|
An
ultraliberal directive proposal relating to the liberalisation of services
On
13 January 2004, the ultraliberal European commissioner Frits Bolkestein
submitted a directive proposal relating to services in the internal market.
The title alone of this proposal points to the far-reaching liberalisation
and deregulation of all service activities in Europe.
Which
services?
The
draft directive applies to all services offered to companies and consumers,
ranging from advertising, recruitment, including employment agencies,
to trade, cleaning services and construction, but with the exception of
certain transport sectors (+3.5 tons), telecommunication, financial services
and services directly offered by the government at no charge.
With
the exception of the police service, legal system (not lawyers, of course)
and the armed forces, no public services whatsoever would be free: we
all ourselves pay for our stamps, pay our hospital invoices, as well as
registration fees for higher education.
So
this indeed has a very wide scope!
The
directive is consequently also applicable to public services. Accordingly,
health, education, culture, audiovisual media, the services of the local
authorities, etc. will also be regarded as pure merchandise that are fully
dependent on the laws of the market, without account being taken of their
specific character and their social aims. It is unacceptable for services
as diverse as architect's firms and hospitals to be treated in the same
way.
The
European social model: a death announcement?
Commissioner
Bolkestein wants to eliminate all obstacles to the development of service
activities and the completion of the internal market.
These
'obstacles' are, however, often rules imposed by the government with the
intention of guaranteeing everyone better services, to protect employees,
to ensure the sound management of public resources, to impose price standards,
guarantee everyone access to services, and guarantee the quality of the
services.
These
rules can prevent free services from turning into a sort of jungle in
which the only rule that matters is immediate profit!
In
the longer term, the consequences of this directive threaten to be catastrophic
for all of us:
•
dumping practices at social, fiscal and environment
level threaten to be encouraged;
•
social attainments come under pressure: lower
pay, longer working hours, increasing flexibility;
•
health, education, culture and audiovisual
resources will just become merchandise, so subject to the laws of the
market;
•
public service sectors run the risk of automatically
and irrevocably becoming privatised and/or liberalised.
This
directive proposal therefore comprises a direct threat to the European
social model without taking account of democratic rules. Indeed, the right
of the government to defend and expand specific social models is made
dependent on marketing interest and the competition.
The
directive: basic principles
Among
other things, the directive puts forward two principles for the completion
of the internal market: the abolition of licences and requirements deemed
unnecessary, and the principle of the country of origin.
•
The directive first of all wants to prohibit
all kinds of obstacles for which no compelling reason of general
importance exists and that slow the establishment of a company on the
territory of a Member State.
The
impact will be particularly perceptible in health care. Indeed, very many
requirements threaten to be put to question here: quantitative and territorial
limitations for pharmacists, subsidies associated with a particular statute,
price standards, etc.
In
this way, the government is denied all means of action at all levels (local,
regional, etc.) to conduct a health policy of high quality that also remains
accessible for everyone.
The
whole social economic sector is also threatened, in particular the integration
of underprivileged groups in the employment market. Activities within
the framework of the social economy are associated with accreditations
with the purpose of ensuring that measures do indeed reach the underprivileged.
There is, however, no guarantee whatsoever that these regulations will
remain in existence if the directive relating to services becomes reality.
And should this happen, the government will have lost an important tool
of employment policy relating to the social integration of the people.
One
can also ask questions about consequences on the guidance and training
of employees (training cheques, guidance organised by decree in the Regions,
outplacement, etc.).
•
The second principle is that of the "country
of origin". This entails service providers only being subjected to
the national provisions of the country of origin, and not to the laws
of the country where the services are provided.
This
comes down to a legal incentive to move to countries with the least strict
legislation at social, fiscal and environment level, and the setting up
of letterbox companies which at rock-bottom prices will be able to swarm
out from their registered offices over the whole territory of the Union.
The
consequence will be enormous pressure on countries with social, fiscal
and environmental standards that protect the general interest.
Posting
of workers: a demonstrative example
.
Posting
of workers offers service companies the opportunity of posting employees
to a country of the Union to temporarily work there.
