27/03/2005 6:50:02 pm
Free Market is a Race to the Top. In today′s Financial Times, Brendan Barber, who is the General Secretary of the largest trade union in Britain, the Trades Union Congress, replies to my article a few days ago. I wrote that it is oddly harmful that the unions demonstrated against the directive which aimed to create a single market for services in the EU. After all, when industries and jobs are moving, we need more jobs, not least in the service sector. Mr Barber writes that they don′t oppose a single market in services, but don′t like this directive. Welfare services should be excluded from the single market, he writes. But keeping them in national monopolies is surely only a way to prevent new jobs in this sector and keep welfare services poor. Mr Barber also wites about a race to the bottom followed by free competition in services. It is the opposite. We haven′t seen such a race to the bottom following a single market for goods; quite the opposite. An independent study published by the EU Commission just showed that such a market could produce some 600 000 jobs, not mentioning tens of billions of higher GDP in the EU. Prohibiting competition, or "social dumping", is to prohibit the possibility to compete with prices. I shouldn′t be allowed to offer my services at one euro less than anyone else. And then you don′t have a market or competition and noting that drives development. Thus, opposing this directive with such arguments, is to oppose the entire thought of a single market in services.
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