An agreement in the European Parliament between the European People's Party and the European Socialist Party (except for the always more coherent French Socialist Party) has approved the Bolkestein Directive in the first reading. Faced with the massive protest against the Directive, it has been approved by removing the controversial "country of origin principle" (which allowed bringing workers from other countries and paying them salaries according to their country of origin), but, in reality, the "country of origin principle" is not avoided nor are public services protected from the implacable law of the market, because these issues are left to the decision of the very ultra-liberal European Commission and European Court of Justice. We must ensure that this Directive is definitively approved, as it would be the biggest boost towards labor deregulation, relocation, and privatization of social services that has ever occurred in Europe.
A survey published on February 17 by the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió, which depends on the Generalitat de Catalunya, has discovered that 73.1% of Catalans want public services to improve, even if this means an increase in taxes. I suppose that in the rest of the State the trend is more or less the same, and for this reason I ask myself who Minister Solbes represents when he defends the Bolkestein Directive with the argument that the services sector is not very liberalized. I demand that Minister Solbes defend the interests of the citizens of the Spanish State in the votes relating to the Directive, since now the text will pass to the Council of the European Union, and a ratification in a second reading in the European Parliament will still be needed. Meanwhile, citizens can sign at www.stopbolkestein.org to demonstrate that there are many people who are informed and concerned about something as opaque and informationally hidden as the Bolkestein Directive.
Jordi Oriola i Folch
