Croke Park 'an excellent agreement' that could be model for other states

THE CROKE Park deal on public sector pay and reform is “an excellent agreement” that could be a model for other countries, a leading figure in the European Parliament said in Dublin.

Leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest group in the European Parliament, Hannes Swoboda MEP, was speaking after meetings with Government Ministers and officials.

“This is an excellent agreement and an example of how you can bring about reasonable reforms with the agreement of those who are affected,” he told The Irish Times.

The Austrian MEP said his motto had always been: “Give unions responsibility and then they will act responsibly.”

He added that, by contrast, social partnerships in “some of the southern countries” of the EU were not really functioning. “It’s a fight, one against the other.”

During his two-day visit he met Tánaiste and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, Ministers Brendan Howlin and Ruairí Quinn, and the team of Government officials preparing for Ireland’s EU presidency in the first half of next year.

Mr Swoboda was welcomed by Dublin MEP Emer Costello from the Labour Party, which is part of the Socialist group at Strasbourg.

He said: “If I speak with the Ministers here they have some vision of what they want to do; they don’t start with complaining about Europe and this and that, they just say what they are doing to reform the country.

“The will to reform is quite visible here in Ireland; it is not so visible, perhaps, sometimes in Greece.”

He said Ireland was making good progress.

“Of course, you have the advantage that you were already on a very good track economically and then it was interrupted by the economic and financial crisis.

“So for you it’s not so difficult as for other regions or countries who never had anything like the ‘Celtic Tiger’.”

He summarised the Irish attitude:

“What can we do here in our own country to solve the specific issues we have. Europe is here to help, but Europe is not a substitute for activities in our own country.”

He said Austria had long experience of the social partnership model, and it had been particularly successful in tackling youth unemployment.

“Youth unemployment is very low in Austria because for up to 20 years there was a consensus built between the social partners that we have to do everything, in education, in training, in job services, to prevent youth unemployment as far as possible,” said Mr Swoboda.

“There’s what we call a youth guarantee, to say: you come out of the schools after the normal school age and you either get a job or, if you don’t get a job, you get other training to improve your capacity.”

He is concerned about the rise of right-wing extremism in Europe, which is using immigration as an issue.

“Many of these parties went quite straight from an anti-Semitic to an Islamophobic orientation.”

He said this had occurred in France, the Netherlands and in his own country, Austria.