Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-085"
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"en.20081215.14.1-085"2
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"Mr President, they say that times of crisis bring people closer together. For a long time, however, citizens throughout Europe have been getting the feeling that it is the EU and the business community who have been coming together against the people. Working hours have been dressed up as a factor in competition, working hours and working life have been extended, wages have fallen and the cost of living has risen, whilst profits have gone through the roof and executive pay has risen to astronomical levels.
Whilst Parliament discusses extending working hours, thus curtailing hard-won social rights, companies are announcing temporary compensated reduced working hours for thousands of staff, and the spectre of mass-redundancies is rearing its head. Models once held up such as the much lauded working-time accounts, which are used up in a matter of weeks, demonstrate the limits of flexible working hours. Once again, we are working in two opposite directions. On the one hand, we are proclaiming better reconciliation of work and family in order to improve the birth rate, which has been falling for years, and on the other hand we are letting Sundays and public holidays degenerate increasingly into normal working days – whereby traditions and family life inevitably fall by the wayside. In the present crisis, ordinary citizens are having to assume liability for the mistakes of the financial community and help out the banks, even with their hard-earned savings. Their pensions are under threat, and before long they may even have to vacate their posts whilst managers stay.
One of the criteria on which European citizens will judge the EU is the extent to which it can provide social security. The EU must make up its mind, therefore, whether to put economic interests or people first.
In this connection, thought should maybe also be given to whether Turkey’s accession should be stopped before this leads to the financial collapse of the European Union. Yet if the EU continues to take the course of adventurous neoliberalism and boundless obsession with enlargement, it should not be surprised to see either falling birth rates or social unrest. Then public support for the EU as a safe haven, which has recently seen a short-term rise, will quickly evaporate, and we shall be in much worse economic trouble than we are at present."@en1
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