ECOSY Seminar - Building Together a Social Europe for All
Final Declaration
As Young European Socialists and Social Democrats, gathered at ECOSY Seminar "Building together a Social Europe for All", that took place in Werftpfuhl, from 14th till 21st August 2005, summarizing all the debates and its outcome of the last week, we do believe that following points have to be the focus of ECOSY and our organizations united in a campaign "Social Europe for everyone":
Free and high quality education for everyone,
We believe that access to education of any level at any stage of life is a right, not a privilege. That is why we stand for education for free, with no tuition fees, what we see as a tool to improve lives of individuals and of an entire society. To guarantee equal opportunities for everyone to chose the life one desires to live, to make sure that everyone is included in creation of the future Social Europe, we want to underline our demand: all Europeans, regardless of skin colour, gender, sexuality, disability or social background should have access to free and high quality education. . What we want is for Europe to be proactive in getting people from disadvantaged backgrounds into education.
There can be no debate on any development or progress, as long as this demand remains undone.
There are many dangers which we need to face: e.g. neo-liberalism that tries to convince people that all is a commodity and has own price. We do not believe that education is for sale and that was why we opposed including education into GATS. We believe that education is an investment in both empowerment of individuals and in the future of entire society. We object privatisation of education and any fees, leading to exclusions and eliltarism. Education, both formal and informal has to be offered for free, as we see a core of a change leading to a Social Europe integrated society of equals. Therefore ECOSY will continue to campaign for sustained investment in education, not just at primary and secondary level, but also at higher/university level.
Speaking about a Social Europe, we focus also on the questions of mobility. Mobility of pupils, students and teachers is what we need to enable to give education more European dimension. ECOSY should also insist on including education as one of prior issues during new EU financial framework negotiations, as much as underlining that VISA (also the permanent stay visas within the EU, needed for staying for a term in a foreign country) regimes are big obstacle by applying for Erasmus/Socrates programmes, and should be therefore abolished.
Students and pupils have to be part of the decision making process at their schools. We demand that to be a standard as we do believe that education is not a one way street, but two ways street, leading to a progress via inputs and evaluations.
Free and quality healthcare for everyone,
We believe that all Europeans should have access to free and high quality healthcare. We totally oppose any move towards a system of healthcare, in where you only have access by paying. This aspect is essential, if we wish to tackle demographical challenges and provide our societies with an answer accordingly to the principle of solidarity between generations. We perceive healthcare to be an integral part of working and family life, to both of which we want to brig security within our vision of a Social Europe. We think that all Europeans have the right to be able to remain both at work and at home insured, safe in the knowledge that their healthcare is taken care of. In terms of life at home, our demands are also focusing on the right of people, especially women, to decide upon the family planning. That is why we demand accessible contraceptives, but above all legal and free abortion to be provided by healthcare systems across the continent. As we believe that quality healthcare is possible only if linked with education, we demand the sexual education to be taught at schools, which we see vital in terms also of HIV/AIDS prevention, which disease has more and more victims nowadays, especially in Central and Eastern Europe.
Gender equality,
As socialists and social democrats, we believe that everyone is equal and deserves the same opportunities in life. Unfortunately we realise that in reality gender equality does not exist. Stereotypes that girls and boys face already in childhood, force them into false believes of female and male roles in society, which, combines with social acceptance or disapproval, limits their chances to choose their life path for the future and significantly affects their access to education. The transition between education and first job is relatively more difficult for women, since there are many known cases of not obtaining the post due to possible wish of having children. In end result, even though women are willing to take any job, while unemployed, when men seem to be more selective, statistically women remain unemployed longer than men. What is more, also at the labour market itself, the gender pay gap exists across Europe. We need to close the gender pay gap, we need to ensure for men and women to have equal rights across society. This means also that we should create a situation in which taking parental leave by mother and by father have the same consequences in terms of home budget. Therefore it is reasonable to introduce compulsory for both parents to take parental leave, to enable women to return to the labour market easier. Social Europe for everyone is the one, in which demands from 1995 Bejing of a new social partnership between the genders are fulfilled.
