Warsaw, 19-21 May 2006
To be checked against delivery
I am pleased to convey the greetings of the ETUC to the Congress of our newest ETUC affiliate, the OPZZ.
It has been a long process. I have appreciated OPZZ's support for ETUC activities and demonstrations in the past and look forward to a close relationship in future. European trade unionism - and Polish trade unionism - can only benefit from a strong united Polish voice at European level. This is all the more important now that Poland has taken its rightful place as a leading nation in the European Union.
Since then, many things, growth rates in particular and average living standards, have improved. Other things, particularly growing inequality and insecurity, have not.
None of these features are unique to Poland. All member states feel the same pressures to varying degrees. But for the new member states, the combination of rapid improvement in some areas with painful adjustments in others is especially acute.
The EU was established as a peace process in Western Europe to repair the ravages of the Second World War; and to make European wars impossible in future.
It went on to become a prosperity process - an initiative which to date has been remarkably successful.
When poor countries have joined the EU, they have closed the gaps rapidly on their richer neighbours. Italy first, and now, spectacularly, Ireland and Spain, have made huge strides. That is our hope, that is our expectation, with the countries like yours, which joined in 2004.
In the meantime, it is important for everyone to recognise the success of the EU enlargement in 2004.
Many in Western Europe have been worried by the emigration of jobs to poorer countries and the immigration of cheap labour.
Yet, while there are undoubtedly losers among the workers in the old EU, there are winners too, just as there are in the new member states. The new dynamic markets of Central and Eastern Europe are providing attractive opportunities. The balance of trade has actually moved in favour of the older member states. So higher growth rates in the East encourage a boost in exports for the West.
Free movement of labour too is having an increasing and mainly positive effect. The ETUC has opposed a continuation of the transitional arrangements used by some countries to impede free movement arguing that free movement is one of the founding principles of the EC.
Everyone should have the right to work and live in any EU country. This is based on four conditions - equal pay and conditions; respect for national collective bargaining systems; equal access to social security and effective monitoring and enforcement.
If you try to interfere with this right to free movement, you drive migrant work to the black economy. You make it vulnerable to exploitation and second class treatment. You undermine your own systems.
When I was General Secretary of the British TUC, we decided not to ask the British Government for transitional arrangements, and the UK has been open to all EU labour. So far it has been a win-win situation with many citizens of Poland working there on equal terms with the British.
I am pleased that Sweden, Ireland and the UK have now been joined by Spain, Finland, Greece and Portugal in ending transitional arrangements.
Finally, I would like to thank OPZZ for its support on the proposed Bolkestein Directive, most recently on the streets of Strasbourg. Bolkestein's “country of origin principle” was fundamentally flawed. The idea that an outside company could go, say, to Germany and observe the laws of its own country, not those of Germany, was a recipe for communal strife and conflict.
Let me give a Western European example. France has tough laws on maximum working time, the UK doesn't. If a British company wins a contract in France, could it, under Bolkestein, have tendered for jobs in France on the basis of long British working hours? We think it could - and the result would have been a major and divisive controversy.
We want a Services Directive - one based on equal treatment of domestic and foreign companies alike but based on the principle of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”, not on a country of origin principle. I hope we can persuade the Polish government. We need your help and the help of Solidarnosc as the Polish Government still seem to support the original Bolkestein idea of country of origin.
For that, and other expressions and acts of support, I thank the OPZZ for your solidarity and support. I pledge today to reciprocate that support to Polish trade unionism in the days, weeks and years ahead.