| FROM CHIEF | Murat SARAYLI |
| Chairman of the Board of TUGIAD/Confedereration of Young European Businessmen (YES) |
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OPEN LETTER TO THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL, REFORM LEADERS DEMAND: MAKE EUROPE SOCIAL AGAIN! |
European Council Spring Summit
Brussels, 22-23 March 2005Dear European Union Heads of Government, We are, all of us, proud to be Europeans. But what is this pride based on? Are we proud of the autocratic empires – Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Third Reich – that wreaked havoc on our continent, tearing families apart and leaving so much destruction in their wake? Or are we proud of our progressive, non-conformist tradition, the one that led Voltaire to challenge the sclerotic social order of the French aristocracy, Columbus to set his sails for the edge of the known and Galileo to point his telescope towards the stars? Are we proud of a social system that – in the name of "social inclusion" – has left 19 million people (more than the entire population of the Netherlands) unable to find work or take their full part in society? Or are we proudest of the economic wealth we slowly and painstakingly accumulated over centuries through our craftsmanship, entrepreneurial spirit and openness to new ideas – a wealth which allowed us to give birth to the concept of social justice in the first place?
The Lisbon Council firmly believes that the values that made European society great are in grave danger. We call on European leaders – gathering in Brussels on 22-23 March, 2005 for the European Council – to redouble their efforts to restore our distinguished tradition of free thought, innovation, economic accomplishment and true social justice. Towards that end, we propose that the European Social Model be revitalized around three core concepts – concepts which, if appropriately understood and explained, could easily form the basis of a viable, effective, cross-party reform strategy. Those three concepts are inclusion, sustainability and opportunity. As a first step, we must question the obscurantist, self-serving arguments we read everyday in the newspapers – employers associations that fight for "greater competition" while they lobby for protection and subsidy in the European Parliament; trade unions that reject the very reforms which would make their movement strong again, because no one has been harmed more by Europe’s catastrophically high unemployment than the unions themselves, whose strength and negotiating power have all but eroded thanks to their head-in-the-sand attitude when faced with the reality of globalization.
The bottom line is this: as we move into the 21st century, too many interest groups and political leaders continue to pledge intellectual allegiance to a notion of society and social inclusion built up in the 19th century, when workers could and did need increased protection from the social forces unfolding around them.
Today, ironically, the mechanisms built up to create social justice in the 19th century have become the largest impediment to creating real social justice in the 21st. We live in an age when sky-high unemployment is our biggest scourge – and yet many unions continue to demand more and more for those inside the labour market at the expense of an ever growing caste of outsiders, who are deprived of the economic empowerment and professional opportunities every citizen is entitled to. The results are a social tragedy: 19 million unemployed, and a youth unemployment rate of 18% in the EU-25. Can a society with 18% of its youngest, most vulnerable members unable to find a job really call itself "social?" Can a politician in a country with over 18% youth unemployment – and there are nine of them in the EU now, including Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Spain – invoke the name of "social justice" to block reforms that would create jobs for the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society?
Despite the severity of the situation we find ourselves in, we continue to conduct a public debate on reform that is unworthy of our vast intellectual heritage. Our interest groups – formed, as they were, in the 19th century and rapid post-war industrialization – fight each other instinctively like cats and dogs, scoring intellectual points off of one another, and tarnishing their opponents in the hope of capturing power for themselves someday. They hear words like "social," "environment," "economy" or "regulation" and they bark like Pavlov’s dogs, constantly warning that we are straying from our roots when in fact it is their own unquestioning ideological dogma – their refusal to grapple with the world as it is, on its own terms – that has made a mockery of the cause they claim to represent. How can people criticize reforms that would attack our sky-high unemployment as "unsocial?" How can some promote only policies based on environmental sustainability while we ignore the collapse awaiting our pension and social welfare systems if those systems are not reformed?
