We’ve just sent in our submission to the European Commission’s public consultation on its trade policy. The consultation covers everything under the trade sun, and so does our long submission.

It’s not exactly weekend reading, so I’ll pick out one of the more juicy issues (and award a prize to anyone brave/sad enough to read the whole thing): the EU’s new investment powers under the Lisbon treaty. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Globalisation, Human rights, Investment, Multinationals, Trade | 1 Comment »

There’s an interesting nugget about German trade union strategy in today’s FT (‘German unions seek pay rises on back of recovery’). This notes that, in negotiations for 110,000 steelworkers, due to begin on August 27, IG Metall,  Germany’s biggest union, will focus on pay rises and a reduction in contract labour, rather than job security. The union agreed a two-year pay deal for engineering workers in February, including a one-year pay freeze and a 2.7% rise in 2011, in exchange for guarantees of job security.

Confidence in the recovery of Europe’s biggest economy is such that the focus can now move from protecting workers’ jobs to ensuring they get a fair share from the future economic upturn. IG Metall boss Berthold Huber also rightly points out the role of faster wage rises in stimulating domestic demand. Read more »

   Filed under: Earnings, Europe | 2 Comments »

Two reports out this week at international level indicate that the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions is beginning to pile up support. First, the Leading Group for Innovative Financing to Fund Development (a body of 55 national governments including the UK) has published a report saying that a currency transactions tax of 0.005% would raise $33 bn a year. Second, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), a tripartite body of employer, union and consumer/NGO representatives, has called for an EU level financial transactions tax of around 0.05% to control speculation and raise money for combating global poverty, tackling climate change and reducing deficits. So the pressure is mounting internationally for the Robin Hood Tax, and the next key pressure point will be the meeting of EU finance ministers on 7 September where France and Germany have insisted on a discussion. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »

OK, only the Austrian employers seem to have come out in favour recently, but it’s a start, and their reasons for supporting a financial transactions tax (FTT) are worth others thinking about: they want an FTT rather than a bank levy because it would be more easy to pass the costs of the latter on to consumers (what economists call ‘incidence’). Meanwhile, EurActiv reports that the German finance minister has renewed his call for an EU FTT, and the Belgian EU Presidency, which began on 1 July, wants to table proposals soon. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Transactions tax | 5 Comments »

The latest issue of Social Trends shows that the UK is a very unequal country by European standards – we have levels of inequality that are normally found in the EU’s poorer Mediterranean and Balkan members.

Social Trends provides a comparison for Gini coefficients (the Gini coefficient is a commonly used yardstick, and it measures inequality across the income distribution) in 2007, which is the most recent year for which there is comparable data available. Social Trends provides a comparison for Gini coefficients (the Gini coefficient is a commonly used yardstick, and it measures inequality across the income distribution) in 2007, which is the most recent year for which there is comparable data available. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Inequality | 4 Comments »

New data show that, over the past 40 years, life expectancy and infant mortality have improved rapidly across Western Europe. The new edition of Social Trends, published yesterday, includes a mass of useful data that I’ll be returning to several times over the next few days.

One example is a table of demographic indicators for 1970 and 2005/10 for the UK and several west European countries that we normally compare ourselves with. This includes data on men’s and women’s life expectancy at birth and on infant mortality rates – very good basic indicators about the combined social and economic success of different countries. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Europe | 1 Comment »

Too good – if unoriginal - a headline to resist! Foreign Secretary William Hague has delivered the first of four promised speeches elaborating what he says will be a new strategic vision for Britain’s foreign policy. Most of today’s speech was old or borrowed, and little was identifiably blue. But there were some good new ideas too. But how will he pay for what looks like a very much expanded diplomatic function (the FT report started with the suggestion that he was bidding to protect the FCO from further cuts), and, crucially, will he be an Atlanticist or a European? I sense trouble ahead if he fails to answer the second question. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Globalisation, Politics | 1 Comment »

A bit of a round up of a big day of news from the Robin Hood Tax campaign. The really new bit of news is the report issued by the Institute of Development Studies, which is the most powerful evidence you can get – written by an avowed sceptic of financial transactions taxes, who has read the evidence and emerged persuaded that the Robin Hood Tax would work. But also, almost un-reported by the UK media, the Council of the European Union – attended for the first time by UK Prime Minister David Cameron – backed a global financial transactions tax. Meanwhile, campaigners from Bournemouth (Unison conference delegates) to Toronto (At the Table activists) called on G20 leaders here and in Canada ”to commit to the Robin Hood Tax, a 0.05 per cent Financial Transaction Tax on speculative trading that could raise billions each year for fighting climate change and poverty both at home and abroad.” Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, G20, Public spending, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »

That’s the German one, by the way.  But as the Guardian report makes clear, the big issue is the rising unpopularity and perceived unfairness of Merkel’s austerity package.  Draw your own conclusions.

   Filed under: Europe, Politics, Public spending | 1 Comment »

The Financial Times reported today that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while pushing for substantial cuts in the German public deficit, would also be seeking a European-level financial transactions tax (FTT) by 2012. This demonstrates that the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in South Korea last week may have reduced the chances of getting a global tax, but has simultaneously made a European tax more likely. The UK’s coalition government is committed to a unilateral bank levy, and the Belgians who are taking over the Presidency at the end of this month (along with the Austrians) are also already committed to a European FTT.

   Filed under: Europe, G20, Transactions tax | Comments Off

On Friday 4 June, a joint delegation of European trade unions and employers met with the President of the European Commission to discuss the impact that cuts in public expenditure across Europe will have on employment. Unions and employers had agreed a joint declaration on the issue, which saw agreement that growth is the only sustainable solution to the problems of the budget deficits caused by the global financial and economic crisis. It is incredibly important that employers were willing to join the ETUC in calling for growth, thus rejecting the prevailing orthodoxy in Governments, the Commission and bodies like the OECD and IMF that cuts are the main priority. On the eve of the meeting, ETUC General Secretary John Monks  warned that the current path risks repeating the errors of the 1930s, when co-ordinated cuts in public expenditure around the developed world turned the global recession into a profound depression. AS well as supporting growth and a sustainable industrial strategy, the ETUC is arguing for financial sector re-regulation, fiscal co-ordination and a financial transactions tax.

   Filed under: Beyond Crisis, Employers, Europe, Financial crisis, Public services, Public spending, Recession | 2 Comments »

Ed Balls is absolutely right when he lambasts Governments in other parts of Europe for cutting public spending, and it is a pity that that part of his article has been swept aside in the coverage by the other element of his argument, that too many workers from Eastern Europe were allowed to work in Britain, where he is wrong. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Migration, Vulnerable workers | 10 Comments »