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Post by dodger on Aug 6, 2013 21:23:25 GMT
A Podmore Review: The EU and the Left
Posted on April 11, 2012 by imarxman
The British left’s ‘great debate’ on Europe, by Andrew Mullen, Foreword by Tony Benn, hardback, 352 pages, ISBN 978-0-8264-9366-8, Continuum, 2007, £75.
Dr Andrew Mullen, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Northumbria University, has written an excellent and scholarly study of the British left’s debates about Europe. As Tony Benn writes in his Foreword, “This is by far the best book about the many long debates that have taken place on the left about Britain’s relations with Europe from the end of the Second World War until the present time … Its greatest merit lies in the fact that it has been meticulously and comprehensively researched. It provides an accurate historical account of all the debates that have taken place …”
Part 1 presents a brief history of the European project and discusses the global context of the EU’s development. Part 2 consists of 13 chapters follow the debates about Europe from 1945 to 2005: each looks at what the state was doing and then at the policies of the Labour Party, the TUC, the big trade unions and the wider British left. Part 3 sums up with thoughts on Europe past, present and future.
As John Monks admitted, “People were misled about going into the EU initially. Britain’s leaders, from Harold Macmillan onwards, were never frank about what it entails and about the loss of sovereignty. They all said it’s just an economic thing; well it wasn’t, it was much bigger.”
In 1990 the TUC said, “the objectives of EMU should be to promote sustainable development, full employment, and economic and social cohesion as well as price stability.” So the TUC denied EMU’s real aims, in favour of what it wished they ‘should be’ – classic idealism. All too often, unions took refuge in motions offering ‘conditional support’ for the EU, akin to “if prayer brings peace, then let us pray.” This again is idealism.
The pro-EU argument made most often at TUCs in the 1990s was that the Social Chapter would benefit workers – an argument we don’t hear much nowadays. Others argued that Economic and Monetary Union, EU Directives, its Social Dialogue process and its Works Councils, would all benefit workers; and that EU membership would increase wages, employment, living standards, investment, the growth rate, benefits and exports.
As Dr Mullen writes, after 1990, “certain sections of the wider British left … embraced defeatism and the mantra that ‘there is no alternative’.” He reminds us that in 1991 the Labour Party Conference claimed that EMU would disarm currency speculators. In 1993, Labour, under John Smith, could have brought down the Conservative government if it had voted for a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. Instead, Labour voted with the government and opposed a referendum, saving the Treaty and the government.
Since 1988, the Scottish National Party has backed the policy of ‘independence in Europe’, which is like backing a policy of ‘peace in war’. The Scottish Socialist Party said, “We promote an alternative vision of a united, socialist Europe.” Other groups called for a workers’ Europe, a people’s Europe, a Europe of the Regions, for a reformed, democratic, socialist, social, progressive, federal Europe.
All made their wishes a basis for policy, as if attaching a nice adjective to the EU made it nice. Even when groups like the SWP say they oppose the EU, they still damn everybody else who opposes the EU as nationalist chauvinists.
In 2004 the TUC Executive Committee claimed that the EU Constitution would lead to full employment and would protect public services. A 1998 Unison conference motion had more realistically forecast that the euro would increase unemployment by 10 million.imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/a-podmore-review-the-eu-and-the-left/About these ads
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Post by dodger on Aug 7, 2013 5:53:33 GMT
Iceland cold-shoulders EU
Iceland’s Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson has told the European Commission that their EU membership bid is over. He said: “This is how democracy works”, pointing out that both parties in the new government had campaigned against EU accession. It’s good to see that one country in Europe still has some democracy; the EU is killing it off everywhere else
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Post by dodger on Aug 7, 2013 10:50:15 GMT
Features MORNING STAR
Don't be fooled by the EU Trojan horse
Tuesday 12 September 2006 DOUG NICHOLLS
TUC Congress 2006.
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Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 5:24:51 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_1112/nobel.htmlThe Nobel Prize for War
WORKERS, NOV 2012 ISSUE
Is humour a recognised characteristic of Norway? Obviously, with the award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, Norway appears in a new light. The prize was awarded among other things for the EU role of “fraternity amongst nations” and “peace congresses” promoting “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe for over six decades”.
Perhaps there is something in the water in Norway. A better description of the EU would surely be as the jailer of Europe’s peoples and nations. The promoter of the greatest extension of police powers, data collection and spying on individual citizens of Europe.
Maybe the prize goes to the promoter of the most reactionary anti-trade union and anti-worker legislation outside of the United States of America? The promoter of every crackpot failed market-driven economic nightmare ever dreamt up by capitalist theoreticians and politicians – Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher, Merkel, Cameron?
Or perhaps the promoter of a new colonialism through the ex-empires of its member states – Britain, France, Germany, Portugal etc? The promoter of war and breakup of nation states – Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Britain next? The assassin of democracy and promoter of unelected autocrats in Greece, Italy and Belgium?
What kept the peace before the EEC was founded in 1957? What really kept the peace, in fact, ever since 1945? A clue is that Europe’s first war since 1945, the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia, only happened after the demise of the Soviet Union.
The EU and NATO go hand in hand – war in Afghanistan, war in Libya, war in Syria. The Nobel Peace Committee would have been better following its precedent of 1914-18 and 1939-45 and awarding no prize.
Truly, the Nobel Peace Prize has become a farce (unlike the highly respected scientific awards). It was founded by dynamite inventor and arms manufacturer Alfred Nobel, after all. And who, exactly, awards it? Stand up the four proud members of the Norwegian Peace Committee, political lightweights all: Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe; Kaci Kullmann Five, self-employed public affairs advisor and former chair of Norway’s Young Conservatives; Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, advisor to the conservative-liberal Progress Party; and Berit Reiss-Andersen, a lawyer and Norwegian Labour Party politician. Surprised, anyone?
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Post by dodger on Aug 16, 2013 8:25:21 GMT
Britain and the EU
The UK joined the Common Market in 1973. The promise advocates made then was that as an open trading area Britain would benefit through securing European markets for its exports. Since then Britain has had an average trade deficit with the EEC/EU running at approximately £30 a day, while remaining in trade surplus with every other continent.
The present Coalition austerity plan was concocted by George Osborne to save (cut) about £7 billion a year. Meanwhile, Britain’s annual gross subscription to the EU is running at around £14 billion.
Two non-EU countries, Switzerland and Norway, export proportionately more into the EU than Britain, while also achieving the highest per capita GDP in Europe. This is a clear contradiction of the argument claiming membership of the EU is vital for trading purposes.
Rather than just being a trading alliance as was claimed in 1973, it is now very clear that there is an intention to construct a federated superstate around the economic core. British governments have been very coy over the last 39 years in divulging the extent domestic law is initiated by the EU. However, an analysis by its Federal Justice Ministry demonstrated that 84% of German legislation originated in Brussels.
There cannot be a vast difference between Germany and Britain when it comes to the legal imbalance. It also comes at a cost, with EU regulation outweighing the benefits of the single market by up to 180 billion euros every year, according to the European Commission’s own calculations.
Nor does Britain benefit from the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies. The former costs families approximately £1200 a year due to food prices being artificially higher than they needs be. At a time of pay freezes that are really wages cuts due to inflation, this is an utterly unnecessary burden.
Similarly, Britain could be regulating its North Sea fish stocks if it reasserted control over its waters out to a 200 miles limit. Conservation and harvesting need to be balanced, a task made much easier by a national government working with a national trawler fleet.
The fundamental issue lying behind all these points is sovereignty. Outside the EU Britain could make decisions in its own interests based on the assessment of its own needs. Without the EU’s Common External Tariff Britain could much more easily negotiate trade agreements with economically emerging countries such as Brazil.
Of course trade with the EU would continue as it presently does for Switzerland and Norway. However, economic links could also be forged with developing trading blocs such as the emergent Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) with its 600 million people and a GDP ranking it third in the world.
The economic disaster that is the unraveling of the euro threatens the economic well being of all EU states, even those such as Britain outside the currency. Just recently the British government, in contradiction of its own avowed austerity, handed over another £10 billion to the IMF to bail out failing economies such as that in Greece.
As long as Britain remains a member of the EU it will have to accept not only the persistent threat of economic disaster beyond its control, but also the continuance of the development of federalism. Britain will be absorbed bit by bit as the EU strives to assert political control over all its member states. Indeed, they will cease being states and become regions: Britain will become merely a region of the EU.
Alternatively, the British people will insist upon its democratic demand for a referendum. Once that is secured the present self-serving cabal of politicians at Westminster – Coalition, Labour, Scottish Nationalist et al – can be confronted by the demand:
OUT OF EU NOW!imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/0...in-and-the-eu/
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Post by dodger on Aug 17, 2013 12:08:08 GMT
A handy revelation of the vacuous idealism that vitiates the Green Party, 13 Aug 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics(No-Nonsense Guides) (Paperback)
The Green Party "believes that decisions should be made at the lowest possible appropriate level, closest to the lives of the people it affects." What does it matter what the Green Party believes? The question is one of practical possibilities, not of beliefs.
"It supports democratic decision-making." And motherhood and apple pie. Again, so what? Why should the EU take any notice of what the Green Party believes or supports? It won't.
It said, "There is a huge democratic deficit in its functioning, a serious bias towards the interests of neoliberalism and 'the market', and central institutions have been overbuilt. But to achieve those reforms we need to work with fellow EU members ..." ... members who have always been perfectly happy to vote consistently for treaties that have continually strengthened the EU's undemocratic functioning, neoliberal economics and bureaucratic centralism.
There is no evidence that needed reforms could be achieved.
