Between integration and rights ” “

The CES (European Confederation of Trades Unions, founded in 1973, representing 53 million workers, and comprising 14 European Federations and 58 national confederations in 28 countries) has called an extraordinary mobilization throughout the continent on 2 and 3 April to support the process of European integration, founded on the rights of citizens and workers, committed to sustainable economic development and aimed at creating greater social cohesion. Two days of demonstrations in European capitals. The aim of the campaign, which intends to transcend national frontiers, is explained by the general secretary of the CES, John Monks. From the Confederation’s headquarters in Brussels he invites the national trades unions to promote “mass demonstrations in all the capitals of Europe and to organise conferences and meetings to heighten the awareness of workers about the challenges of integration”, and warn them of the dangers of a exclusively laissez-faire economic management, based solely on business profit. Among the keywords of the two-day transnational event the CES indicates democracy, equity, freedom, toleration and work. “Social Europe is threatened in the national systems of collective bargaining and social security of the member states – warns Monks -. Governments tend to undermine the foundations of welfare, to progressively privatise the public services, and to weaken the measures of social protection”. That is why the trades-union movement as a whole is raising its voice: “The single market ought to have brought with it major changes and positive forms of reconstruction to the benefit of workers. Moreover, the forthcoming entry of ten new countries into the EU will accelerate the movement of capital and persons”. The CES maintains that, in view of these changes, the Union needs to be given a Constitution that may sanction the rights and duties of citizens, foster dialogue between workers and employers, support collective bargaining, and guarantee the overall renewal of the forms of the welfare state and appropriate levels of essential services for individuals and families. A “socially oriented” Union. The CES, together with UNICE – the European Employers’ Union -, participates in the social dialogue at the EU level and is consulted on the most important decisions in the fields of economic, monetary and employment policy (for example, the “Lisbon strategy” aimed at making the EU, between now and 2010, the world’s most competitive economy based on knowledge and the valorization of human resources). In this role, the Confederation is pressing for an immediate resumption of the negotiations on the European Constitution, which it would like to be “socially oriented”. To this end “it is essential to ensure that EU policies and programmes be in conformity with its great objectives” of social and economic development, protection of citizens, protection of rights, defence of consumers and environmental safeguard. The CES is certainly not a newcomer to such issues. In the course of its last continental congress, held in June 2003, the five priorities for concerted trade-union action for the years ahead were defined, also to give new impulse to the modernization of Europe in the framework of international political and economic relations. Five priorities for trade-union action. The CES first asked, on the eve of the intergovernmental Conference and the drafting of the Constitution, for “the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Constitutional Treaty and the development of a modern conception of full employment and solidarity between the generations”. In the second place, also with a view to putting an end to generalized fiscal competition between the various member states, it called for “greater coordination in the various industrial and commercial sectors”. Social dialogue is the central element on which the CES’s third priority is focused, to promote “the extension and reinforcement of the sector of European professional relations”. In the fourth chapter, entitled “Europe and globalization”, the congress of the Confederation asked the Union “to promote measures for the protection of workers in the event of crises and identify a guiding role in the European social model”. The reinforcement of the CES and the European trade-union identity was the fifth element, through which the congress asked for “a reinforcement of the capacity for action at the EU level as far as social and employment policy is concerned”.