Workers want a good European legislation

On May 19th, 2015 the European Commission published the package "Better Regulation", reflecting its desire to ensure better, easier and more effective regulation in the European Union. The three EU Institutions – the Council, the Parliament and the Commission - will present a list of proposals to be submitted to "review, simplification and improvement". This operation is primarily aimed at boosting competitiveness in the internal market and support small and medium enterprises. A review of the program will take place every year.

In the coming weeks, the EESC will adopt an opinion on the entire package, having recalled on several occasions that it should be respected as a consultative body of the Union, as provided in the Treaties. Until now the EESC, through its reports and opinions, evaluates the social and economic situation and proposes legislative initiatives.

In response to the Commission request, the EESC will strengthen this area of activity that falls within the purview of its institutional powers.

The Workers' Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, during its extraordinary meeting on 24 June 2015, held a dialogue with representatives of all major political parties in the European Parliament.

Although the Group shares the objective of "good legislation", which has also been expressed on several occasions, it raised doubts and expressed serious concern about the analysis of the texts proposed by the Commission.

According to art. 151 of the Treaty «The Union and the Member States… shall have as their objectives the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, so as to make possible their harmonisation while the improvement is being maintained, proper social protection…»

The Commission intends to submit to an impact assessment all initiatives likely to have a significant economic, social or environmental impact. The EESC Workers' Group considers that no impact assessment could be totally neutral or purely technical. Conversely, the risk of political manipulation is very strong.

Significantly, the impact assessments of the Commission actually do not prevent the maintenance of austerity policies, of economic governance and of structural reforms that have been the cause of a profound social regression. In addition, public consultations on the internet have never been a truly democratic instrument nor truly representative of civil society and those social organisations most deeply established at national, regional or local level.

Impact assessments, internet platforms, "independent" groups of experts strengthen perhaps the technocratic procedure but can in no way substitute either the legislative function of Parliament, democratically elected, or that of the consultative bodies of the Union: the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions.

Furthermore, the proposal to submit for evaluation agreements between European social partners, mainly on the actual representation of stakeholders, is a clear violation of the Treaty.

Representatives of European Trade Unions have always fought for a stronger and united Europe, asking to minimise the weight of bureaucratic rules in its implementation. But it is precisely in these difficult years from an economic and social point of view that citizens and workers in Europe need common rules that guarantee people's rights, their protection and well-being, rules that should not be sacrificed in favour of economic and financial interests. Conversely, a weakened and "simplified" European legislation may concede the free market a form of self-regulation that will aggravate the difficulties of the majority of citizens, exacerbating discrimination and social inequalities.

Representatives of Trade Unions, Members of the EESC Workers' Group therefore commit to be particularly vigilant in the work of detailed analysis of the documents 'Better Regulation' to which they will devote full attention in the coming weeks, together with the other two EESC Groups, all democratic parties of the European Parliament, the European Trade Union Confederation and other civil society organisations.

It is paradoxical that although the European Commission claims it wants to simplify and improve legislation and fight against bureaucracy and costs, it suggests mechanisms that are likely to lead exactly to the opposite of the aims pursued.