How many EU Treaties would the other 27 EU states have to agree to tear up in order to achieve any reform?
The Green Party continued, "work from inside to make it into a fair and democratic union ... The European Union is well placed to enact policies on crucial issues such as human and workers' rights" .. Oh yes, the EU's famous respect for workers' rights, witness "the imposition of dictats from above, such as the austerity that has been forced on the people of many states in south Europe" it referred to earlier. How can that have happened?
The Green Party went on, "We need to continue to work with our European partners ... to build a more peaceful and sustainable world." By imposing sanctions on Syria, by sending arms to jihadists in Syria?
...............................................................................................................................................
I would only add that the German Greens vote for German Troops to be sent to Afghanistan not only led to hundreds of members tearing up their party cards. It left many without an option as to where their protest vote might go. Plain as the nose on yer face. Don't Vote--it only encourages them. 
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Post by dodger on Aug 23, 2013 13:52:08 GMT
www.theworker.org.uk/blog/
TUC Congress
Aug
22
2013
The TUC Congress meets as usual in the second week of September.
This year there is one motion to consider fully and carefully and only one.
This is the motion from the RMT calling for a referendum on European Union membership.
Naturally the motion has been put to the end and attempts will be made to sideline it.
It will cause confusion amongst the left the right and Labour affiliates.
Yet without it being fully understood and embraced the lofty aspirations of all the other motions are impossible to achieve.
With Britain’s political system and economy in the straightjacket of the EU, which is on an anti worker anti union binge throughout the continent, there is no hope for social progress.
The trade union should restore their role in challenging capitalist power and lead the way in calling for a democratic expression of the popular hostility to the EU that has never been permitted to speak out.
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Post by dodger on Aug 24, 2013 3:13:22 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_0313/words.html
Words, words, words
WORKERS, MAR 2013 ISSUE
Speak softly and carry a big stick – that was the advice of US President Theodore Roosevelt. When it comes to the European Union, our politicians prefer the opposite. They shout loudly, but do nothing.
So in February Theresa May belaboured the judiciary for letting foreign criminals stay in Britain after their sentences, on the grounds that they have a right to a family life. The judiciary points out it is only implementing the laws that this and previous governments have so shoddily drafted.
If governments really wanted to stand up for Britain, they would do it. The political parties mouth about immigration, but the only thing they put in writing is their signatures on EU treaties designed to prise open borders so that wage rates can be lowered across the continent. They will throw open Britain’s doors to Romania and Bulgaria next year, if we let them.
Even so, they know that the next general election – fixed for May 2015 – will be unlike any recent one: at last, Britain’s place in the EU will be one of the main issues.
The manoeuvrings to position the parliamentary parties have started. Cameron’s apparent bravado over the European Union, his promise of an “in/out” referendum, which only guarantees further delay and in fact further integration, are an attempt to deflect and confuse the ever-growing hostility and opposition within Britain to the EU. Clegg as a fanatical europhile is hostile to the “in/out” proposal. Miliband remains silent.
Cameron trumpeted his revision of the EU budget. A cut, he said. But Britain will pay more. Clegg, hostile to cutting any EU expenditure, claims the deal is his idea. Miliband remains silent.
Cameron has started campaigning against mass immigration, or rather he talks about it, conveniently ignoring that Polish is now Britain’s second language. Clegg welcomes mass immigration. Coming as he does from the party that was the architect of mass EU immigration from Eastern Europe, Miliband remains silent.
What we need, what we must bend all our energy towards, is a declaration from our trade unions that they will wage war against the EU and everything it stands for.
We are at present some way from that clarity. With the exception of a few unions, the EU is still seen in the offices of most – and particularly so in the TUC – as some kind of saviour.
That weakness is a crucial support for the EU and for the multinational companies that stand behind it. They share a vision of one landmass devoid of nation states and national interests, with no controls on how they operate, and trade unions rendered powerless to control the price of labour by mass migration.
Miliband’s “One Nation Party” is launched and at least on health says the right thing – repeal the Health and Social Care 2012 Act – but not much else. So all around us we see stunts, photo-opportunities, trailed stories in the media, soundbites and parliamentary drivel.
It is important that this government goes, and goes as soon as possible. But let’s not run away with the idea that salvation lies in general elections. We need a referendum now.
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Post by dodger on Sept 2, 2013 5:44:16 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/statements/eu-referendum-now.htmlCPBM-L Statement: EU referendum now!
WORKERS, JUL 2013 ISSUE
It is time for a referendum on the European Union. Nobody in Britain under the age of 56 has had a vote on membership of the EU or of its predecessor, the EEC. The Parliamentary parties have often promised a referendum but have always broken their promises, because they represent capitalism and capitalists are afraid to hear the views of the working class.
