THE EU is clearly in a crisis of its own making. The EU constitution, which would have handed over a massive array of powers to Brussels' centralised control, has increased popular hostility to the EU.

The eurozone is facing enormous problems, if not meltdown, as its strict monetarist rules are ignored by an increasing number of member states.

Members cannot agree a budget, the Common Agricultural Policy continues to dump heavily subsidised food into the Third World at inflated prices and there is a great deal of unease about EU enlargement.

However, the source of most unease is the proposed Services Directive, which demands the "liberalisation and deregulation of all service activity in Europe."

Europhile TUC staff could only watch at Congress this year while delegates overwhelmingly voted against the constitution, the Services Directive and the neoliberal directives coming out of Brussels.

All these problems stem from the core structures of the EU itself. All EU treaties, from the Treaty of Rome to Maastricht, enshrine the "free movement of capital, goods, services and people" and the concept of "ever-closer union."

The vehicle for establishing this "free movement" was the creation of the European single market, and the mechanisms for achieving "ever-closer union" are the various treaties, including the discredited EU constitution.

For the ordinary citizen, this has basically meant the right of big capital to roam free without the constraints of laws drawn up by elected governments - and those citizens don't like what they see. Therefore, it was clear that, at some point, the corporate EU project would be met with resistance from organised workers.

For instance, there is growing trade union resistance to the break-up and privatisation of national publicly-owned railways being carried out across the EU through the implementation of several EU directives.

Various "rail packages" proposed by the European commission are being imposed, which demand that all cross-border rail must be opened to competition by 2008 and all internal rail by 2012. At no time was there any meaningful public debate about these far-reaching neoliberal measures.

Yet, as a result, state-owned French railway SNCF has lost its freight and passenger monopoly and companies like Connex - which made such a mess of Kent's rail services - are seeking to break up the French network. The same is happening in Italy, where private rail operators undercut the publicly- owned train operator by cutting corners and employing fewer staff.

This smash-and-grab ethos is also enshrined in the services directive. However, from the point of view of the eurofederalist, this neoliberal drive is simply the implementation of the push toward the free movement of services, as defined by the treaties.

In order to create a truly single EU market, the services directive enshrines the "country of origin" principle, whereby firms from other member states can operate in Britain, for instance, without having to comply with British laws and standards.

This clearly provokes a race to the bottom for staff pay and conditions in deregulated health and education sectors as offshore firms ignore even minimum standards.

In a perfect example of what this will mean, the European commission has spoken out against Scandinavian-style collective wage agreements, which guarantee minimum standards for workers, claiming that they breach EU laws on free movement.

During a recent visit to Stockholm, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy attacked such agreements before a forthcoming European Court of Justice (ECJ) case, where the principle is to be tested for the first time.

"If member states continue to shield themselves from foreign company takeovers and competition, then I fear that the internal market will begin to dissolve. The question here is whether or not Sweden has implemented article 49 in the treaty on free movement," Mr McCreevy bluntly said.

Understandably, the Swedish TUC, which backed euro membership when the people rejected it in the 2002 referendum, has indicated that it will now withdraw support for Swedish EU membership altogether if the eurofederalist ECJ rules against collective bargaining.

Despite this EU-led neoliberal offensive, we are still being asked to defend something called the "European social model," which includes the doctrine of social partnership. This strategy claims that unions have no alternative but to collaborate with the employer in order to "add value" to the firm - ie profits.

However, rail workers in the private train companies in Britain, for instance, are not in partnership with their employers and subordinating trade union activities to the logic of the capitalist firm only allows employers to boast of more profits at the expense of workers' jobs and conditions.

And social partnership is not just about restricting wages. It stifles democratic involvement in the life of trade unions, making people passive in the wider social and political life of the country.

As a result, the espousal of social partnership is usually accompanied by acceptance of "labour flexibility," budget cuts, privatisation and the centralisation of power as part of the corporate blueprint for the EU.

If there is no European social model, what does exist is a variety of social models across Europe and beyond, where trade unions, employers and elected governments have, over the years, found different ways to negotiate solutions to disputes.

Yet these very models are being eroded by Brussels, which demands "labour flexibility" to deal with economic crises rampant within the struggling eurozone.

The left has to recognise that the core EU objectives of "ever-closer union" and the "free movement of capital, goods, services and labour" only really suit the needs of big business.

Therefore, it is not surprising that corporate powers, grouped in the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) and the European employers' body UNICE, draw up most EU rules through lobbying the unelected European commission.

Corporate power has no problem promoting the nefarious concept of a European social model and social partnership as long as it assists them to press ahead with the broader eurofederalist project.

As ERT boss Keith Richardson once said, "if politicians feel it is important to get the chapter referring to the desirability of full employment and they think it will help public opinion, we don't really object - providing of course that it remains related to aspirations."

The clear privatising agenda coming out of Brussels will continue to alienate trade unionists and deepen their resolve to resist EU directives, which only reflect the basic tenets of the Treaty of Rome and the needs of big capital.

These anarchic principles add up to unbridled capitalism in tooth and claw and the gradual removal of all national democratic structures and decent public services by corporate carpetbaggers, if they are allowed to get away with it.

Brian Denny is spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution. This is an edited version of a recent speech to a meeting of the European United Left Group (GUE/NGL) of MEPs in London. It has appeared earlier in the British left daily, The Morning Star.

See also:

http://www.spectrezine.org/europe/Kartika3.htm
http://www.spectrezine.org/europe/BrianDenny.htm