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PES and ETUC leaders meet

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New Social Europe: PES and ETUC leaders meet

On 22 September, the Party of European Socialists, led by its President the former Danish Prime Minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, hosted a meeting with the ETUC, led by general secretary John Monks, to discuss how to meet the challenges posed by the growth of hedge funds, and the creation of a single labour market.

Fears were expressed that the nature of company ownership was changing fundamentally in Europe. S hareholder controlled companies, which had evolved from family owned firms, were giving was to companies bought and sold for reasons of short term profit by hedge funds with no interest in their workforces. It was proposed that the EU should legislate to ensure greater transparency in hedge fund's operations, to strengthen defences against hostile takeovers, to regulate stock options, to protect the rights of minority shareholders, to strengthen EWCs, and to better regulating stock markets. In addition, a lot of pension fund money was now being invested in pension funds, and this called for a more active union role.

On migration, and more specifically on the rights of EU citizens to free movement, it was argued that the real problem was exploitation - and that many workers were victims and not just newly arrived ones. The real answer lay in ensuring that everybody's equal rights in the single European labour market were respected and enforced.

Both issues will be on the agendas of the PES's and the ETUC's congresses, on 7-8 December 2006 and 20-24 May 2007 respectively, and it was agreed that joint work would be mutually beneficial.

It was also agreed to hold similar meetings at least annually.

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