The EU is the rule of finance capital. It is foreign rule. It is the enemy of Britain’s survival. Yet Parliament has always voted it more and more powers, without ever asking us. It’s time that the British working class put an end to Parliament’s betrayal of Britain.
We the people must stop all the delays, all the lies of reform and renegotiation. We must demand the vote, to express the will of the people in a referendum with one simple question, whether to stay or leave. Democracy means that we take our own decisions, that we take responsibility.
It’s time we focused on the job of rebuilding Britain. Britain can be an independent country outside the EU, forging relations with other countries both in Europe and in the wider world. This is impossible within the EU.
EU referendum now!
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Post by dodger on Sept 2, 2013 9:38:09 GMT
Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe's Money
Author: BERNARD CONNOLLY
Publisher: Faber & Faber (November 1, 1997)
"THIS BRILLIANT book is a devastating exposure of the pretensions of those who want to rule Europe. It shows that the attempts to achieve monetary and economic union, and consequently political union, are bad for us. They will not bring monetary stability, economic growth or political harmony. Instead they will destabilise currencies, reduce growth and promote hatred between the nations of Europe.
Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is supposed to build on the experience of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain's membership of the ERM forced us into a disastrous and quite unnecessary recession. After two years of suffering, Major said in July 1992 that Britain would soon be the leader of the ERM. Two months later, we were well out of it, and ERM had bermbed, as Jacques Clouseau, Major's mentor, would say.
ERM constrained British Government policy on non-monetary matters too. The Government appeased Spain over the fishing dispute to keep Spain happy about the sterling/peseta rate. So the Common Fisheries Policy, so damaging to Britain's fishing industry, is not an isolated EU aberration: it stems from the whole logic of economic and monetary union.
The ERM was described as the Eternal Recession Mechanism; EMU is likely to be Even More Useless. The ERM kept the poor countries poor; it did not help them to converge; it certainly did not help them to meet the Maastricht criteria. Spain's experience of ERM was catastrophic: 22% unemployed. The ERM forced Denmark into recession: unemployment doubled to 12%, the budget was slashed, and investment, output and wages all fell. In the ERM, Ireland's unemployment soared from 11% to 23%. ERM subordinated nations' economic interests to minorities' foreign policy goals: ruling class interests dominated working class interests. Some still claim that ERM and EMU could control capital, but actually they were and are attacks on the working class.
A 1992 report by the Monetary Committee, which advises the EU's Council of Ministers, admitted that ERM did not stabilise prices or money and did not reduce inflation. Perhaps it was after all just a tool for moving countries towards political union.
The book also depicts the present dangerous struggle between the French and German ruling classes for control over the proposed institutions of a single European state. Germany is determined to keep the Deutschmark and the Bundesbank: it wants EMU so that it can assimilate other countries into an expanded Deutschmark zone. France wants a new currency and wants to get its hands on the Bundesbank; it pushed for the Maastricht Treaty, which would destroy the Deutschmark. Who would control Europe's currency? Who would control the proposed new European Central Bank? Germany or France?
As Wilhelm Nolling, a Bundesbank Council member, said: "We should be under no illusion - the present controversy over the new European monetary order is about power, influence and the pursuit of national interests."
They are already fighting about the 1996 InterGovernmental Conference. Germany wants the economic criteria for EMU met as soon as possible: it insists that economic convergence must precede monetary union. France wants the earliest possible date for monetary union, believing that monetary union would produce economic convergence. Both are wrong of course: convergence cannot and will not be achieved, either way.
EMU's implications are universally unpopular. The workers of France, Italy and Belgium are striking against the EU's schemes. The Austrian Government fell in October, unable to pass the EU-required budget.
We can see both from ERM's effects, and from the effects of the attempted imposition of the Maastricht criteria, how damaging membership of EMU would be. It would cause, as intended, a permanent lowering of wages, a permanently higher level of unemployment, and massive cuts in public spending."
William Podmore - May 15, 2001
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Bernard Connolly was fired by the European bureaucrats after this book came out. If you read this book you will understand why. This book has all the detail you could ask for. It is an incredible expose of the events leding up to European Monetary Union.
If you support the European Community, reading this book will change your mind -- if you dare read it.
Indeed the EU Commission fired him for that, and he brought the case in court
from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's quite angry article on that on the Telegraph in 2001:
"THE European Court of Justice ... found that the European Commission was entitled to sack Bernard Connolly... for writing "The rotten Heart of Europe. ... The ruling stated that the commission could ... punish individuals who "damaged the institution's image and reputation". The court called the Connolly book "aggressive, derogatory and insulting", taking particular umbrage at the author's suggestion that Economic and Monetary Union was a threat to democracy, freedom and "ultimately peace"."
Though I wonder: how many corps, orgs and institutions would not fire someone that just brought out a book titled "The Rotten Heart of <insert name of my employer here>"?
