THE FORCED march towards an economically integrated capitalist Europe is to advance one step further with the EU Heads' of Government Summit in Cardiff on 15/16 June.
At a meeting in Cardiff on 25 January a significant crosssection of the left agreed to organise a march and rally on 13 June in opposition to the integration project being pursued by the summit.
Among those present were leading left activists from the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru, as well as representatives of the Communist Party, the SWP, Cymdeithas yr laith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), Unemployed Action Groups, the Campaign Against Euro-Federalism and the Euromarch Network.
People's Europe
business Europe, Yes to a people's Under the slogan "No to a big Europe!" It was agreed to base the platform of the demonstration around the following key demands:
* Against the austerity measures to meet the convergence criteria for the single currency.
* Against cuts in the welfare state and social spending and the privatisation of public services.
* For full employment, with real permanent jobs on a living wage.
* For the equality of all nations in Europe.
* Against the racist "Fortress Europe".
* For a halt to the degradation of the environment.
A demonstration against these key aspects of European integration, at a time when so much attention will be focused on the summit, can play an extremely valuable role in openino up a real debate on Europe in Britain.
And nowhere is this widening of the debate more vital than in Wales, the summit's host-nation, where the leadership of both the labour and nationalist movements, and much of the reformist left see the EU as holding out solutions to their country's many problems. Alan Thornett THE BIGGEST political issue in Europe in 1998 will be the preparation for the single currency, due for introduction on January 1 1999, and the implementation of its notorious jobcutting convergence criteria.
The key task for Blair during the British Presidency of the EU, which runs from January until June is to oversee these developments.
During this time the remaining preparations for the single currency have to be completed, incluaing agreement on the final list of member states which will be going into the single currency from the outset.
That list will be agreed at an EU EMU Council to he Keld in Brussels on May 1-3, chaired by Robin Cook.
Thus even though Britain will Thousands marched through Paris and 50 other cities on January 7 protesting against unemployment not be on the list, and even though -against Blair's wishes - a committee of those involved directly is to be set up, there is no doubt that Britain under New Labour is playing a very different role than under the Tories.
The British Presidency will culminate in Cardiff on June 15-16 with a summit that will be the launch pad for the single currency six months later. As always it will be this event at the end of a presidency that marks its focal point and acts as a balance sheet of what has and has not been achieved.
Common policy
The Cardiff conference will also focus on employment conditions across Europe - following on from the so-called "Jobs Summit" held in Luxembourg last November. That conference introduced a new principle into the EU that the issue of employment, and unemployment, should be treated as an issue of joint concern and the subject of a common policy.
Under pressure from Tony Blair, the conference adopted of a remarkable set of "employment guidelines" which the member states will be required to implement. The implementation will be monitored at the Cardiff summit.
The statement adopted puts it this way:
"The implementation of the Guidelines will be regularly monitored under a common procedure for assessing results: each year from now on, the Commission will report on the implementation by the Member States of the employment Guidelines. The Commission may necessary - propose Recommendations to individual Member States.
"This type of approach to coordinating national employment policies draws directly on the experience built up in the multilateral surveillance of economic policies, a method that proved particularly successful in the case of convergence.
"The aim is to achieve a convergence process of Member States' employment policies and to create for employment the same resolve as that applying to economic policy, so that targets can be jointly set, verified and regularly updated."
What are the policies they want to monitor and converge? This is made clear under the guideline entitled Modernising Work Organisation:
"The social partners are invited to negotiate, at the appropriate levels, in particular at sectoral and enterprise levels, agreements to modernise the organisation of work, including flexible working arrangements, with the aim of making undertakings productive and competitive and achieving the required balance between flexibility and security.
Annual hours
"Such agreements may, for example, cover the expression of working time as an annual figure, the reduction of working hours, the reduction of overtime, the development of part time working, lifelong' training and career breaks.
"For its part, each Member State will examine the possibility of incorporating in its law more adaptable types of contract, taking into account the fact that forms of employment are increasingly diverse.
"Those working under contracts of this kind should at the same time enjoy adequate security and higher occupational status compatible with the needs of the business."
This agenda echoes completely the position Blair has béen putting to Europe and which he put to the Amsterdam Summit: that the solution for the EC is to follow Thatcher's Britain in forcing in employment "flexibility".
Already we have seen the difficulties posed for many of the member states, as resistance to the convergence criteria has led to huge demonstrations, strikes and other protests. Unemployment and flexibility has already been central to these shows of resistance - and this will become even more explosive now.
This makes the Cardiff summit important not just for the single currency but also for the issues of unemployment and job insecurity. Across Wales, Scotland and England.- indeed across the whole of Europe - we must work to organise a sizeable protest against these plans in June which can link up with the mood of discontent that is already escalating here and abroad.