New Social Europe Archives: February 2008

  • Victor Negrescu: Back to reality

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    Rating: 4.3/5 with 6 votes

    Published Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 13:51
    by negrescuvictor Join PES activists (893 views and 1 comments)

    Today I faced a horrible event – one colleague of mine got beaten in the street because he looked at the wrong car. Victim of an assault, he couldn’t react or call the police because he was too scared that the guy could get his home address – he seemed very dangerous and with a lot of money.

    How can you face brutality? How can you fight what’s illogical with logic? This is today’s main problem. This event brought me back to reality and unfortunately don’t have a perfect answer to this problem. What’s the solution for violence? If I take the example of violence in suburbia I can explain it by the lack of integration and the social exclusion. The home violence is explained by psychological reasons that we all know and even the hooligan violence is explainable by the group feeling and mentality. But this… free and hard violence is unexplainable.

    I’m tempted to say education is the answer, but he surely didn’t learn this at school. I’m also tempted to say that the solution is to put cameras everywhere and to be more radical but this only scares not stops violence. One thing is for certain – Romania is not a dangerous country, not at all, but unfortunately today’s Romanian society is too... » read more ...

    Tags: blogger of the week, citizens, justice

  • Electron filmed!

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    Rating: 4.8/5 with 4 votes

    Published Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 10:24
    by frederic.vareillas Join PES activists (973 views and 3 comments)

    Hi,

    American scientists have just filmed an electron in motion. Watch it on Yahoo News. It is time for us, Europeans, to pay our scientists a decent wage, and pay them well. It is time for us to fund correctly our science universities.

    Who's going to find the next source of energy?

    Yours friend,
    Frederic

    Tags: energy, investment, wages

  • A motion for a tax on financial transactions

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    Rating: 5/5 with 2 votes

    Published Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 09:59
    by amandinecrespy Join PES activists (779 views and 1 comments)

    For the French Socialist activists in Brussels, the latest news about the global financial markets remind the necessity to master international financial flows. The product of this law could be used to make globalization more social.

    By means of a motion submitted to activists’ signature, they want to mobilize socialist leaders on this issue. They welcome the commitment of some French figures as well as of PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen on this matter. The European Parliament itself had shown some will to explore the question.

    As the campaign for the 2009 European elections is coming, it is now time to take action in order to include the tax on financial flows into the PES 2009 manifesto.

    The motion was signed by French and European activists amongst whom Michel Rocard. You can post a comment if you want to sign the motion as well and your name will be added to the list.

    Tags: globalization, tax

    File: Motion taxation des transactions financières.doc

  • PES Women: how do we shut the gender pay gap?

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    Rating: 5/5 with 5 votes

    Published Friday, February 22, 2008 at 13:49
    by Editor (961 views and 1 comments)

    On average European women earn 15 percent less than men. Today is the 22. February – the day where working women will have earned a wage equal to the yearly salary of working men. That’s almost two months longer women need to work to achieve the same income. Read more about the wage inequalities here and give us your ideas - what can Europe’s socialists do to shut the gender pay gap?

    Last year PES Women launched a campaign for equal wages on 22 February – read more about ‘Gender Pay Gap. Shut It!’

    Tags: discrimination, wages, women, workers

  • Jon Worth: Can we accept European state-run enterprises?

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    Rating: 4.3/5 with 4 votes

    Published Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 12:40
    by jonworth Join PES activists (948 views and 3 comments)

    Utilities logos - Veolia, SUEZ, E.ONFree trade between Member States is one of the principles on which the European Union is founded. I profit from this personally, being able to sell website services in the UK, Belgium, Germany and Sweden. It's good that a company from Ynys-ddu can sell its widgets in Ystad without hindrance.

    Europe-wide markets have helped many large firms to develop - plenty of us make calls with our Vodafone mobiles, fly Easyjet and drink beers brewed by Inbev. Regulatory frameworks established by the EU help these firms to develop.

    Yet what about services traditionally provided by the state such as refuse collection, water and energy services? Street sweeping in Camden, London, the underground in Stockholm, trains in northern Netherlands, buses in Pontypridd and sewage works in Budapest are all operated by Veolia - a logo that's appearing all over Europe. SUEZ is active in many... » read more ...

    Tags: blogger of the week, energy, public services, transport

  • The difficult questions cannot be avoided

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    Rating: 4.7/5 with 3 votes

    Published Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 17:29
    by helmar Join PES activists (848 views and 2 comments)

    I have translated a comment written for the Swedish Social Democratic newspaper Aktuellt i Politiken. It deals with how important it is that we Social Democrats don't give up the idea of a New Social Europe just because it takes time to achieve our goals. We cannot avoid addressing important policy areas, such as labour market and health care, on an EU level if we really want to make a change. I would be happy to discuss it with you.

