Vienna, 05/04/2006
To be checked against delivery
Dear Colleagues
I am very pleased to be here today for this important meeting of trade unions from Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.
I had the opportunity to attend your last meeting, in Mexico, two years ago, and I hope that your deliberations will identify progress in our relationship. This will give us an opportunity to draw up united positions for social justice for presentation to the summit of political leaders next month.
The ETUC's links with trade union organisations in your region has intensified over time. The historic ties of our Spanish and Portuguese members in particular have been a great asset on which to build the relationship for the European trade union Movement as a whole.
The relationship has been encouraged thanks to the European Union's increasingly strong involvement in the region. The EU has encouraged integration at sub-regional level - for example through Mercosur or the Andean Pact - as well as in the Caribbean through the Lomé and successor conventions.
We want to use those platforms from which to introduce a social dimension to the economic relationships being established.
On the trade union front, the ETUC fully supports the moves towards trade union unity at world level. This is also promoting increasing unity at regional level.
We have worked harmoniously with the regional organisations of the ICFTU (ORIT) and of the WCL (CLAT) which are now well on their way towards unification. And they will be including confederations not currently affiliated to any international, for example in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay.
We would like to see Latin America moving towards stronger regional governance and institutions, and a more united and inclusive trade union movement. That is a model we recognise as our own.
Regional integration at the political level helps construct alternatives to the unipolar world. It provides alternatives to any hegemony; to military adventurism. That means multilateral approaches to resolving conflict. It means the use of soft power, through dialogue and negotiation.
That is the European Way.
It is not perfect by any means. We have to practice what we preach in Europe too.
Colleagues,
Yesterday, I was in Paris, participating in a mass demonstration organised by our five French affiliates, together with student groups, to send a clear message opposing increasing job insecurity in Europe. For the respect of social dialogue and collective bargaining. For policies aimed at giving hope to our young people when they enter the world of work.
We in Europe are facing the tough challenge of developing our social model to deal economic globalisation. We do not accept unilateral diktats from governments or employers.
We are making our point clearly, we are holding up our values, and we are scoring significant advances - for example by pushing back attempts to introduce social dumping in the services sector.
In that fight, we also look towards you, our colleagues from the Americas.
In the current context of globalisation, the European social model will not be able to stand alone at a time when the United States and Asia are rejecting the role of the state and civil society in economic development.
In Latin America, the need to achieve social cohesion is better understood by the social forces as a result of your economic development concerns and your cultural similarities with Europe.
So we need you and, maybe we can help you too.
The aim of the EU-LAC bi-regional partnership, launched at the Rio summit in 1999, will not be attained fully unless we manage to overcome the serious social imbalances in Latin America.
We agree with the European Parliament on the need for the EU-LAC partnership to set up political instruments, including a Euro-Latin American parliamentary assembly and we hope that the coming summit in Vienna will enable progress in this direction.
The partnership model offered to Latin America by the European Union must distinguish itself clearly from other free trade plans, such as NAFTA. This lacks a social dimension, and has thus met with strong public opposition.
Several governments have decided on alternative courses, prioritising the strengthening and harmonising of their sub-regional integration process and aiming at creating the South American Community of Nations.
We hope that the European Union will support such aspirations. We want to see increased cooperation programmes to work towards social cohesion; to strengthen civil society organisations and institutions; to establish common policies for matters such as migration.
In this connection, a better commitment from the EU is required in resolving the problem of external debt and so that European countries comply with international agreements on development aid.
We need a relaunch of negotiations between the EU and the various LAC sub-regional blocs.
The Vienna summit should break the deadlock in the negotiations with Mercosur and lead to an agreement to launch negotiations with Central America and the Andean Community.
The European and Latin American trade unions want these negotiations to result in agreements - not simply free trade agreements, but rather genuine political, economic and social association agreements.
Colleagues,
The ETUC wants to improve coordination with the Latin American unions.
We want to work together with the trade unions in Europe and those in Mercosur to break the deadlock in the EU-Mercosur negotiations so that a fair agreement can be signed involving civil society and above all the unions.
And we want to see a work plan developed signed by ETUC, ORIT and CLAT. That will be part of our joint contribution to the new international trade union organisation. A practical contribution to world trade union unity.