eurotrash - the latest on brussels

WORKERS, MAR 2005 ISSUE

Media bias
The Daily Mirror recently ran a poll on the EU constitution alongside a pro-constitution full page article. Yet its readers voted 72% to 28% against Britain signing the constitution, clearly surprising the paper's editors. Meanwhile, an independent commission has examined the BBC's coverage of the EU. Chaired by Lord Richard Wilson, a former Cabinet Secretary, it included pro-EU and anti-EU figures and it found that the BBC's coverage was biased in favour of the EU, concluding, "Although the BBC wishes to be impartial in its news coverage of the EU, it is not succeeding." Pro-EU campaigners always complain that the media are biased against them. But now the BBC has been told to put in place guidelines to ensure fair coverage in the referendum.

French fight
The increasingly fierce fight to protect the 35-hour week in France is damaging the government's chances of winning a Yes vote in the EU constitution referendum. Early in February, almost 600,000 trade union members marched to protest against the proposed laws to lengthen the working week to up to 48 hours. And at the end of January, the central organisation of the CGT union voted to oppose the constitution, by 81 votes to 18, with 17 abstentions. They said that they "opposed an EU construction marked by the subjugation of social rights to the logics of profitability and competition, the main principles found in the constitution".

Germany's jobs disaster
The German minister for employment, Wolfgang Clement, has said that he expects joblessness to rise even further following the news that it had broken a post-war record and topped 5 million in January — over 10% of the workforce. Despite his claims that it would start to fall by the end of the year, other commentators say the true figures are nearer 9 million. Last year unemployment appeared to be stable, but only because about 93,000 people were taken off the register, as they had "little jobs", which paid no social security. Proper jobs, meanwhile, continued to decline.

top