Home / European workers want and deserve a Recovery Plan with political accountability. We cannot the fix the problems of the past with the same mindset that created them.
Germany’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union has begun. Chancellor Angela Merkel will preside the discussions about the coronavirus pandemic, the Recovery Plan and the EU’s next long-term budget but for us, the only investment programme that can answer to the concrete demands of workers, and that can represent a remarkable change from the past, is a programme with political accountability. We cannot the fix the problems of the past with the same mindset that created them.
The idea that market alone could help get us out of the crises has been a mantra since 2008, and working people still pay the consequences of that, but the current crisis shows that today only a democratic control over the investment plans can assure a real change towards a more equal and green Europe, along with the immediate creation of an European Health Fund.
The only alternative solution to this widely foreseen crisis is to involve concretely the European Parliament in the discussions of the Recovery Plan.
What people want, and what we want from the European Union, is a plan functional to ensure their safety and health, especially for women and for those in the most devalued and underpaid jobs, who kept our society functioning at the risk of their lives without an adequate remuneration for that. And for us, the only solution is to work for the creation of a European Health Fund.
European leaders were forced to suspend some austerity measures used in the past before they started the discussions about the Recovery Fund but for us the Recovery Fund must be unambiguously oriented toward a social and ecological transformation of the economy.
Until past instruments are still on the table, we consider that Europe is not moving away from a dangerous past perspective: if the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the Growth and Fiscal Pact are not repealed, any Recovery Fund will just be a honey trap.
We cannot the fix the problems of the past with the same mindset that created them.
Heinz Bierbaum,
President of the European Left
