78TH PLENARY SESSION

Thank you, Chairman.  Chairman, I would like to thank both speakers for their presentation this morning and I think we are discussing a very pertinent question here: is a social Europe what citizens want? 

I suppose I would ask the question: well how would we know what citizens want, because it is interesting to note that although the European Union is over 50 years old, we are looking here today at a report produced by the first European wide citizen’s deliberation and while it is a very welcome report, I suppose it strikes me that it has been a long time in happening, this direct consultation with citizens, because I think there has been an assumption to date that those elected representatives that ratify treaties in national parliaments and also the ministers who sign up and agree treaties, that they are representing the views of their citizens.  I think this is a problematic assumption because a lot of these politicians are elected.  They have fought their campaigns on a national basis, and have not engaged in any detailed or meaningful way on European issues with the voters who are electing them.  So I think this direct consultation with European citizens is a very welcome development and I hope it is a process that will continue. 

I also note that the opening lines of the report we received today do seem to very strongly suggest that citizens want to see a social Europe.  The report says all across Europe our national consultations nearly unanimously ask for the EU to play a substantial role in virtually all social policy issues and to actively create a social Europe beyond the economic Europe.  It is also interesting that the report makes it very clear to us what is meant by a social Europe.  I think typically when we talk about a social Europe we refer to employment and labour standards and rights in those areas, and while they are very much a part of the responses that were received through this consultation process, it is obvious also that citizens were referring to policy areas such as health, child protection, the rights of older persons, support for the family and so on. 

Within the EU, obviously in many Member States citizens already enjoy strong social rights and entitlements in these areas, but I think they are also aware there is no room for complacency and that in the context of the quickening pace of enlargement in the EU, there is a fear of a race to the bottom as new Member States join with much lower levels of social standards.  To look at the process of enlargement to date, I think pre 2004 there was a more gradual pace of enlargement and the effect of that was the convergence upwards of social and environmental standards.  I think when you look at countries like Portugal, Greece, Spain and Ireland we have all benefited from that process.  But since the big bang in 2004 and then the accession of countries like Romania and Bulgaria, I think there is genuine concern amongst European citizens that we are going to see a downward trend in these standards. 

Unfortunately in the negotiation of the recent Reform Treaty, I think the fact that the UK secured a protocol allowing it an opt out of the Charter for Fundamental Rights, that that is an issue that will be of major concern that in some way the European Union is facilitating a sort of ‘take it or leave it’ approach to these standards and I think our own Government, ourselves, we will have to clarify our own position on that issue for our citizens as we enter into a referendum treaty next year.

In terms of a point that was made by Mr Rauws to do with globalisation, I think this is a very fundamental issue, the whole issue of a social Europe in the context of globalisation, because the issue for the European Union really is:  can it convince its citizen that it is going to serve as a bulwark against the worst excesses of free market globalisation or is it, in fact, what many critics would suggest, a vehicle to advance and accelerate the process of free market globalisation? 

I think unless citizens can see that there is an added value to the European citizenship, that on the global stage that the EU is actually a champion and a promoter of high standards and strong standards of environmental and social protection, I think it won’t be as relevant, it wouldn’t as easy to mobilise the loyalty and the support of European citizens and that the EU would act through the global institutions it belongs to attempt to universalize these values and these standards.  Thank you. 

78th plenary session of the National Forum on Europe • St Patrick’s Hall • Dublin Castle • Dublin 2 • Thursday 28 June 2007
Mr Roger Liddle, policy advisor to the President of the European Commission and Mr Gerrit Rauws, Director of the King Baudouin Foundation addressed the theme ‘Is a Social Europe what citizens want?’

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National Forum on Europe by Deirdre