Cercas: «No society can surely flourish when people are poor»

On March 13th, the European Parliament approved my report on employment and social aspects of the role and operations of the Troika (ECB, Commission, IMF) with regard to euro area programme countries: Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus by a broad majority: 408 votes in favour, 135 against and 63 abstentions.

I was fully committed with this report because it would have been foolish to close this chapter of European history just talking about the impact the programs have had on markets, on macroeconomic imbalances and public debt while forgetting the impact they have had on citizens and welfare states.

I have based the analysis on accurate and scientific data, as well as on several studies made by the European Parliament, Universities and Research Centres from the concerned countries. We have also been in contact with the ILO and the Council of Europe to see to what extent social and employment obligations have been affected.

All that data show, without the shadow of a doubt, that the austerity policies and the structural reforms imposed in the troika countries have, first of all, infringed the European Social and Employment Legal obligations set in the Treaties, in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and in the international obligations of the EU and of those countries such as the European Social Charter. Furthermore, the Troika has despised the existence of this legislation surely because they believe, and unfortunately this mantra has already been extremely widespread, that resolving macroeconomic imbalances is an end which justifies the means, and that there should be no limit for the logic of economy.

Those measures have also led to a real social tsunami:

• There has been massive employment destruction, unemployment has tripled in some countries and it is severely affecting young people as well as other vulnerable groups of the Labour Market such as women, migrants and long term unemployed.
• There is an outstanding lack of credit for companies, resulting in the closure of hundreds of thousands of companies, mainly SMEs;
• There is a sharp rise in poverty and social exclusion, which is already touching middle classes. We also see new signs and forms of poverty such as energy poverty.
• There is an evident worseing of fundamental public services, such as health care or medicines, as well as a big decrease in the quality offered by those services in important fields such as educations or health.
• Social Dialogue has been destroyed and the already existing collective agreements have been ignored
• All those measures have been implemented in violation of the European Primary Law and international labour conventions such as ILO core conventions and the European Social Charter.

If we don't act to change this, this social bankruptcy of Southern Countries will increase and Europe will become unsustainable. One doesn´t have to be a prophet to know that this extremely serious social crisis, created by the austerity measures, will be followed by a political crisis with invaluable consequences for all of us. We will end up with a core of prosperous European countries bordered by sinking Member States in the South.
This report has been made so as to avoid this social disaster in the future, so as to show the injustice that lays in the fact that the innocent are paying the bill of the crisis.
This report has been made so as to shout out loud that it is the time to repair the damage done, including social dialogue and other core elements of the European Social Model.
This report has been made so as to put an end to the Troika and its conditionality, so as to create truly European mechanisms to tackle this type of unbalances in a transparent, fair and socially responsible way, so as to put social and employment goals on equal footing as economic and financial ones.
This report has been made so as to help those countries and their citizens, the real victims of this crisis, with sufficient technical and financial means. This report has been made to make the Council and the Commission understand that social bankruptcy needs to be tackled with the same energy and means as financial and budgetary bankruptcy.
If the Parliament has approved this analysis and these recommendations is because this Parliament, fortunately, knows that Europe is not only a market but a Social Market Economy. Europe is not only a system of cooperation between heads of State and Government or between Ministers and Commissioners but a Democratic Community of values that has been fully put into question.
This is why we ask for the end of the Troika and the establishment of an employment and social recovery plan. We believe that we need to repair what was destroyed. We need to repair what was lost. We need to set out a growth programme for employment because without employment there will be neither social justice nor recovery of the macroeconomic and budgetary imbalances.
We need to fight to restore Europe, the Europe of solidarity, of citizens, of common social values. Because, as Adam Smith pointed out, "No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable".