27 April 2007
Public sector unions across the European Union have joined MEPs in calls for a limit on the application of free market laws to public services.
Speaking in Brussels last week, Harlem Désir, vice-president of the European Parliament's socialist group – of which the UK Labour Party is a member – said: 'It is now politically and legally urgent to clarify the rules applied to [public services] in Europe, to guarantee that they will not be submitted to the sole logic of the internal market and competition.'
His comments coincided with co-ordinated demonstrations by public sector trade unions in Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands.
In the UK, the Department of Health is in dispute with the European Commission after it suggested that free market law implies that patients should be able to choose GP services from anywhere in the European Union at the NHS's expense.
That dispute follows the European Court of Justice's ruling last May in the case of Yvonne Watts that NHS hospital patients subject to 'undue delay' should be permitted to seek alternative treatment elsewhere in the EU. The DoH denies that this applies also to GP services.
But the European Trade Union Confederation, EU socialist group and European Federation of Public Service Unions have now asked the commission to develop a 'framework directive' to clarify what various single pieces of EU case law mean for public services.
It should also explain how public sector procurement might meet social aims such as job creation, citizen participation and sustainability without falling foul of EU competition law.
John Monks, general secretary of the ETUC, said: 'We are asking for a legal framework reflecting the social cohesion role played by these services, rather than blind competition as the sole principle governing an open market.'
PFapr2007
