Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-11-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20070711.4.3-020"2
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"Mr President, what we have just heard from the current President of the Council proves that this is going to be yet another wasted opportunity to put on the agenda some of the serious economic and social problems that need changes in policy and responses on the part of the Community institutions: for example, the unequal distribution of income, increased job insecurity and the poverty in which nearly 80 million people live, including increasing numbers of workers on low pay and fewer rights, old people with negligible pensions, and women and children being denied fundamental human rights.
Instead of attaching priority to changing the objectives and statutes of the Central European Bank so as to demand that it be subject to democratic control, to curb the rise in interest rates and to stop social injustice from getting any worse, he persists in his obsession with the main proposals contained in the neoliberal and militaristic draft Constitutional Treaty and greater concentration of the power of major EU powers. Instead of fighting for the withdrawal, or at least a radical revision, of the Stability and Growth Pact and the Lisbon Strategy, in order to kick-start investment in the public sector and SMEs, to curb deregulation and the privatisation of fundamental sectors and public services with a view to creating more jobs with rights and reducing poverty and social exclusion, he places the emphasis on the sacred cow of competition to increase the power of the economic and financial groups. Instead of proposing measures to respect the dignity of working people, and to alleviate the increasingly insecure situation of millions of workers, particularly women and young people – as several thousand people demanded at the demonstration organised by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers on 5 July in Guimarães – what we are seeing is an emphasis on flexisecurity, which more than anything else means flexi-exploitation of the workers.
That is why we stress the need for a sea change on the part of the EU, and why we say it is time to listen to the people's demands, to extend democracy and to commit ourselves to a fairer social Europe characterised by progress and a fairer distribution of income; it is time to uphold the principle of sovereign States with equal rights, to strengthen international cooperation and solidarity, to commit ourselves firmly to peace, whether in the Middle East, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa.
We reaffirm our objection to a so-called reforming draft Treaty, but which, in practice, is nothing more than a reproduction of the Constitutional Treaty by means of a major smokescreen designed to circumvent referendums and to reduce democracy and the opportunity for people and national institutions to make their voices heard, for fear of pluralistic debate and public opinion in our countries. That is why we want a referendum in every Member State, as public opinion in our States demands."@en1
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