Corporate Government Taking Hold in Europe, Threatening Social Safety Net and Euro Democracy

From IT’S OUR ECONOMY:

An American style corporate-government is taking hold in Europe, revolving doors between corporations and government, policies that support big business interests and polices that undermine the social safety net.  Below is a report from a watchdog website, the Corporate Europe Observatory on how it threatens European democracy — as it has done in the United …

The year 2011 may mark a wa­ter­shed in the his­tory of the Eu­ro­pean Union. Using the pre­text of the “euro cri­sis”, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion and the Coun­cil have put for­ward pro­pos­als to give the EU new pow­ers to deal with core wel­fare is­sues, in­clud­ing so­cial ben­e­fits and wages, under a new tech­no­cratic pro­ce­dure – hard (if not im­pos­si­ble) to track, let alone in­flu­ence by those who stand to lose out.

The pro­pos­als em­body a cor­po­rate so­cial and eco­nomic agenda which, if en­acted, will con­sti­tute a “silent rev­o­lu­tion” im­posed from above, with no real de­mo­c­ra­tic de­bate or pop­u­lar participation.​The pro­posed changes – which in­volve a se­ries of pro­posed rules on ‘eco­nomic gov­er­nance’ – have been wel­comed by the EU’s key big busi­ness lobby groups, which see some of their tra­di­tional key lobby de­mands re­flected in the changes.  There is an ur­gent need for a de­mo­c­ra­tic de­bate through­out the EU, in par­tic­u­lar on al­ter­na­tives to the aus­tere ne­olib­eral model of ‘eco­nomic gov­er­nance’ that is now being pushed by the Com­mis­sion and the Coun­cil. And it will re­quire a broad-based so­cial strug­gle to make the al­ter­na­tives a re­al­ity…

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