Thread by @EmporersNewC

1. A number of things going around about the EU and worker’s rights, so here comes your friendly neighbourhood EEC expert to put them into context. Starting with this one. (Thread)

https://twitter.com/LauraSmithMP/status/1185873321411391490

2. So it’s not a great start with the first sentence: “The social dimension of the EU merited merely a mention in the Treaty of Rome”, followed by “the EU was always a business oriented organisation of States”.

3. If “merely a mention in the Treaty of Rome 1957” amounted to the single economic and social progress declaration at the top, then this might by true, but it just isn’t.

4. If you include the reference to the social fund, you may argue it is true, but it isn’t.

5. If you then add the reference to wanting social in other countries, it still doesn’t become true.

6. Because Article 4 references the Economic and Social committee, and not only is it important in terms of the social dimension, but it also demonstrates how the corporate background of the EEC was advantageous to its development.

7. Before the EEC was even created, the European Coal and Steel Community were already working with Unions through something called the ‘Consultative Committee’.

8. This mean, as soon as discussions between the six began, the trade union began to lobby for what they wanted, including consultation.

9. In fact, the European Labor Congress reviewed the first proposals of the Brussels committee, calling for freedom of labour to cover both skilled and unskilled workers.

10. Harmonisation of and improvement of workers’ rights, including equal work for equal pay.

11. And then complemented on the proposal to carry forward the consultative committee into an Economic and Social Committee.

12. Chapter 3 of the Treaty of Rome was dedicated to the European and Social Committee.

13. The committee was made of 3 groups. The Employers Group containing representatives of private business. The Workers group containing representatives from trade unions, and special interest groups.

14. There were to be special interest groups representing specific competences and the “general public”

…and here’s the exciting part.

15. While the Treaty of Rome stated the Economic and Social Committee was to be consulted by the Council in all cases in which they deem it appropriate, the treaty also coupled it to explicit articles of the treaty.

16. Freedom of movement? Consult with the Economic and Social Committee

17. Agriculture? Consult with the Economic and Social Committee

18. Employment, labour legislation, working conditions, occupational and continuation training, social security, protection against occupational accidents and diseases, industrial hygiene, the law as to trade unions, and collective bargaining between employers and workers...?

19. Yeah, you guessed it… Consult with the Economic and Social Committee.

It's true the role wasn’t amazingly defined, but the Commission President, Walter Hallstein, asserted that the Commission were ‘obliged’ to listen to them.

20. Without the steel and coal background this type of committee is normal in Europe. France had the Luxembourg Commission, the Netherlands the Sociaal Economische Raad, Germany the Reichswirtschaftsrat, even the UK experimented with one after WWI and during the Depression.

21. But that’s not where the article’s “history lesson” ends, because we now learn that social needed public voice. I haven’t traced the quote but that could be any one of a number of things in the 1970s.

22. For instance, this quote often used to describe the early days of the EEC, is not untrue.

Despite Walter Hallstein’s firm support for the Economic and Social Committee, unfortunately it was not effective.

23. The EEC did not start by rolling out large pieces legislation, they began by looking at narrow technical areas that could be harmonised. The first Committee consultation covered the protection for Nuclear power workers, not a widely understood subject at the end of the 1950s.

24. Consultation was therefore difficult, and additionally, this consultation came too late in the process when it did come. Even when they Committee gave an opinion it was secret because it was supposed to be technical and not political.

25. But moves to correct this problem were attempted before the 1968, with a push to get right of initiative as early as 1965.

In October 1972, the committee were finally given the right to comment on all EEC matters publicly, and at any time.

26. If 1968 was one of the catalysts, the Preliminary Guidelines for a Social Policy Programme in the Community probably should come from France, but they didn’t. They were written by Belgian Social Affairs Commissioner Albert Coppe.

27. The mandate for the Action programme described actually comes directly from the Paris summit of 1972.

(The bulletin makes this absolutely clear)

28. The momentum at the 1972 Paris summit originating from Willy Brandt, a politician whose passionate support for workers’ rights predates 1968 by quite a few years.

29. Moving on to the idea that social was added to “sugar coat the pill”, it’s important to remember the Single Economic Market was negotiated in an IGC.

30. In EEC terms, negotiating something which is controversial to a Memberstate at an IGC is the diametric opposite action of sugar coating a pill.

31. The facts are that France and Germany’s proposal for the Single Market was a derivative of the Dooge report, and the reason the Dooge report includes social is: “to remain true to the objectives which the Community set itself from its inception.”

32. Principles which were already being used to interpret the law, like in the Defrenne case, where the ECJ asserted the community objective of ensuring social progress and seeking improvements in the living and working conditions of the people.

33. As an aside, it has been argued by Professor Brian Bercusson that Val Duchesse was an attempt to circumvent the veto, but that has no direct connection to the inclusion of social, or majority voting, in the Single Market.

Most of the politics predate this event.

34. For example, the root of the decision on majority voting for the Single Market can also be found in the Dooge report, but were influenced by things such as the Genscher-Colombo proposal and the more recent UK proposal, ‘Europe: The Future’..

35. All of the QMV proposals being present in the same package sent to James Dooge on the same day in July 1984... one month after the Dooge Committee was proposed.

#SherlockHolmesFace

36. I’m 36 tweets in, and we’ve managed 6 sentences, and it’s pretty clear that there is a certain amount of “subjectivity” in the area of the EEC.

However I believe the article is to express discontent about what is happening in terms of Collective bargaining.

37. Which is totally a fair point to make, Collective bargaining has been eroded. Not just in the EU but nationally too.

This is still not a reason to leave the European Union.

38. I’m sure the author would write similarly vitriolic comment about our own government’s actions, be them Labour or Conservative.

(Spoiler: He does.)

39. And what the EU is doing now is definitely not a reason to vote for what the UK does when it’s not going to be in the EU.

40. It is a bit like if a country voted for economic suicide, and then talked about what happened in economic reality, at a time when the country was sat in economic purgatory just as an excuse to "get on with it" and vote for economic hell.

41. Pointing to what goes on inside the EU is the last thing politicians should be doing when considering what future they are committing their country to outside the EU.

/End

P.S. The EU is not a socialist paradise, neither am I suggesting it is, but writing, or sharing, an article describing the enshrined institutional representation advocated by Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Henri de Saint-Simon as “merely a mention” is quite something!