RESISTING THE EU’S PRIVATISATION AGENDA

october 2005 :: RMTnews 25 The return of our railways to public and accountable ownership is still high on RMT’s agenda following the highly successful Rail Against Privatisation campaign in the lead up to the general election earlier this year. Two important fringe meetings at the recent Trade Union Congress and Labour Party Conference again underlined the dissatisfaction of the travelling public with the current state of our transport network. The attendances at both meetings revealed overwhelming support for a return to a publicly owned and publicly accountable rail network. Despite the fact that both the TUC and Labour Party back the return of rail to public ownership; this government appears to be stone deaf to the wishes of their electorate. Everybody else seems to know how disastrous, expensive and dangerous privatisation has been, and it must end. If democracy means anything then this government must develop the political will to respond and admit that Network Rail’s decision to bring some maintenance back “in-house” and the consequential cost reduction and performance improvement indicates that there should be a progressive re- integration of the rail network to the public sector where it belongs. The taxpayer can no longer tolerate a situation where in 2003 they paid £1.1billion to the train operating companies, who in turn handed over £160 million to their shareholders. The subsidy to the privatised railway now by far exceeds that paid to British Rail under nationalisation. The argument that the growing amount of passengers carried is due to privatisation doesn’t hold water as the increase is due to economic changes and would have occurred under British Rail. Past experience shows that should there be a down turn in the economy passenger numbers fall and if that happens then no doubt there will be demands from the rail privateers for yet more subsidies to provide the service. Ongoing research by the independent think tank Catalyst highlighted on page ten in this magazine also points to the need for public ownership. This pressure must continue, however, it must be understood that one of the reasons that this government refuses to act is that they do not want to challenge European Union directive 91/440, passed on July 29 1991, which provided the model for the Tory government’s 1993 Railway Act and is now imposing rail privatisation across Europe. Just this month MEPs voted in favour of a controversial new bill which aims to create a harmonised European train drivers’ licence and privatise all train services, paving the way for social dumping and rail chaos. The legislation aims to “integrate” railways across the EU by attacking publicly owned rail networks in each member state. Under the plans, all cross-border rail must be opened to competition by 2008, and all internal rail by 2012. EU interference in directing the privatisation of public services in member states goes way beyond rail and includes recent outrageous demands to privatise Caledonian Macbrayne lifeline ferry services in Scotland. There are also controversial plans for a services directive, which demands the wholesale liberalisation of all essential services from health to education. However, these fundamental issues are widely ignored by the media and politicians. The rejection earlier this year of the anti-democratic EU Constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands was welcome. Yet the whole basis of “liberalisation” and “globalisation” in Europe continues to emanate from Brussels. The sooner this is more widely understood the sooner resistance to these anti-people policies can be mobilised. Tony Donaghey President’s column Resisting the EU’s privatisation agenda Under the plan, all cross- border rail must be opened to “competition” by 2008, and all internal rail by 2012. European Parliament transport committee chair Paolo Costa said: “The EU must boost the liberalisation and interoperability of the railway system”. RESISTANCE However, many national parliaments found parts of the package in breach of the subsidiarity principle - the recognised principle to legislate at EU level only when necessary. The European Commission's railway proposal was the subject of a pilot project to try out a new instrument - the "subsidiarity early warning mechanism”. This states that the Commission should review its legislative proposal, if at least one third of national parliaments send their "reasoned opinion" arguing that the bill is in breach of "subsidiarity". In the pilot project evaluating the railway package, 14 of the 31 national chambers present indicated that the subsidiarity principle had been breached, and expressed doubts about some proposals in the package. For instance, Britain and Sweden argued that it would be too costly to introduce a new type of driving licence for their train drivers - to be the same as elsewhere in Europe - as their trains mainly provided domestic journeys. However, all reservations have been ignored and German MEP Georg Jarzembrowski, backing wholesale rail privatisation across the EU, claimed the complaints from national parliaments would not change anything. "We could still overrule their opinion… the basic EU rules are in line with the proposals such as the railway package," he said. However, plans by Brussels to roll out rail privatisation across Europe are being met with increasing hostility and trade unions are at the forefront of the battle to protect decent public rail services.