    It takes time for a new Europe to develop

    A Catalan, an Estonian, a Welshman and me. No, this is not the start of a joke about national characters; it is a normal dinner in Brussels and no stranger than when I spend time with friends from all over Sweden when I am in Stockholm. It would be absurd if I told my friend from the South of Sweden that I think we should not have national labour market policies, since we have both higher salaries and lower unemployment in Stockholm. I would probably be punched if I said to my friend from Gothenburg that Stockholm hospitals cannot accept patients from other regions since they have different bacteria and viruses in their hospitals. And I would definitely get into an argument with my friend from the North of Sweden if he said that he does not care if we have congestion charges in Stockholm or not, since they have no problem with pollution or congestion in the North. It is obvious that our visions reach over... » read more ...

    Tags: employment, health

  • manifesto2009 barometer: New Social Europe

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    Rating: 4.7/5 with 3 votes

    Published Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 16:51
    by Editor (1126 views and 1 comments)

    The first months of debating New Social Europe have really brought up a lot of priorities and proposals for the PES to consider.

    Tackling the consequences of globalization has been a recurring theme: Esther from Barcelona has given us a great summary of the challenges we face. Many new ideas have come out of the discussion: regulating sovereign wealth funds wanting to buy up strategic European companies; ensuring hedge funds are subject to the same rules concerning transparency and respect for workers’ rights; allowing workers who face redundancy due to a takeover bid and outsourcing of production to acquire the factory and start up on their own as a cooperative. All very interesting!

    How to create a humane and responsible common European migration policy, as proposed by Yohann from France, is also being actively debated at European level due to the legislation being adopted on the EU blue card and the upcoming French Presidency of the EU. Sarkozy has promised to adopt a European Migration Pact – but let’s see what he comes up with… Socialist governments such as that of José Luis Zapatero in Spain are at the forefront of the debate and this is certainly... » read more ...

    Tags: barometer, discrimination, diversity, gay, globalization, health, investment, LGBT, women

  • EU must say no to prostitution!

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    Rating: 4.7/5 with 7 votes

    Published Monday, February 18, 2008 at 15:20
    by maj1991 (1007 views and 3 comments)

    Within the borders of EU thousands of women each day sell their bodies for sexual pleasures. For some it’s a choice of their own or a last way, but for 700.000 to 2 million women and children it’s not. They are victims of trafficking. When it comes to trafficking the message from EU is very clear: we will not tolerate this!

    But when it comes to women who haven’t been forced by anyone, but have chosen for themselves, the perspectives are very different. In many EU countries prostitution is de-criminalized, which means that it’s legal to buy and sell sexual pleasures, however it isn’t an acknowledged profession. Holland has legalised it and Sweden has, as the only country, criminalised the buyer.

    This of course makes it very difficult to come up with a united strategy. However, this is a debate that should be taken and it is vital that the EU countries form a collective strategy to combat the abuse against women, and in order to help these.

    A study has shown that 92% of the women in prostitution would leave their profession if they could. The consequences of prostitution, both physical and mental, are many, and prostitutes often come from homes with violence and incest. Prostitution is... » read more ...

    Tags: equality, fundamental rights, women

  • Eric Sundström: for the emanicipation of women AND for the economy, stupid!

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    Rating: 4.8/5 with 6 votes

    Published Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 21:20
    by Eric Join PES activists (1050 views and 1 comments)

    During my week as your guest blogger, I have promised to comment on all four main subjects here at Manifesto 2009. I have already written twice about ”European democracy & diversity” (here and here), and once about ”Save our planet” (here). Today’s blog is about our ”New Social Europe”.

    I became politically active through the wonderful organization ”Social Democratic Students of Sweden” (known as SSF within ECOSY). My first position of any importance in SSF was as a member of our committee on gender equality. I was the only guy (male, that is) on the committee and it opened up a new world to me. Previously, I had read a lot about gender equality and the way in which our society is structured so that it discriminates against women. That was compulsory reading when I studied political science, and I have always been one of the geeks who actually read what you are supposed to.

    But during my year working on the SSF-committee on gender equality, I realized what difference the political tools I had only read about can make in real life. During one conference we invited Sweden’s first commissioner to the EU;... » read more ...

    Tags: blogger of the week, child care, equality, public services, women

  • Spanish manifesto: food for thought for Europe’s socialists

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    Rating: 4.6/5 with 9 votes

    Published Friday, February 1, 2008 at 12:50
    by Editor (1593 views and 4 comments)

    The Spanish Socialist Party, PSOE, has launched its manifesto for the Spanish general elections on 9th March. It happened at a conference this Saturday at which PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen declared “We cannot have a Social Europe without a Social Spain”!

    The manifesto is full of exciting new proposals on how to strengthen the Spanish welfare state, fight climate change and reach full employment, including the extension of child care for children under 3 years of age, an issue which the PES has been campaigning on across Europe.

    PSOE has also made several European proposals, which it will fight for in the European Council and Council of Ministers if re-elected: the introduction of a European framework directive on public services; strengthening workers’ rights, notably through the revision of European law on worker information and consultation; a common European migration policy, defining integration policies, the fight against human trafficking and illegal migration and favouring legal migration; the creation of a common border police; regulating hedge funds and tackling financial speculation; promoting the creation of an Alliance of Civilisations at global... » read more ...

    Tags: energy, immigration, political parties, public services