HOW MUCH IS YOUR MISERY IN EUROS?

The Summit of Laeken's stake
This summit is an important stage in the construction of a neo-liberal EU.

In order to »simplify the treaties«, the project of the European Constitution has started. Its preamble should be the Charter of the Fundamental Rights, proclaimed in Nice and integrated in Laeken.

In this second-rate Charter, the rights to an income, to work, to housing are not acknowledged. If this Charter was part of the Constitution, it could be used to destroy the other social rights.

Meanwhile, the indicators which determine the poverty line must be redefined during this summit.

Therefore we can expect the worst: the acquired social rights of each country may suffer a levelling down, or a real regression, whereas the standards of living should be levelled up.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the capacities of repression against any form of contestation, against all the resistances carried by the social movements will be reinforced after this summit, within the frame of an endless war.

A global economic recession

After a few years of economic improvement, recession is coming back.

Redundancies are on the increase, like in the field of civil aviation recently, unemployment figures are increasing as well as those for insecure work.

The EU Broad Economic and Politic Guidelines give rise to the generalization of insecure jobs which replace unemployment, as for instance unemployment and social benefits are made conditional. The unemployed are forced to accept any jobs regardless of wage levels and conditions of flexibility.

No more neo-liberal diktats!

The neo-liberal policy destroys the social cohesion; millions of men and women are struck down by difficulties in Europe. We refuse this infernal circle. Wealth must be redistributed, not only for the EU inhabitants, but also to put an end to the inequalities with the Easter and Southern countries, and to the terrible conditions the migrants suffer.

Therefore we want to stress our urgent and necessary demands:

• The right to an income, with which anyone in Europe, regardless of age, sex, origin or any other discrimination, can live. The minimum standard of income, under which one can't live is calculated in every country as 50% of the GNP/ head.
• The right to real jobs and to freely chosen training, offering a real social status. This implies the refusal of any kind of insecure or forced jobs.
• The significant cut of working hours without flexibility, and the creation of jobs.
• The refusal of privatisations, the strengthening and improvement of public services and their access to all the unemployed and insecure workers.

We also encourage all forms of economic alternatives, which aim at reinforcing the social link universally, and place men and women at the heart of their projects.

We want to join our struggles together in this spirit in order to reverse the current policies and to create another world.

Three dates are on the agenda:

• the summit of Barcelona in March
• the summit of Seville in June
• the 30 October 2002: the change of the »Saving Global Day« into the »Income Global Day«

This initiative will be suggested to the Unemployed and Insecure Workers Organisations from the other continents in Porto Alegre.