I thank the committee for meeting us at this late stage. Listening to the presentations made by Mr. Coughlan and IBEC, I realise many of the positions legitimately held 20 years ago are being rehearsed now on all sides, particularly by the employers. The organisations for the unemployed are adopting a position to which everyone must listen with new ears because we are struggling with issues such as the globalisation of the economy and the fact that the European Union is an inadequate response to that.
I am not only the general secretary of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, I am also the secretary of the European Network of the Unemployed which met last weekend in Glasgow. We have circulated a position paper which we sent to local partnerships. It is a fairly neutral analysis of the treaty and of the position of the European Network of the Unemployed on the treaty.
The INOU and ENU believe the Maastricht Treaty did little in terms of unemployment except to make it worse. The types of economic policies which were included increased unemployment in every country other than Ireland and led to a decline in social standards in many countries. The situation was made worse as governments cut back on expenditure. We argued that this treaty needed to be one which did not just step a little bit further forward but which reversed the anti-employment and anti-unemployed trend in the Maastricht Treaty. Many people who argued for the Maastricht Treaty at the time are now quite open about recognising the faults we pointed out at the time and for which we were marginalised.
The five things we are looking for in the revision of Maastricht are a commitment to full, not high, employment, which is an ILO idea to which Ireland signed up in 1967; an opportunity to link this commitment to other economic goals so that inflation is not considered more important than decent jobs; a change in the convergence criteria to include unemployment so that low Government expenditure and inflation, which are important, are not considered more important than decent jobs; the introduction of a social audit; and the inclusion of the voluntary sector as a social partner.
The most significant achievement is the employment chapter. Even the EU's documentation, "Citizens' Guide to a New Treaty", states that one of the great achievements is the promotion of a high level of employment, which is now one of the major objectives of the Union. However, it was always an objective of the Treaty of Rome. It is unclear why that is considered progress. While that section includes a number of positive things, it writes in stone that employment policy is a matter for each member state and not for the European Union.
There are two choices in building the European Union. We can take the view adopted by the National Platform that none of this should be moved to a European level or the view that employment and the interests of the Single Market and business people are moved to a European level along with social policy and the interests of the unemployed. However, we are only getting half the deal at present. The things which open up the Single Market weaken the position of workers and, therefore, lead to more insecure jobs, low pay and unemployment. While these are moved to a European level, the type of measures required to counterbalance them are not being moved to that level. We recognise that progress has been made on some of our issues, but the Maastricht Treaty was such an extraordinary setback in terms of unemployed people throughout Europe that this Amsterdam Treaty does not necessarily counterbalance that.
The political response throughout Europe has been the mobilisation of unemployed people on an unprecedented level since the 1930s when it manifested itself as fascism. At present, it is manifesting itself in progressive demands for a better European Union. However, the Amsterdam Treaty fails to meet that demand. Unless it is clearly marked by politicians at regional, national and international level and unless they recognise that more needs to be done, there are substantial dangers that the high levels of unemployment across Europe will stop being progressive forces and might become forces of reaction in terms of racism and fascism.