Upcoming Events

International | EU

no events match your query!

New Events

International

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

EU-US competitiveness pact: time for action!

category international | eu | opinion/analysis author Saturday December 21, 2013 16:39author by O. O'C. - The People's Movement Report this post to the editors

Discourse is really about boosting corporate profits at the expense of the welfare of the population and of the environment.

The competitiveness dogma will not solve the present euro-zone crisis, as it is downward pressure on wages (and therefore consumer demand) and on government spending that has locked European economies into spirals of decline.

EU competitiveness pact: time for action!

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership,competitiveness,us eu pact,european council

Our politicians regularly tell us that we must work harder and longer, and for less pay, in order to be more “competitive.” We must reduce or give up our hard-earned social protections, pensions and unemployment benefits in order to be more competitive. We must be more “flexible,” which means we must sacrifice job security for ever more precarious and demanding work practices—in order to be more competitive.

Governments must observe “fiscal discipline,” rather than stimulating economies out of

recession, because such discipline makes us more competitive. Peripheral EU countries must surrender their sovereignty to the Troika in order to “regain competitiveness.” We must sign free-trade deals, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States, because that will make us more competitive. We must not “over-regulate” the financial sector, or impose “excessive” environmental restrictions on businesses, because to do so would be to make us less competitive.

The competitiveness dogma will not solve the present euro-zone crisis, as it is downward pressure on wages (and therefore consumer demand) and on government spending that has locked European economies into spirals of decline.

More fundamentally, this discourse is really about boosting corporate profits at the expense of the welfare of the population and of the environment. We have the option of distributing work and income more fairly, so that everyone has access to a decent wage and fulfilling work, as well as high-quality public services; but to do so requires that we redistribute income away from financial capital and corporate profits more generally and towards the mass of the population, towards public services and towards environmental protection.

The true agenda behind this talk of “competitiveness” will be evident at the European Council meeting on 19 December, which will debate a proposed new competitiveness pact. To help draft this pact the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel,

invited the president of France, François Hollande, and the president of the EU Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to a meeting in Berlin in March with fifteen members of the European Round Table of Industrialists, all of them chief executive officers of large corporations, two of whom were asked to chair a “working group on competitiveness.”

The report of that group called for, among other things, reduced taxes, a rolling back of (limited) bank regulation, further erosion of labour protection, the streamlined facilitation of mergers and acquisitions, and privatisation. As Corporate Europe Observatory, put it, “the demands of the ERT appear to amount to nothing less than putting the European Union entirely at the service of corporations.”

The TTIP, if adopted, would constitute another contractual arrangement between member- states and the Commission—a form of “troika for all”—that would see the further weakening of national labour laws, downward pressure on wages, and more ERT-style “business-friendly” regulation (or the lack of it).

This last element will increase the likelihood of another economic crisis erupting in the future. To avert such a crisis we need more, not less, regulation, especially of the financial sector.

The TTIP also features yet more intrusive mandatory rules on the economic policies of member-states, building on the Austerity Treaty and related measures that serve to reduce democratic control over vital areas of economic governance.

The pact must be rejected, for three main reasons. Firstly, it would deepen the European economic crisis by further depressing domestic demand and government spending at a time when stimulus measures are desperately needed for recovery. Secondly, it would take still more economic policy tools out of the hands of national governments and transfer them to unelected technocrats. And thirdly, in line with the aggressive “competitiveness” agenda long pursued, it would further degrade the quality of life of workers by forcing them to work longer hours for less pay in conditions of ever greater insecurity while simultaneously cutting the public services on which they depend. This is being done in the name of “competitiveness,” but in reality it is for boosting corporate profits at the expense of ordinary people’s rights to a decent life.

More at http://www.people.ie/news/PN-95.pdf

Related Link: http://www.irishreferendum.org
© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy