Neoliberalism in Europe. posted by Richard Seymour

The Bolkestein directive, or the 'Services Directive' as it is otherwise known, is not likely to feature in the Sun's compendium of loony Euro measures. This is for the perfectly excellent reason that it was a measure designed to subvert the interests of workers and consumers.

Named after Frits Bolkestein, the former EU internal market commissioner who introduced the idea in January 2004, the law enables the company you work for to transfer its headquarters to a country in which legal protection for workers is particularly weak, and you would suddenly find that you no longer have the benefit of protections won by decades of trade union and social struggle in your own country. The right to strike, pay negotiations, pensions - forget all that. Bolkestein has suggested that the law is about harmonising rules in the EU. Effectively what it does is level down, so that the lowest common denominator in terms of regulation prevails. Unsurprisingly, our oleaginous Prime Minister, after striving to weaken protection for British workers on his last Euro-adventure, is in the vanguard of this movement. Peter Mandelson, that paragon of self-effacing asceticism, has accused opponents of the directing of wanting to lead "a cosy life" .

George Monbiot summarises :

Companies, it says, “are subject only to the national provisions of their Member State of origin.”(2) Roughly translated, this means that a company based in one European country but working in another is bound only by the rules of the country in which it is based. If a construction firm whose offices are in Lithuania, for example, has a contract in the United Kingdom, it need abide only by Lithuanian law while working over here. The obvious result is that every enterprising corporation in Europe will relocate its headquarters to the place in which the laws are weakest.

And then it gets really weird. The state responsible for enforcing the rules – health and safety laws for example – will be the one in which the company is based, not the one in which it is working.(3) If, for example, a Lithuanian construction company is forcing workers in the UK to use dodgy scaffolding, our own Health and Safety Executive won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. Instead, the Lithuanian equivalent must send its inspectors over here, and, without local knowledge, hampered by any number of translation problems, seek to defend the lives of British workers.

Given the way such markets work, the company they are monitoring will, more likely than not, be a British one flying a Lithuanian flag of convenience. But if that company is threatening your safety on a building site in Brixton, you will be able to seek protection only by protesting to the authorities in Vilnius.

Speak good Lithuanian, do you? Fancy an easyJet flight every time something goes wrong? It would certainly add new meaning to the term "flying picket". There has not been a move this contemptuous of public opinion since the highly secretive and abortive Multilateral Agreement on Investment which, among other things, sought to allow companies to sue governments who impose regulations which are deemed to have restricted its ability to make profit under the new regulations.

For now, lucky you, the move has failed. The French have scuppered it, much to the dismay of other governments in the Union.

Why did it fail? Certainly not because of the feeble protests of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). More likely, it is because Chirac as having a hard enough time at home, what with strikes and protests erupting on an almost weekly basis against his plans to scrap the 35 hour week . The Bolkestein directive, while barely known about or discussed in Britain, has been met with a gale of protest in Europe.

Naturally, the European leaders anxious to impose this law have not given up. Hence, "'Bolkestein directive' to stay, but will be watered down" . Bolkestein, for his part, isn't satisfied . For him, it's just another form of racism .