Public services – a pillar of the European social model

ETUC Public Services Petition

Article by ETUC General Secretary

John Monks

Public services face attacks from all angles - from the threat of competition, job cuts in the name of efficiency and a constant cycle of reorganisation and fragmentation.

Healthcare, education, justice and social welfare all play too much an important role in society to be put at risk by ill-thought through reforms. The shift from one reform process to another is demoralising for staff and destabilising for service users. Reforms and changes should be based on sound evidence and thorough road testing to ensure they will improve service. Users and staff should also be consulted about and involved in reforms to make sure they are well planned and delivered to make a real difference.

Most of the decisions on public services are taken on national level, but it is a domain of divided responsibility between the European and national levels. Europe also has a responsibility. Until now the focus of the European Commission has been on the internal market and opening markets for competition - the latest example is postal services, but there are risks for health services, social services, waste.... It's up to the Member States to ensure social policy and social security and protection which remain a purely national competence. Development of the market lies in European hands, and is a European responsibility, but social protection is a national domain. Yet Member States are losing more and more control over the instruments for shaping social protection.

That's why we need a European counterbalance and the European promotion and protection of public services.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has launched a campaign to secure a million signatures across the EU supporting a Directive on public services, to follow up the successful campaign against the EU Services Directive. The practical effect of such a Directive would be to confer on Member States the power to protect their public services from general requirements to liberalise such services, which often leads to privatisation.

European legislation on public services should be designed to give priority to the general interest embodied in public services, ensure that everyone has access to public services, strengthen public services in order to guarantee citizens' fundamental rights, guarantee more legal security so as to allow the development of sustainable public service missions and give public services a firm legal basis and thus immunity from ideologically motivated attacks.

Please sign the petition either online at http://www.tuc.org.uk/etucpetition or on a printed version at www.petitionpublicservice.eu