Cultural equality,
Modern Europe is home to people of different skin colours, different origins, different traditions and different religions. We believe that all of the people are equal and deserve the same opportunities in life, which should be reflected in social acceptance for everyone and making sure that everyone has her or his own space in society with a full right to enter school, find and sustain a job, be welcome by healthcare system, feel secure about now and the future. As we strongly reject any prejudices, stereotypes and following them actions based on phobias, we also totally oppose the rise in "Islamaphobia", which sadly has been the case after the tragedies of Madrid and London.. We are not afraid to stand against the resurgence in the far right across Europe, we want combat extremism for which we, by building Social Europe for all, find no space. That is why the campaign on "All different, all equal", being launched for the year 2006 by Council of Europe is s important and needs our active support.
Same sex marriage,
Heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality – our sexual orientation does not depend on anyone’s decision, but on the nature and most beautiful feelings, alike love to another human being. A social Europe must not tolerate discrimination because people are born homosexual, a Social Europe must be based on respect and acceptance for everyone. To make sure that it is not just a nice slogan, but a concrete project – fight for equal rights, a Social Europe must allow same sex marriage. Same time, we reaffirm ECOSY position from the 7th Congress, which stands for the adoption of children by same sex couples.
Full employment, with more and better jobs,
As socialist and social democrats we do recognise tradition of our movement to takes its origins from the workers movement. Today, during the discussion of the re-launch of Lisbon Strategy and debate over the reform of Growth and Stability Pact, we do believe that defending jobs, their creation and their improvement is extremely important.
Process of re-launching Lisbon Strategy is for us an opportunity to demand the change, the fulfilment of tasks government pledged five years ago. In Europe 55 million people are endangered by poverty. Many of them work and their job nevertheless does not allow them to cover basic needs of everyday life. This has to be changed. Every job has to be bringing wage bi enough to cover costs of living.
As young socialists and social democrats, we strongly support mobility of workers. We do believe that everyone has to have a right to chose its employment and living space, especially if that could create opportunity for ones betterment and satisfaction. Nevertheless, we realise that what is enough in one country, is far from being enough in another. Taking the opportunity of those differences, employers look for a cheap labour, employing (also illegally) people from across borders and exploiting them. We need to stop this procedure, which is so humiliating to us, speaking of dignity and human rights. Minimum wage on the European level has to be therefore established. To defend the workers rights, we do believe in the role of strong trade unions, which we as socialists and social democrats should see and support as our natural partners.
Lisbon Strategy incorporated a demand to diminish employment in Europe to 5%. That is far from reality of today, half way of its implementation, and what worries us more and more, is that the number of unemployed young people is rising. That leads to loss of generations in some agglomerations with no job perspectives and exploitation in many countries by letting young people work for free, however full time and without insurance, in framework of so called "internships". That has to be abolished. Social Europe we put forward as a goal has to start at the point more and better jobs are created. It has to start by the point where transition between education and labour, letting people be employed in a sector for which they have necessary skills instead of dumping them just somewhere to temporary solve the unemployment subsidies issue. Entering labour market can no longer be an experiment over each young person.
Tackling the objectives of Lisbon Strategy, we believe that Europeans make up skilled and dynamic labour force in the world. As socialists and social democrats, we believe the jobs that the Europeans have must reflect this, emphasising though that we must not get into a bidding war with China and India and try to pay the workers as little as possible.
Public services,
ECOSY believes that public services must be always at the centre of all social policy. Public services don’t know the difference between gender, origin, sexuality or social background. Without investing in public services in the long term, we will never achieve a social Europe. Good public services benefit everyone, not just the privileged few.
As Young European Socialists, we must fight any attempt to erode our public services. Our public services must continue to provide services, free at the point of use to everyone who needs to use them.