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Post by dodger on Sept 7, 2013 6:42:25 GMT
Eurobriefs - The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, SEP 2013 ISSUE
Shovelling money into Brussels
Britain’s official net contribution to the EU budget was £9.5 billion in 2012, against £2.9 billion in 2002. Other net contributions bring the current level to £12 billion. Our total net budgetary contribution since joining in 1973 is just under £240 billion (current value). The cumulative balance of payments deficit in trade with other EU members is almost £500 billion.
Eurozone jobless rate stays up
The overall unemployment rate in the EU dropped for the first time in two and a half years, falling from 11 per cent in May to 10.9 per cent in June. But in the eurozone, the unemployment rate is still 12.1 per cent. Youth unemployment rose by 0.1 per cent in both EU and eurozone, to 23.2 per cent and 23.9 per cent respectively.
Economies wrecked
The Belgian government has adopted new measures to cut its deficit by a further 750 million euros this year and almost 2.4 billion euros next year in order to stick to its EU commitments. In Spain 5,069 companies declared themselves insolvent in the first half of 2013, up more than 22.5 per cent on the same period in 2012. The Irish economy contracted by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the last quarter of 2012, with declines in household spending, investment and exports.
The exodus from Bulgaria
A survey commissioned by the European Parliament has found that more than 80,000 Bulgarians are expected to leave their country permanently with a view to settling in Britain. Bulgarians are paid an average £3.15 per hour. Bulgaria, with just over seven million people, is the poorest country – and one of the most corrupt – in the EU.
About 100,000 Bulgarians already live in Britain – many more than the 30,000 in France or 75,000 in Germany – despite Britain being further away. The number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in Britain increased by 15 per cent over the past year to a record 112,000. Some 14,000 extra people from Eastern Europe’s states found jobs here last year.
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Post by dodger on Sept 11, 2013 15:36:27 GMT
Obsessed by its Single Market, the European Union has been forcing us to accept onto Britain’s health registers doctors and nurses who can’t speak English...
The deadly cost of “free movement”
WORKERS, FEB 2012 ISSUE
Most people in Britain will remember the case of the German doctor Dr Daniel Ubani, who came over to Britain to do a “moonlight shift” for an agency and because of his limited English language skills gave a morphine overdose which killed his patient. On his first “out of hours” NHS shift on February 16, 2008, he gave 70-year-old David Gray up to 20 times the recommended dose of diamorphine, killing him within hours.
Yet few people appreciate that the reason he was able to work in this way was a result of EU Directive 2005/36/EC called the Mutual Recognition of Professional Qualifications Directive (MRPQ). Probably even fewer know the EU is proposing to review this directive with a view to relaxing the controls even further, and the coalition government is falling over itself to lead the way.
Here is the opening paragraph of the government’s response to the EU review published in September 2011:
“The modernization of the Professional Qualifications Directive comes at a crucial time in the economies of the EU. Decreasing public budgets and difficult economic circumstances cast new light on systems which originate from past decades, and create urgency to ensure that these systems do not hinder economic growth. We therefore welcome the review of the Recognition of Professional Qualifications Directive (2005/36/EC), as one of the European Commission’s 12 levers to boost growth in the single market.”
The systems which “originated in past decades” are the accumulated experience of professionals, their professional bodies and trade unions, which have fought to improve and maintain standards, often standards related to the safety of the public they were serving.
Mutual recognition
The MRPQ is a fundamental component of the Single Market. It allows professionals to have their qualifications, obtained in one member state, recognised in another and thus allows them to be employed anywhere within the Single Market irrespective of where they were trained. The Directive applies to the European Economic Area, which includes EU member states along with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The Directive was transposed into British law in 2007. There are currently 800 regulated professions across the EU with two systems for recognition of qualifications: the “general system” and “automatic recognition”.
Doctors
Lack of planning has become a feature of the modern NHS. Above: doctors in Glasgow protest in March 2007 against a system as described as “complete chaos” with thousands of expensively trained junior doctors unplaced and without even an opportunity to be interviewed.
Photo: Workers
The system of automatic recognition applies to seven professions: doctors, dentists, general care nurses, midwives, pharmacists, veterinary surgeons and architects. For these professions there are “harmonized minimum training requirements”. Note the word “minimum”. Language competency is not viewed as part of this “minimum” requirement – the focus is on clinical and professional skills.
Yet most clinical skills – the taking of temperature, blood pressure and so on – require language competency if only to seek the patient’s consent before doing the procedure. Failure to do so could make the procedure legally an assault.
Most of the professions are covered by the “general system”. In this instance the directive allows that where there are “substantial differences” in training requirements between member states the host country “may impose compensation measures, requiring the applicant either to complete an adaptation period or take an aptitude test.” One of the main reasons that the EU now wishes to review the 2005 Directive is that so many professions have been adept at defending their standards.