This
may be, for example, a Polish construction company building the structural
work for a flat building in Brussels using Polish employees.
There
is a directive already regulating such case in practice, in our case with
the Polish construction company making a declaration to the Belgian inspection
services, appointing a representative in Belgium, with the Polish workers
being subjected to the employment conditions in force in our country:
hourly wages, working hours, social documents, etc.
At
first sight the Bolkestein directive proposal appears reassuring, because
the regulation is retained and it only concerns an exception to the principle
of the 'country of origin'.
But
because an aim of the proposal is to eliminate the administrative rigmarole
that impedes the free traffic of services, control possibilities in guest
countries are made more difficult if not impossible. The directive relating
to the posting of employees immediately becomes fully undermined. In other
words, if the Bolkestein directive comes into force, it will no longer
be possible to apply the employment conditions in force in Belgium to
the Polish employees, for example.
The
same problem arises for temporary employment from agencies
.
At
present, temporary employment agencies have to be accredited to operate
in Belgium.
Because
of this accreditation, only high quality employment agencies can start
operating in our country. The directive threatens to bring an end to the
accreditation procedure. This would immediately throw the door wide open
to malafide companies with dishonest practices which threaten to destabilise
the working of the sector.
Employment
agencies will therefore have every interest in establishing themselves
in countries where they have to pay the lowest taxes, and where social
contributions also are lowest. They can then send out temporary employees
across the whole of Europe for dumping pay, while the Belgian agencies
will not be able to compete. These Belgian companies will then simply
have no other choice than to decentralise to be able to survive, or put
pressure on social partners in dialogue and politicians to reduce wage
costs. These are extreme situations to which a combination of the principle
of the country of origin and the blind elimination of obstacles to the
establishment of service providers can lead.
Finally,
the inspection services will also become powerless here: an employment
agency established in Lithuania can send a hundred female workers to Belgium
a month as secondment. The inspection services are not able to in each
case examine whether appropriate salaries are being paid, or if overtime
worked is actually paid. And if pay conditions are being complied with,
this does not guarantee that the workers will have received their full
pay. It is indeed often the case that accommodation costs are deducted
from the pay!
No
adequate control: the door wide open to malafide practices?
One
way to prevent the total breakdown of the employment market in Europe
is to establish compulsory rules of co-operation between the national
inspection services. This would entail setting up a real network of inspection
services (a sort of social "Europol") at European level!
In
the current situation the coordination of the inspection services of the
25 Member States of the Union is barely conceivable: they must already
exist, and if they do exist they must also be efficient! So this is more
wishful thinking at the present.
But
in anticipation, the door remains wide open for Mafia groups who are already
operating in various sectors and will profit from the lack of controls
and political coordination to exploit employees.
The
harmonisation of the employment conditions in all EU countries is therefore
urgently required, obviously with harmonisation upwards, intended to harmonise
with the legislation of the country that offers employees the greatest
protection.
Privatisation
of social security?
In
the longer term, the directive proposal also threatens to have disastrous
consequences for health care.
The
directive proposes the scrapping of a large number of licensing procedures,
although they actually comprise the fundaments of most national health
systems and guarantee their quality, accessibility and financial stability.
If
the Bolkestein directive came into force, it would be impossible to impose
the following on providers of health services
•
compulsory minimum and/or maximum prices for
medicines and fees;
•
minimum standards for personnel in hospitals
and rest homes;
•
subsidisation standards taking into account
the specific way of financing health care;
•
quality standards relating to care.
Member
States would also lose a large part of their autonomy when making fundamental
choices concerning the organisation of health care. In other words: this
would ultimately mean the end of any public health policy worthy of the
name.
The
directive also thwarts other European processes and even the Treaty
Besides
the threat the directive proposal poses to the abovementioned fields,
it also thwarts other current or announced initiatives and is incompatible
with the Treaty on certain points.
•
For the derogations provided by the directive
proposal for the principle of the country of origin, reference is made
to a future directive of the Parliament and the Council on the accreditation
of professional qualifications.