ECOSY believes we should continue to strive for excellence in our public services. If we do not work continually to improve our public services, the right will come back and claim that they are a waste of money and need to be scrapped. As socialists, we can never let that happen; we must continue to run our public services efficiently and always demand transparency, equal access and sustained investment.
We do not want the privatisation of the public services.
International solidarity,
International solidarity is the prior principle, on which our movement stands and acts. By that we understand a common effort to bring the Social Europe to each and every one.
We unequivocally condemn the terrorist attacks, both in London and Madrid. These are not attacks on politicians or Governments, but on ordinary, hard working Europeans. We stand against any violence and we demand peace and stability to be insured in Europe and around the Globe.
ECOSY believes that as social democrats, that our aims are not just a social Europe. Eventually, what we want is a social world. ECOSY believes that young socialists in Europe have a responsibility to work with our comrades from around the world, share ideas, and help make this social world a reality. As together we are stronger, we believe in importance of a close relations with IUSY and IFM-SEI. We also believe in our common mission at World Social Forum, with which we link many hopes in terms of vision for the world.
End poverty now,
We believe that it is a scandal that 10 percent of Europeans must live in poverty. We must work together as Europeans to ensure that future generations have social progress, environmental protection, economic growth and full employment.
The year 2005 is an extremely important year for the common fight against poverty. We do support the GCAP (Global Call Against Poverty) and ECOSY joining the action "Make poverty history". We believe that on the days of action, namely on 10th September and 10th December we all, our organizations and our comrades, we need to be on the street with a global white band campaign. We need to create a strong, united European voice to demand from governments delivery of the Millennium Development Goals promise, to ensure that WTO Hong Kong will be a step in our struggle for justice and improvement across the world. Social Europe is Europe for everyone with a strong foreign policy aiming at improvements not only inside, by via improvements inside to play a positive role externally in ensuring sustainable development.
Fair trade now,
In Europe and the wider world, we do not have free or fair trade. Rich countries especially Europe and America; impose huge tariffs on imported goods, heavily subsidise domestic industry (especially agriculture) and then dump the excess produce on developing nations. By dumping the goods on developing, they undercut local producers and put them out of business. Dumping is causing misery and mayhem across the developing world, in India 10 000 farmers a year are driven to suicide.
ECOSY believes the act of dumping is disgraceful, ad that the motive of rich nations while doing this is purely self interest. We believe that the European Union should abolish trade barriers on imports, abolish subsidies for domestic farmers (Common agricultural policy) and stop dumping excess produce on to developing countries.
ECOSY believes that European countries do not need to protect domestic industries in order for them to compete with the rest of the world. We believe that a social Europe will provide its citizens with the tools to produce goods and services that can compete with any country in the world.
Africa,
Europe has a sad past when it comes to Africa, but this must not stop us from fighting the poverty that blights modern day Africa. ECOSY applauds the lead taken by the Europeans with regards to debt relief and increased aid to Africa. We also welcome the deal agreed at the recent G8 summit in Gleneagles in Scotland. That being said, we do not believe that the deal goes anywhere near far enough. Debt relief must be extended to many more African countries, trade must be made fair, and aid must increase now. It is only by doing this that we can end the scandal that means an African dies every 3 seconds.
The environment,
As Young European Socialists, we are the ones who, via inspiring vision and motivation for action aiming at change, can deliver a social Europe for future generations. In our fight we can not forget, that the circumstances we live for are closely linked with environmental conditions, for which we all are responsible. ECOSY recognises the lead taken by European countries in adopting the Kyoto treaty and strongly disagree with the Unites States of America for not doing likewise. Kyoto is the way to make a step towards a positive future of our planet. We must move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy to provide our future energy needs. We must act for an environmental friendly behaviour of everyone, encouraging people to use water and energy reasonably and to achieve this goal we believe that education programmes have to include environmental protection.