From the perspective of the EU commission, the directive has been a success, but they view the current mobility of professionals within the EU as too low. In their own estimation intra-EU trade in services represents only 25 per cent of overall trade in the EU when the services sector represents 70 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. The commission cites “burdensome and unclear procedures” as one of the main obstacles to EU citizens “exercising their rights to cross borders”. However they also acknowledge that there have been particular concerns with regard to cross-border provision where public safety is at stake. This is testament to the efforts by health professionals and others in Britain to raise the alarm.
But the EU is a many-headed hydra. Realising it has been caught out on public safety in health care, it is claiming to put in extra safeguards in this area, using this as a diversion from the more general attack on all professions contained in the Directive.
Language and public safety
Under the 2005 directive as implemented in English law the requirement to test for language ability rests with the employer and not the regulator of a particular profession.
As reported in Workers in May 2011, this has led to a situation in health that both professionals and public find incomprehensible and dangerous. For example, whenever an overseas nurse seeks to join the UK nursing register, the regulator can expect them to provide evidence of English language competency equivalent to GCSE English, or undertake the IELTS (International English Language Test) and pass at grade 7.5 both verbal and written – i.e. at a high standard. But only if that nurse is coming from outside the EU, such as Hong Kong or South Africa.
In contrast a nurse or a doctor can come from anywhere in the EU or wider EEA area and join the UK register without any language test. The responsibility for language testing rests with their employer.
The nursing unions and the regulatory body the Nursing Midwifery Council (NMC) have publicly expressed their concerns about this issue for a number of years. In March 2011 the NMC submitted evidence to the commission on behalf of all 26 nursing regulators across Europe demanding the authority to test language skills prior to putting someone on the register. The chief executive of the Patients Association also raised concerns: “How can we allow Europe to direct something as important as the delivery of safe care, particularly for older people?”
The government says that it should be up to the individual employer to test language competency, but the case of Dr Daniel Ubani shows how risky this can be. The different level of scrutiny between NHS trusts was exposed at the inquest for the patient killed by Ubani. In June 2007 Leeds Primary Care Trust (PCT) tested Ubani’s language skill and he was told he had not passed the language exam. He had only scored a 6 on the IELTS test, but a mere month later he successfully applied to a different trust for formal registration as a GP. The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly PCT did not bother with a test “because he was an EU doctor”, and placed him on the nationwide performance register. This meant Ubani could work anywhere in England and Wales.
It emerged at the inquest that the out of hours company which used Ubani’s services told him to return to Germany the day after he killed David Gray. Ubani, now 68, has since been suspended by the General Medical Council in Britain but continues to practise in Germany.
Fitness to practise
Health professionals in Britain are required to demonstrate that they have undertaken a certain amount of continuing professional development each year. But the EU directive again does not allow the regulator to impose this requirement on EU health professionals: it gives this responsibility to individual employers. Dr Ubani was working as an out of hours GP but it emerged at the inquest he had never practised as a GP in Germany. He mainly does plastic surgery work. The Nursing and Midwifery Council recently told a House of Lords committee that it had been “required to register nurses who had not had practice experience within 20 years”. There has been no attempt to rectify this omission in the proposed new version of the directive. Even the British government has had to express concern on this:
“We have heard strong concerns from our partners and stakeholders concerning health professionals seeking recognition who have been out of practice in their home State for a number of years, but then seek to practice in another Member State. The current Directive seems to require competent authorities to register professionals who met minimum training standards some years ago, but have not practiced recently.”
As in the case of Ubani someone struck off in one country can freely practise in another, avoiding the consequences of their malpractice. Dr. Hamish Meldrum of the British Medical Association, speaking in Cardiff in June 2011, reported: "We are aware of several cases where doctors have been removed from the medical register in this country because of fitness to practise problems, but are still practicing elsewhere in the EU. I am afraid EU law seems to put freedom of movement rather higher than protection of patients."
The only forum that appears to have explored the issue fully (but only in relation to health professionals) is the European Union Committee of the House of Lords. It has published a report with the promising title of “Safety First: Mobility of Healthcare Professionals in the EU”*. Indeed the introduction to their report states:
“The number of incidents which have occurred as result of failures of the Directive may be considered statistically low but where they have occurred he results have been devastating. Confidence in the Directive, particularly in relation to those professions covered by automatic recognition, has been severely undermined as a result, leading to fear in some quarters that mobility has been prioritised over public safety.”
The House of Lords heard from witnesses including regulatory bodies and Royal Colleges, but sadly none fundamentally questioned the nature of the Directive. This allowed the House of Lords final report to include a Jane Austen type clause that read “It is generally acknowledged that the free movement of services provides benefits for the EU as a whole, for its individual member states and for its citizens. None of our witnesses sought to question this.”
Alarming
Yet many did raise the issues of language and fitness to practise, and even more alarming information about the registration of health professionals came to light. For example in some regions of Spain there is no formal or compulsory regulatory system for nurses – no register!