•
In compliance with article 152 of the Treaty,
health is an exclusive competence of the Member States. The directive
proposal contains coordination rules that contradict regulation 1408/71
relating to the social security of mobile employees. A study is currently
taking place at high level into the mobility of patients and the evolution
of health care in the European Union. In 2004 these activities should
result in a notification from the European Commission in which a general
strategy is determined with proposals to meet the recommendations from
the study.
•
As regards services of general interest, the
directive proposal anticipates the White Paper of the Commission on this
subject. So far the Commission has not appeared able to speak out on a
framework directive on services of general interest which exactly describes
what these are to be understood as. The directive proposal has no relation
to services of non-economic
general interest, but to services of economic interest. Reference is however
made to the definition of the concept of "services", that is
very broad and evolutive !
•
A directive proposal relating to temporary
labour has currently reached deadlock, and it threatens to lose all relevance
if the Bolkestein directive comes into force.
The
issue must also be raised as regards the actual precedence relationship
between the Bolkestein directive proposal and the other proposals it thwarts
and detracts from.
Because
the Bolkestein directive would work like a steamroller, all the initiatives
threaten to lose their political relevance and not be successfully completed,
although they do provide for locks and are quite a bit more ambitious.
GATS
This
directive proposal suspiciously resembles the GATS agreement in which
at international level the liberalisation of all services in all sectors
is negotiated on the basis of supply and demand.
So
far, the EU has resisted the opening up of sectors such as health, education,
secondment of employees, culture and audiovisual resources. Now these
sectors are also being threatened by the Bolkestein directive, the standpoint
defended by the EU is also coming under pressure.
It
may be feared that the philosophy at the basis of the Bolkestein directive
could signify a course change for the EU's standpoint in the World Trade
Organisation. If this would be the case, the EU would be cooperating on
the spiral of increasingly thorough liberalisation, without attention
to the social aspect that is completely neglected within the World Trade
Organisation.
Liberalization
of port services: a new disguised attempt
The
text of the directive proposal, even if in other words, adopts the content
of the directive proposal with respect to the liberalisation of the harbour
services that in November 2003 was ultimately voted down in the European
Parliament under pressure of the European trade unions. The
approval of this directive proposal would signify the end of the Major
law.
There
can be no question of going back on a decision that was the result of
democratic voting in the European Parliament, where the liberalisation
of the harbour services was rejected in all clarity.
In
the text of the Bolkestein proposal it is anything but clear if the harbour
services would fall under the area of application of this directive.
The lack of clarity is also one of the problems with the directive.
It is as good a certain that the pilot services would fall under the directive,
and if the harbour services are being targeted, the Major law would again
appear to be under threat !
As
far as the EFBWW is concerned, this directive proposal is purely
and simply unacceptable as it is particularly dangerous:
- disruption of the employment market
in Europe;
- degradation of employee rights;
- economic, social and environmental
dumping;
- threat to the survival of high quality
public services;
- subjecting of social security to
the laws of the market.
By
removing the licence systems, the Directive intends to dismantle
various democratic and social achievements, established by parliamentary
and governmental bodies. We are of the opinion that a blind and
unquestioning simplification as the Directive recommends, would
mean a violation of these achievements that resulted from legitimately
elected bodies. We thus take side with the ETUC and its campaign
"Our Europe - Europe That's Us!" in support of the right
of the national governments to make pass the guarantee of the fundamental
civic rights before that of the free competition and market rules.
We
cannot accept an ultraliberal Europe that is fully subjected to
the laws of the market, where employees are regarded as merchandise,
and where restructuring, dismissals and decentralisation are the
order of the day!
We
accordingly argue for a strongly social Europe with purposeful work
for everyone, and for the upward harmonisation of employment conditions
in the European Union
We
also demand high quality public services accessible for everyone,
and consequently a framework directive for services of general interest.
We
want the expanded Europe to also be "our Europe", and
for employees of whatever country to be able to strive for the improvement
of their working and living conditions without them being played
off against each other. |
|