‘The investment rate in the European Union had been decreasing well before the 2008 crisis.’ said the Euro Parliamentarian Alfred Sant in the plenary session in Strasbourg. ‘Following this crisis, stagnation continued to spread.’ In his intervention the MEP said that to reach higher levels of competitivity in order to create new jobs, internal devaluation has become the most effective tool. Proponents of labour market flexibility and the modernization of social security systems are in reality promoting such devaluation.
Sant said that this process undermines the European social model, a model by which public authorities on the one hand guarantee freedom to private enterprise, while on the other hand ensure protection to the people as workers and citizens. The European social model is being damaged, if not dismantled completely inorder to boost the European Economy.
‘Actually, where the European social model is being abandoned, competitiveness is still not being enhanced,’ said Sant ‘The truth is that the European economy is not succeeding to deal with and manage globalisation.’ Given the way globalisation has developed, it became incompatible with the European social model unless buffered and substantially adapted.
Alfred Sant said that the present resolution is ignoring this dilemma because the structures that have been established to ensure the competitiveness of member states are too complicated, too bureaucratic. Up to now, they have really been a failure. In all this, it will be unacceptable if European Parliamentarians seem to be agreeing that the European social model should be curtailed or swept aside. ‘Rightly so, European citizens will disagree’ said Sant.
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