Solidarity letter sent by the ETUC to trade unions in Northern Ireland   I am writing to express the ETUC’s solidarity with the workers taking a courageous stand in Northern Ireland. The wave of coordinated collective action by ICTU unions, initiated on 21 September 2023 and culminating in a strike rally in front of Belfast City Hall on 22 September, underscores the collective determination of working people to secure fair wages, improved working conditions, and a brighter future for themselves and their communities.

Following the visit of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to the island of Lampedusa on 17 September, the ETUC reiterates the urgent need for a fair and humane European asylum and migration policy, in line with international and EU legal obligations and in full respect of fundamental rights.

The European Commission recently published its long-awaited BEFIT (Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation) proposal for the taxation of large multinational companies. It follows a long-term effort to introduce group taxation with a formula for allocating taxable profits where value is created (in terms of payroll, number of employees, assets). This was the intended objective of the CCTB and CCCTB proposals, which have now been withdrawn from the European agenda.

ETUC and its federations: European Transport Workers’ Federation, Uni Europa, IndustriAll and the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions call on policymakers to adopt a strong Directive on platform work that would end the exploitation of vulnerable workers and re-establish fair competition in a quickly developing platform economy.

Together with civil society and trade union organisations, the ETUC has outlined essential conditions to address forced labour. These have been listed in a letter sent on Wednesday 13 September 2023 to the MEPs who sit on the European Parliament's Committees on Internal Market and the International Trade Committees. Please find the text of the letter below:

CFDT, FO, CFTC UNSA and DGB with the support of the ETUC call for a ban on deregulation for SMES    Deregulation: no - Simplification: under strict conditions The Franco-German Initiative on the relief package for SMEs is disguised deregulation: SMEs fall in a legal no man’s land; Business cannot be above the law