The House of Lords response to the commission on health professionals was much more robust than that of the House of Commons. In particular they said in relation to language competency that the current and proposed Directive “strikes the wrong balance between facilitating mobility and ensuring public safety”. They specifically called for regulators to be able to test language competency.
In London the population is predicted to grow by 13 per cent in the next 20 years with the elderly population rocketing by 34 per cent in the same period. But the London Strategic Health Authority, soon to be replaced by a new body, has announced that the number of training places for adult nurses is expected to be reduced by around 420 between 2011/12 and 2012/13, down from 2,000 to 1,580.
Timetable for EU attack
2005 EU Directive on Mutual Recognition of Professional Qualifications(MRPQ)
2007 MRPQ transposed into British law
Mar 2010 EU Commission announces an “evaluation” of the directive
Jan 2011 EU launches a consultation
Jun 2011 UK Green Paper on Modernising the Professional Qualifications Directive
Sep 2011 UK government response to EU Commission supportive of further relaxation of controls on movement
Jan 2012 Commission’s proposals for change expected
2013 New Directive expected
In January a nameless Department of Health spokesperson told Nursing Times magazine that a 40 per cent increase in the number of EU nurses joining the UK register from 2010 to 2011 was one reason that fewer students would be needed.
So in the year after nursing in England has moved from Diploma to Degree status, the number of students is slashed and EU nurses (many prepared at sub Diploma level) join the register! The irony was not lost on a string of nurses who commented with fury on the online version of the Nursing Times article – including some recently made redundant and third year students struggling to find jobs.
Fighting back
The current Directive is dangerous. The new version is potentially even more so. See the Box, left, for the timeline of this particular EU attack. As Workers goes to press many union branches are preparing motions for conference and if ever a topic needed to be understood and debated, here is one.
We need to emulate the two sons of David Gray who have never stopped campaigning against this system. They have fought relentlessly to have Ubani removed from the register in Germany. Last year Ubani took them to court to try and prevent them speaking up. Ironically the German courts said that the sons could keep speaking up and Ubani could not silence them, but apparently no law in Germany or European court can prevent this negligent doctor practising.
The law is an ass. The wording of this Directive needs to be turned on its head. Professionals in every country should mutually recognise the right of professionals to organise in their own country.
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Post by dodger on Sept 11, 2013 15:42:12 GMT
We’re not broke. We’re not at the mercy of foreign investors. And the working class could rebuild Britain – but first it has to force its way into the driving seat...
How we could fix the economy
WORKERS, DEC 2011 ISSUE
Those commentators who are paid to depict capitalism in bright colours usually quote something along the lines that international investors have only lent Britain capital at such low rates of interest on the condition that state overspending is brought under control. But the fact is Britain has adequate scope to rebuild as we have plenty of access to inexpensive long-term domestic finance.
Rather than giving serious thought to the supervision and regulation of monopoly banking why not first examine the nature of UK government debt. Then the question of reorganising British banking can begin to be properly addressed.
Commentators often quite deliberately interchange the terms government debt (i.e. the accumulated total of budgetary shortfalls for years in the past) and government deficit (i.e. the estimated budgetary shortfall for the current financial year). The intention here is to confuse the ill-informed so that the government can justify the attacks on our living standards.
At present Britain’s anticipated government deficit is 11 per cent, which simply means that after annual revenue sourced mostly from taxes, government expenditure for 2011/12 is estimated to exceed revenue by 11 per cent (£122 billion); total government debt as a proportion of GDP is 68 per cent (£900 billion). Compare these figures to those laid down in the Maastricht Treaty that was signed by Thatcher in the 1990s. The treaty dictates that EU governments should not incur debt greater than 60 per cent of GDP and run an annual deficit of more than 3 per cent. So from a British perspective this suggests that rather than the image of “spiralling out of control” things are not so out of line against their own Maastricht criteria.
Look at Europe!
Our £900 billion of debt, 68 per cent of GDP, has an average maturity of 14 years, against the average in German-occupied Europe of 79 per cent of GDP and maturity of just 8 years. Greece tops the league with a debt of 160 per cent of its GDP.
Significantly, the length to maturity for each tranche of British government debt is evenly spread. This gives flexibility and allows planning to occur in line with the scheduled dates when each tranche of debt falls due. For example only 20 per cent of our government debt was due to mature between June 2010 and June 2013.
Compare this with Italy: it has some 220 billion of its total debt of 1,900 billion euros set to mature over the next couple of months. The Italian government has to immediately repay 220 billion euros, or find new creditors now willing to lend on revised terms. Italy’s finance minister has recently said that his country’s fate is now entirely in the hands of Berlin.
We should also look at the argument that we are now perilously dependent upon international investors upon whom this country relies to stave off bankruptcy. Is this true, or just nonsense?
“It’s time for us to turn
the tables and insist that
we rebuild our country...”
