Documents found
-
391.More information
AbstractThis article addresses the difficulties faced by European-level unions as they try to organise actions of trans-border collective solidarity in the new political and economic space of the European Union. There are few such actions, despite the important social and economic reforms that the European community has undertaken in the last 20 years, reforms that affect both the content and the organisation of working conditions and collective social rights. Nevertheless, in the transportation sector, which is subject to major competitive pressure, transnational union structures have succeeded in mobilising workers repeatedly, creating ties among the various trades. This is, then, a departure from the general union situation where there is little evidence that any Europeanisation of social conflict is on the agenda.
-
392.
-
394.More information
In 2005 the “Constitutional Treaty” designed to restructure the governance of the European Union (EU) was rejected in popular referendums in France and the Netherlands. Subsequently only in Ireland was a referendum held on the Lisbon Treaty, which reinstated most elements in the previous version, in June 2008. Again a negative result threw the EU into crisis, though a second Irish vote in October 2009 yielded a different result.The “no” votes reflected a familiar pattern of popular rejection of initiatives on European integration. This article provides an overview of such referendums in western Europe, focusing in particular on the role of national trade unions in popular votes on EU accession and on Treaty revisions. It discusses trade union intervention in a dozen countries which held referendums since the Single European Act in the 1980s (and in the United Kingdom, which did not).It is evident that while mainstream trade unions (or at least their leaders) have usually endorsed the integration process, in most countries where referendums have been held their members have voted otherwise. This has been particularly evident among manual workers. Sometimes popular attitudes have been strongly influenced by narrowly nationalistic arguments, but rejection has often been based on “progressive” rather than “reactionary” grounds. In particular, the justified view that the EU in its current direction is encouraging a neoliberal, pro-capitalist drift in social and economic policy has underlain a left-wing critique of further integration.But having assented to the underlying architecture of actually existing Europeanization, unions have rarely shown the will to mobilize offensively around an alternative vision of social Europe. This has left the field open to right-wing nationalists (and to fringe left-wing parties with only a limited electoral base) to campaign in the “no” camp during referendums. Popular attitudes are malleable, but it requires a major strategic re-orientation if unions are to reconnect with their members in order to build a popular movement for a genuinely social Europe.
Keywords: European Union, referendums, trade unions, Lisbon Treaty, neoliberalism, social Europe, Union européenne, référendum, syndicat, Traité de Lisbonne, néolibéralisme, Europe sociale, Unión Europea, referéndum, sindicato, Tratado de Lisboa, neoliberalismo, Europa social
-
395.More information
This paper argues that the development towards a common migration policy in the European Union reflects the emergence of a new form of regionalism resulting from the recent structural transformations in the global political economy. The European governments are caught in a web of contradictory interests and tendencies. On one side, the logic of global economic restructuring dictates continued deregulation and flexibilisation of the labour market, implying increased high levels of immigration. On the other hand, the political backlash against globalisation pushes towards a closure of the external borders. The result is the construction of a Fortress Europe, with a set of specific cooperation agreements with the regions surrounding the European Union in order to regulate the inflow of migrants.
-
398.More information
ABSTRACTThe process of European integration, the globalization of economic exchanges and intensified reforms in national social welfare systems have triggered the production of a growing number of comparative analyses of welfare states. The author summarizes some of the recent stages in this reflection on the future of national social welfare systems. He shows how, in barely a decade, we have gone from a debate on the types of welfare state, marked by controversies on the type of variables to be considered and on the number of such typical regimes, to a reflection on the evolution of these social welfare systems, i.e. to an analysis of the changes the various regimes have undergone, prompting questioning on whether they are becoming more and more similar or are in the process of being dismantled.
-
399.More information
"The eastern European '68ers formed the backbone of the democratic opposition and dissidents, whereas we, the somewhat older '56ers, only joined in with certain reservations, because we had a closer acquaintance with defeat." The writer György Konrád takes an ironic look at the '68ers from the perspective of a participant in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.