Public Services Petition

The European Trade Union Confederation has set up an online petition to legally protect public services in the EU (via). Here's the petition:

Public services are essential for social, economic and regional cohesion in Europe. Such services must be of high quality and accessible to everyone. Until now, the only options put forward for developing public services have been privatisation or liberalisation (namely in sectors such as Energy, the Post and Telecommunications). It is time to find different solutions!

For this reason, we are calling on the Commission to propose European legislation on public services designed to:

• Give priority to the general interest embodied in public services;
• Ensure that everyone has access to public services;
• Strengthen public services in order to guarantee citizens’ fundamental rights;
• Guarantee more legal security so as to allow the development of sustainable public service missions;
• Give public services a firm legal basis and thus immunity from ideologically motivated free market attacks.

In the end, I don't know what the exact right mix and interaction of 'public' and 'private' is for services like garbage disposal or telecommunications, but I think some degree of liberalisation can work. I'm more negative on the post and on energy, where I think liberalisation won't bring benefits to society, just more costs. I agree with all the points of the petition but the last, because I don't know if we should legally determine what can be liberalised and what can't. We just need a more sensible policy.

The EU, however, is on a single-minded, unreflective drive to liberalise as many public services as it can. It's good to push back a bit.

The petition has almost 520,000 signatures at the time of writing, and is aiming for 1,000,000.

Go sign.