Second full session: preparation of the Assembly of the Unemployed and Insecure Workers in the struggle
The next assembly will take place on the 12th-13th December in Brussels and aims at gathering about 400 participants. The European networks and social organizations will be invited. The assembly could be held in Saint-Gilles (Brussels) where the »comité des sans-emploi« organizes on the 27th and 28th April a big party of the »Sans« (people without rights).
Two other meetings have been planed for the preparation: a »restricted« commission on the 2nd March in Brussels and a wider coordination on the 21st-22nd April (the exact place has not been chosen yet). During the summits in Gand/Liege some other European initiatives to prepare this assembly will take place, specially because the dates (18th/19th October 2001) match the International day of struggle against poverty (17th October).
Third full session: the introduction of the Euro
In less than a year now, the EU will enter the Euro. Are the unemployed and insecure workers concerned ? Marie-Paule had written a document of reflection, introducing as well some practical questions which the poorest in Europe will have to deal with. When you live with minimum resources, any mistake with the change can become dramatic!
We have concluded that, despite the fact that we certainly won't stop the Euro, we still have to use this drastic change to denounce the neo-liberal strategy that lies under the European construction decided in the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice. We think that we have to follow closely this question and the preparation of the EU Constitution, before it is too late for the unemployed, the insecure workers, the persons excluded and all the others.
With the Euro, millions of people will realise what the neo-liberal Europe, build since 50 years by the governments and the employers, really is. We have to prove, in Laeken-Brussels at the end of the year specially, that an other Europe remains possible.
