hood Tax campaign to influence the debate around the Presidential election in the autumn.

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  • International

    Exit polls confirm tide against Merkel’s austerity

    13th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    The largest state in Germany – North Rhine Westphalia, with 18m people, over a fifth of the German nation – has been voting today and the exit polls suggest that the current minority red-green coalition of the SPD and the Greens will achieve an outright majority, with over 50% of the popular vote – exit polls say the Greens remained on 12% and the SDP regained the votes they lost in 2010, rising from 35% to 39%.

    But the big story really has to be the continuing decline of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, who – again, this is according to exit polls, and I’ll update later when the final tally is in – saw their vote decline by a quarter from 35% to 26%. With Germany’s General Election due next year, this almost makes Merkel’s administration a lame duck, and it can’t even be blamed on the collapse of her coalition partners the FDP (whose vote again held up, as it did last week in Schelswig-Holstein).

    In Germany’s most populous state, covering cities like Dusseldorf and Cologne, this is a major blow, and, coupled with Hollande’s ascent to the French Presidency, will put German-led austerity in Europe under increasing pressure this summer. The 23 May informal summit of EU leaders will not quite see Merkel isolated, but certainly increasingly embattled.

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  • International

    Where does social Europe stand now?

    12th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    I spoke last night at a TUC/Foreign Policy Centre roundtable in Cardiff, sponsored by the London office of the European Commission, about the impact of current European developments on the social model. Here’s an edited version of my remarks.

    As last weekend showed, it’s not safe to speculate about what’s happening in Europe, because the detail keeps changing – and this month’s plethora of Presidential, Parliamentary, regional and local elections
    suggest the primacy of the bond markets may have to give way to the primacy of electorates. However, we do seem to be living between two competing narratives.

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  • International

    Is Cameron up to rewriting the world’s anti-poverty agenda? And what should be on it?

    10th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    No, he’s just co-chairing a UN panel to look at the issue, with the Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia, according to the (much anticipated) announcement yesterday. But there is a radical and progressive agenda that goes beyond 2015, and unions have a major part to play in formulating the new development roadmap. Certainly the panel David Cameron will co-chair – and which will be revealed at or after the Rio+20 UN conference on green jobs – must not consist solely of politicians (and yes, there should be a trade unionist on it.)

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  • International

    Overseas aid law: coalition’s broken pledge

    9th May 2012 — Filed under: International

    Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    So, the Queen’s Speech reiterated the Government’s commitment to raise overseas aid over the next year from 0.56% of Gross National Income (GNI) to the fifty-year old UN target of 0.7% – but the pledge in the Coalition Agreement and the Conservative Party’s 2010 manifesto to set that commitment in legislation remains unfulfilled. The proposal to legislate is deeply unpopular among right-wing Conservative MPs but was a key element of David Cameron’s attempt to detoxify the Conservative Party.

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