EU in Crisis: Analysis, Resistance and Alternatives to Corporate Europe

Speaker(s)

Fiona Dove, Susan George, Walden Bello, Leigh Phillips, Esther Vivas

Organised by

Corporate European Observatory (CEO), Transnational Institute

Speak­ers will in­clude Susan George, Walden Bello, Igna­cio Ra­monet Leigh Phillips Es­ther Vivas Mar­i­ana Mortágua, Miren Etxezarreta, Andy Storey as well as ac­tivist move­ments in Greece, Por­tu­gal and many other coun­tries.

Or­gan­ised by Cor­po­rate Eu­rope Ob­ser­va­tory (CEO), in co­op­er­a­tion with the Transna­tional In­sti­tute (TNI) and with the sup­port of the Eu­ro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Pub­lic Ser­vices Unions (EPSU).

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The EU’s re­sponse to the fi­nan­cial cri­sis and the es­ca­lat­ing eu­ro­cri­sis has ex­posed more clearly than ever the dis­as­trous dom­i­nance of ne­olib­eral ide­ol­ogy. Ob­sessed with bud­getary dis­ci­pline, EU de­ci­sion-mak­ers are im­pos­ing sweep­ing aus­ter­ity mea­sures, pri­vatis­ing pub­lic ser­vices and cut­ting wel­fare. Cor­po­rate lobby groups see their long­stand­ing de­mands im­ple­mented overnight while the liv­ing stan­dards of mil­lions are un­der­mined and economies grind to a halt.

The EU’s em­pha­sis on free mar­kets and dereg­u­la­tion in the last two decades was a cru­cial fac­tor in caus­ing the cur­rent cri­sis. This in­cluded:

• Dereg­u­la­tion of the fi­nan­cial mar­kets, al­low­ing a credit-fu­elled bub­ble that col­lapsed in 2008, and which boosted the pow­ers of spec­u­la­tors
• The sin­gle cur­rency which ex­ac­er­bated the dif­fer­ences be­tween stronger and weaker economies
• The drive for lib­er­al­i­sa­tion and ‘com­pet­i­tive­ness’ which left al­most every sec­tor of so­ci­ety ex­posed to mar­ket forces, at the ex­pense of so­cial rights, en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion and pub­lic ser­vices.

These flawed poli­cies were heav­ily in­flu­enced by cor­po­rate lob­by­ing, re­flect­ing how big busi­ness had cap­tured the pol­icy-mak­ing processes in Brus­sels and in mem­ber states.

Since 2008, bil­lions of tax­pay­ers' euros have been spent on sav­ing banks that had reck­lessly gam­bled on spec­u­la­tive mar­kets, trans­fer­ring pri­vate debt to pub­lic debt. Fol­low­ing the cri­sis, the power of the fi­nan­cial lob­bies - and their easy ac­cess to de­ci­sion-mak­ers - has en­sured that only lim­ited reg­u­la­tion has been in­tro­duced.

EU de­ci­sion-mak­ers pre-oc­cu­pied with ap­peas­ing the fi­nan­cial mar­kets are now propos­ing and implementing new ‘eco­nomic gov­er­nance’ rules and a new EU treaty to sup­port their “shock doc­trine”. These mea­sures chal­lenge the core of democ­racy in Eu­rope, putting cru­cial de­ci­sions in the hands of tech­nocrats. This is the Eu­rope of big banks and cor­po­ra­tions which side­lines any at­tempt at a ‘So­cial Eu­rope’.

There are en­cour­ag­ing signs of re­sis­tance. The in­dig­na­dos and oc­cupy move­ments, union strikes and demon­stra­tions, mark a grow­ing re­jec­tion of the EU's free-mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism. These are in­di­ca­tors of a dif­fer­ent Eu­rope emerg­ing: a Eu­rope that in­sists on democ­racy and re­fuses to be run by big busi­ness and tech­nocrats.

Since 1997, Cor­po­rate Eu­rope Ob­ser­va­tory has been work­ing to ex­pose and counter the in­flu­ence of cor­po­ra­tions that is dis­tort­ing democ­racy and un­der­min­ing so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. The ur­gency of dis­cussing work­able al­ter­na­tives, strat­egy and com­mon ac­tions at the Eu­ro­pean level has never been more ev­i­dent. Join us to cel­e­brate our 15^th an­niver­sary in a two-day con­fer­ence in Brus­sels with move­ments from across Eu­rope to strengthen pro­gres­sive re­sponses to the EU's cri­sis. The con­fer­ence will be in Eng­lish with trans­la­tions into French and Span­ish pro­vided.