Nice 2000: mobilization of the marches for a social Europe!
An »active European social movement« on the road
Marie-Paule Connan
Since a few years, the EU governors have waved the ghost of an Active Social State, in which our only right would be to work, without any claim about quality, wages or security. The Convention which had to write the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union deliberately decided on October 3rd 2000 that the social rights- and especially unemployment benefits, pensions, minimum income and housing benefits- were only promises that might not be kept in the future. Year after year since 1997, the guidelines concerning labour policy have made the unemployed and the workers feel guilty and responsible for their situation; they have been told that they are unemployable, inadaptable and that they lack entrepreneurship. The pensions reformers claim moreover that elderly people live too long, and cost too much. Young people's lack of experience has also become a fault, which implies that they are forced to undergo very poor insertion status, which makes them become completely dependent on their family and doesn't enable them to prepare their future retirement.
Our presence and our requirements in Nice have proved that we do not hesitate to ACT to defend our rights and to ask for an Europe which is more democratic and more social.
We, workers, unemployed, insecure workers, poor pensioners, illegal immigrants, homeless people, all together, we do believe in our struggle and our success, we want to be fully considered as citizens, we want to be allowed to take part in the important decisions that are taken by the EU. Since Amsterdam, we have been shouting, we have been singing our hopes and our believes in a democratic and social Europe, as well as our refusal to accept the new accomplished fact of an ultra-liberal Europe, which does sacrifice the social acquis and the democratic rules in order to satisfy the market and the financial forces.