To its shame, the media laps up much of this theatre, endlessly repeating the shallow clichés in which the reform debate is conducted and allowing the scoundrels and rogues to tarnish good politicians with blatantly self-serving demagoguery. The result is near total public confusion and widespread fear about the very real challenges our society faces, and the actions we must take if our society is to continue living up to the values we say we possess.Towards that end, we call on all Europeans – and the European Council in particular – to recommit the European Social Model to these three core values:
Inclusion: We pride ourselves on being a society based on inclusion, but can we really call the society where we now live an "inclusive" society in any sense of the word? If so, how do you explain the 19 million unemployed that our stubborn insistence on working less and less for more and more has created? Even worse, our hugely overtaxed, over-regulated labour markets exclude precisely the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society: the young, the old, women, immigrants and the low-skilled. Nowhere in the developed world are so many groups of people so consistently discriminated against and prevented from participating in the labour market. A labour market that is unabashedly skewed towards middle-aged men may have many attributes but it is certainly neither social nor inclusive. A truly inclusive society must strive towards full employment, giving its citizens the confidence that even when a job is lost, a new one will be found. The increasingly dysfunctional concept of "job protection" – which has cost us dearly in terms of job satisfaction and job creation – must be replaced with a new concept of "employment protection," meaning that if a citizen is laid off, he or she can be confident that new employment opportunities can be found within a reasonable time. Full employment is the best system of social inclusion, and we call on all Europeans to embrace European Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s proposed Partnership for Growth and Jobs – and we call on the European Council in particular to follow up with appropriate legislation that will make it possible to create the healthy, sustainable jobs of the 21st century. Sustainability: Every child knows that nature needs to be protected for the sake of our quality of life but also for the benefit of future generations. The validity of "sustainability" is universally accepted when it comes to the environment. Yet, we would be well-advised to apply the principle of sustainability to other areas that matter as much to our citizens, such as the health of our public finances and the longevity of our social security systems. As is, too many governments are trying to spend their way out of the economic malaise they face, piling up debt that will be the taxes of our children and generations to come.
The same holds true for our social security systems, particularly in the area of health and pensions. We know that we will face an unprecedented demographic crisis with a rapidly aging and rapidly declining population. Already, our social security systems have come under tremendous strain, and need to be urgently and comprehensively reformed in order to provide future beneficiaries with the security and stability they deserve and we have come to take for granted. What good will be a healthy environment if our tax burden will have to rise to astronomical levels while the social safety net evaporates? Applying sustainability only to the environment, while ignoring other, equally important fields of public policy, is short-sighted, irresponsible and will cost our children and future generations dearly in terms of quality of life, security and prosperity.
Opportunity: History will remember Europe’s inability to provide adequate opportunities to our citizens as one of our gravest blunders. Indeed, the underutilization of human potential and the lack of incentives to capitalise on our abilities are already felt. Hundreds of thousands of our best and brightest scientists, entrepreneurs and professionals have left Europe, seeking their fortune elsewhere. In a knowledgebased economy, losing a large part of our above-average, intellectual capital is the worst failure imaginable. But we are also leaving our youngest citizens behind. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study has shown, we are not providing the educational infrastructure and upward mobility that our youngsters need and deserve. This trend continues in university education where Europe spends one third less per student than the United States. Upon graduation, our citizens find a sclerotic labour market that in most countries creates too few jobs in general and too few high-value added jobs – the ones that are urgently needed to sustain our prosperity and global competitive edge – in particular. At the same time as our dysfunctional labour markets and rising unemployment pushes more and more of our citizens towards poverty and disillusionment, our political leaders have the audacity to generously subsidise agriculture and the dying industries of the past.
We must urgently restore opportunity by giving our youngest the tools they need to succeed in a knowledge economy, while offering everybody, particularly our innovators, entrepreneurs and scientists, an environment where dreams can be realised, curiosity rewarded and the pursuit of the unknown regarded as the precondition for a healthy, prosperous society. We call on the European Council to come forth with appropriate legislation and to take the high road in this debate. We need leaders that are worthy of the name. We need you to help us break through the hideous ideological gridlock that has come to substitute for reasoned political debate. And we pledge our support to anyone willing to stand up for the right course and give us a social model that lives up to the values we hold so dear. Paul Hofheinz (President-The Lisbon Council-Belgium), Ann Mettler (Executive Director-The Lisbon Council-Belgium), Tjark de Lange (Board Member-The Lisbon Council-Belgium), Alja Brglez (Founder and Executive Director and Culture-Institute for Civilization-Slovenia), Kevin Cullinane (President of Young Leaders and Entrepreneurs JCI-Worldwide Federation- Ireland), Daniel Dettling (Founder and Executive Director-Berlinpolis-Germany), Peer Ederer (Co-Founder-Deutschland Denken!-Germany), Maciej Grabowski (Vice President-Polish Lisbon Strategy Forum-Poland), Francesco Grillo (Founder and President-Vision-Italy), Sabine Herold (Spokesperson-Liberté Chérie-France), Jean-Philippe Lehmann (Founding Director-The Evian Group-France), Murat Sarayli (President-Young Entrepreneurs of Europe (Yes for Europe)-Belgium), Jörg Tremmel (Managing Director-Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations-Germany)