Not surprisingly, it’s nonsense: the fact is 80 per cent of British government debt is facilitated through long-term credit provided by Britain’s occupational pension funds and insurance companies. So forget the bogey man in the form of the international investor. We are the bogey man for it is our pension fund capital and insured savings that is by and large used to cover their debt and make up their annual deficit shortfall.
The Coalition is currently looking to raise a further £300 billion from our funds over the next three years. As no one else wants to buy government debt, this will also signal the start of the transfer of £275 billion of quantitative easing from the Bank of England’s balance sheet over to our pension funds and insured savings.
During this process the government and their apologists intend to bleat that international markets insist that we should wreck our health service/education or whatever else that is civilised in our country. Should we just accept this? Clearly no, because the figures show it is plainly the workers who are servicing government debt and who should be in the driving seat when it comes to deciding how.
So what could be done? For one thing, we have to import huge volumes of goods that hitherto were manufactured in Britain. Even though our currency exchange rate has fallen by 25 per cent over the past couple of years this has not helped our exports as much as it has raised the costs of imports, leading to price inflation.
But unlike previous occasions in our industrial history, we do not have the immediate ability to increase our exports or to substitute what we are now importing with better priced British manufacture. This is due to 30 years of politically inspired industrial destruction. It’s time for us to turn the tables and insist that we rebuild our country.
Deflecting attention
To try to deflect attention away from this question, we now hear that for Britain to prosper, we need a strong and growing Europe. Wrong. What we need to do instead is to place our destiny into our own hands and rebuild Britain. But this terrifies those that are clinging on to power because to rebuild, to remove mass unemployment, would make British working people a political threat – better the debilitating virus of deindustrialisation to keep us on our knees.
What is needed above all else is a determination to face up to and speak the truth. Facts are stubborn things and the fact is that economic outcomes are determined by philosophy, which class perspective you are coming from. So for a successful economic outcome we need to change the philosophy and raise ourselves and our horizons above the absurd mumbo jumbo of the paper world of the credit system.
Britain has sufficient capital, sufficient real wealth, to do this. So the term “spiralling out of control” so often used in the media is an exaggeration designed to catch and encourage the gullible to give up all the gains that working people have won through trade union actions over the past 150 years or more.
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Post by dodger on Sept 23, 2013 22:41:34 GMT
CPBM-L Statement: EU referendum now!
It is time for a referendum on the European Union. Nobody in Britain under the age of 56 has had a vote on membership of the EU or of its predecessor, the EEC. The Parliamentary parties have often promised a referendum but have always broken their promises, because they represent capitalism and capitalists are afraid to hear the views of the working class.
The EU is the rule of finance capital. It is foreign rule. It is the enemy of Britain’s survival. Yet Parliament has always voted it more and more powers, without ever asking us. It’s time that the British working class put an end to Parliament’s betrayal of Britain.
We the people must stop all the delays, all the lies of reform and renegotiation. We must demand the vote, to express the will of the people in a referendum with one simple question, whether to stay or leave. Democracy means that we take our own decisions, that we take responsibility.
It’s time we focused on the job of rebuilding Britain. Britain can be an independent country outside the EU, forging relations with other countries both in Europe and in the wider world. This is impossible within the EU.
EU referendum now! ■
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Post by dodger on Sept 29, 2013 15:03:30 GMT
Eurobriefs - The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, OCT 2013 ISSUE>
Let us out!
Good news: the 30th annual British Social Attitudes survey reported, “Euroscepticism is firmly in the ascendancy, with a record 67 per cent wanting either to leave or for Britain to remain but the EU to become less powerful.”
Dutch oppose opening labour market
According to a recent poll, 81 per cent of Dutch citizens oppose the opening of the Dutch labour market to Bulgarians and Romanians from 1 January 2014.
Social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher agreed eastern European workers threaten the jobs of Dutch workers as they are willing to work for less than the minimum wage. He said the government will address the “negative consequences ”of intra-EU migration. That won’t go as far as closing the country’s borders to those migrants, which would not be permitted by the EU.
According to the 2011 census, Bulgaria has lost 582,000 people over the past ten years and 1.5 million of its population since 1985, a depopulation record not just for the EU, but also by world standards. It now has almost the same number of inhabitants as in 1945.
Crisis zone
Economic news in EU member states continues to reflect serious problems. In Greece, unemployment in the 15-24 age group reached 58.8 per cent, an unimaginable figure in any European country until recently. In France the government announced spending cuts of nearly 15 billion euros in response to lower growth forecasts.
Is that a promise?
The two co-chief executives of Goldman Sachs International have said banks will move to the Continent from London “in very short order” if Britain exits the EU. No more Goldman Sachs – another great argument for leaving the EU.
Sadly, it’s probably a bluff. If Goldman Sachs moved its offices any distance away from the Stock Exchange, that would make its traders’ electronic transmissions take longer, losing it a competitive advantage.
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