European workers enjoy more social support than five years ago but the far right and strict austerity are looming threats.
Minimum wages, platform work and the gender pay gap are just three of the social and economic issues European Union policy-makers have addressed through legislation in the last five-year term. Structural reforms have been passed at the EU level to reduce poverty among those in work and those outside it and to end the extraordinarily precarious working conditions of some 28 million ‘gig’ workers. Measures have been taken to reduce the gender pay gap—a phenomenon expected otherwise to disappear only by the year 2104, as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) calculated at the beginning of the term.
Trade unions have been making such demands for decades. The result in 2024 is far from a trade unionist’s utopia but the reign of neoliberalism in the EU has been showing more than a few cracks. Work on the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights, which began mid-decade, improved the situation of the European working class, for example in terms of work-life balance and transparent and stable working conditions.
A new report by EUMatrix (formerly Votewatch Europe), commissioned by the three main Belgian trade unions, analyses some key votes influencing working conditions during the past session of the European Parliament. Its main focus is on the parliamentary votes of the 21 Belgian MEPs with regard to the issues prioritised in the 2019 Belgian trade-union memorandum for Europe, which evolved through grassroots exchanges, coupled with the ETUC’s 2019 manifesto.
MEPs’ votes on these issues are however markedly similar by affiliation from one country to the next. So the report sheds some light on the EU as a whole—it indicates the voting behaviour of each European Parliament political group, for instance—and its findings are to a large extent representative when it comes to addressing workers’ concerns and demands across Europe.
Clear voting pattern
The report finds that a vast number of social proposals have found their way to the floor of the parliament since 2019 and a considerable number have been adopted. Analysis of key votes shows broad support from a majority embracing the Left and the Greens through the Socialists and Democrats and the liberal Renew group to the centre-right European People’s Party for most of these proposals, on issues ranging over care policy after the pandemic, the fight against inequality and ‘social dumping’, reform of European Works Councils, the right to strike, collective bargaining and corporate sustainability and due diligence.
The report shows conversely a clear voting pattern among the far-right groups of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), of which in Belgium the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance, N-VA) and Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest, VB) are respectively members. These MEPs voted against the interests of working people on most of these issues.
This was not only the case for key labour-market policies but also for specific industry-related policies with a major impact on workers’ daily lives. For example, on the Digital Services Act, a key tool to regulate digital industry, there was strong support across the political spectrum for data sovereignty on the part of European citizens, except for ID and the ECR.
Representing the ‘little man’?
This anti-social voting record of the ECR (including N-VA) on legislation comes as no surprise, as it represents a broadly pro-market and neoliberal political faction. Some, however, might be surprised by the record of the ID (including VB). This political group claims to represent the interests of the ‘little man’, yet its votes demonstrate this could not be further from the truth.
ID voted against workers’ interests on issues of in-work poverty and the minimum wage, to name just two among many. Some far-right MEPs attempted to justify their anti-worker votes by claiming these issues should instead be tackled at the national or regional level—although how one is supposed, for instance, to combat social dumping in a common European market via national or regional legislation is not immediately obvious. Seeking to hand all leverage over social policies to the member states is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, and in no way would improve the lives of workers across Europe in the 21st century. So if ID claims to defend workers’ rights, why does it vote against workers’ interests in the parliament?
A more detailed analysis, taking in committee votes and legislative amendments on social policies, paints an even worse picture of the extreme right’s social sensibilities. The leading VB candidate for these elections, Tom Vandendriessche—recently reprimanded by the European Parliament president for using a Dutch version of the Nazi term Umvolkung (demographic transformation)—did not even vote in favour of proposals to fight human trafficking in the civil-liberties committee. And in the trade committee the N-VA MEP Geert Bourgeois did not even support proposals to ban forced labour.
New fiscal rules
The EUMatrix report also looks at the recent revision of economic governance, associated with the reimposition of fiscal rules following their suspension during the pandemic. ‘The new fiscal rules leave workers and citizens behind,’ said the ETUC after the final vote in the parliament in April. Its general secretary, Esther Lynch, complained that they risked ‘returning Europe to miserable austerity’ when what was needed was ‘to massively scale up public investment to meet the EU’s social and climate goals’. And she said: ‘Any cuts resulting from today’s vote should come from the pockets of ultrarich CEOs and shareholders, not at the expense of our children’s schools, decent housing for working families or health and social care for the vulnerable and elderly.’
The report addresses too the issues of just transition and the Social Climate Fund. Strong support is still to be found across the political spectrum on these themes—apart from MEPs from the nationalist and far-right parties—although it is crumbling in the political centre. This should come as a powerful warning for working people. Votes against environmental or climate policies can have dire consequences, unevenly shared across the population and largely invisible for several years in the future. Most of the time ordinary people, especially the most vulnerable among them, pay the heaviest price.
European society, and workers in particular, cannot afford the social rollback of which some right-wing and conservative political groups are dreaming. In the next five-year term, Europe must instead deliver a social and economic policy which leaves no one behind.
This is the final article in our series on a progressive ‘manifesto’ for the European elections
Marie Hélène Ska is general secretary of the Belgian trade union confederation ACV-CSC.
Miranda Ulens is general secretary of the Belgian trade union confederation ABVV-FGTB.
Olivier Valentin is national secretary of the Belgian trade union confederation ACLVB-CGSLB.