There’s a fair alternative to McCreevy’s Europe
It goes to the heart of the debate about what kind of Europe we want and what Europe is for.
The McCreevy dogma runs thus: deregulate the economy, which will stimulate growth, which will provide the resources to put in place a safety net for those the market excludes.
Presented as an apparently ‘new’ line of argument, it is in fact simply a rehash of the old ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ approach.
Both the old and new version ignores the calamity that awaits those at the bottom when the tide goes out and the fact that, in the meantime, many thousands fall though the holes in the safety net.
Witness the 150,000 Irish children living below the poverty line, and the inequality of access to essential health care evidenced by recent tragedies.
It is also nonsense economics, which fails to account for the real cost to all of society of abandoning all those people excluded as “uncompetitive”.
The commissioner falsely seeks to bolster his position by arguing that the alternative to his approach is ‘protectionism.’ He says every member state can have the social model it chooses but simultaneously argues that everyone has a right to undercut everyone else’s labour market standards, irrespective of the national model.
Sounds a bit like the old Henry Ford dictum: “You can have a car of any colour you want, provided it’s black.”
A more realistic and humane alternative is outlined by the European Socialists in our document ‘A Europe of Excellence, which is available at www.derossa.com
This alternative is based on social partnership, development of open and flexible regulation of markets, with a well developed social infrastructure.
This social democratic model is by definition broader in concept than mere social protection in time of need, McCreevy’s ‘safety net’ approach. We address the need for reform of the economic governance of Europe as well as of the social dimension.
We also argue for universal access to quality education, public transport, health service, childcare and environmental sustainability as essential to a prosperous economy and a healthy society. Commissioner McCreevy should recognise the message of the French and Dutch referendums: the Europe that he and his co-ideologues promote is seen as a threat by an increasing number of European citizens. He offers them pain without gain and demands that they give up hard-won security because “there is no alternative”.
Well, it won’t wash and it takes a particularly insensitive regime, heedless of its own survival, to send ‘John Wayne McCreevy’ to tell the citizens of Europe’s fairest societies, and most competitive and innovative economies, that they must join the race to the bottom - or else!
I am committed to the EU as the best available vehicle for the economic and social advancement of the people I care about, in Ireland and abroad.
But I don’t want McCreevy’s Europe.
Nor, I believe, will he get it - because Europeans won’t accept it.
However, there is a real danger that the populists and nationalists with their facile solutions will be the real winners, and who knows where that might end.
Proinsias de Rossa MEP
Room 1410
Liberty Hall
Dublin 1
