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The EU, Global Europe, and processes of uneven and combined development: the problem of transnational labour solidarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2012

Abstract

In 2006, the European Union launched its new free trade strategy Global Europe with the explicit goal of increasing European competitiveness. This article explores the positions of trade unions and other social movements on Global Europe. Importantly, while Northern social movements and trade unions from the Global South reject Global Europe due to its impact of deindustrialisation on developing countries, European trade unions support it in so far as it opens up new markets for the export of European manufactured goods. It will be argued that this has to be understood against the background of the dynamics underlying the global economy and here in particular uneven and combined development. Due to the uneven integration of different parts of the world into the global economy, workers in developed countries may actually benefit from free trade, while workers in the Global South are more likely to lose out. It will, however, also be argued that while these different positions within the social relations of production are shaping the position of trade unions, they do not determine them. Over time, through direct engagement, trade unions in the North and South may be able to establish relations of transnational solidarity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

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16 Even the EU's ‘Everything but arms’ initiative launched in 2001 and granting the 49 least-developed countries free access to the EU market for all their products except weapons has had neo-liberal implications in that it was used by the Commission to justify EU internal market related reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for sugar and rice (Faber, G. and Orbie, J., ‘Everything But Arms: Much More than Appears at First Sight’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 47:4 (2009), pp. 767–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar). It would also be interesting in this respect to investigate the wider European Neighbourhood Policy towards North Africa and Eastern Europe and assess to what extent this policy too is focused on opening up new markets. For overviews see Browning, Christopher and Joenniemi, Pertti, ‘Geostrategies of the European Neighbourhood Policy’, European Journal of International Relations, 14:3 (2008), pp. 519–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moisio, Sami, ‘Redrawing the Map of Europe: Spatial Formation of the EU's Eastern Dimension’, Geography Compass, 1:1 (2007), pp. 82102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 World Development Movement, ‘Europe fights for profits from Africa’ (19 December 2007), available at: {http://www.wdm.org.uk/news/archive/2007/europeanprofitsfromafrica 19122007.html} accessed 27 Feb. 2009.

20 Seattle to Brussels Network, ‘The EU Corporate Trade Agenda: The role and the interests of corporations and their lobby groups in Trade Policy-Making in the European Union’ (2005), p. 30, available at: {http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2005/EU_corporate_trade_agenda.pdf} accessed 30 May 2009. The EU Corporate Trade Agenda, p. 30.

21 Oxfam International, ‘Partnership or Power Play?’, p. 3.

22 Ibid., p. 34.

23 PSCC, ‘Resolución de la Plataforma Sindical Común Centroamericana (PSCC) sobre el ADA/CA-UE (Guatemala, 14 de mayo de 2009)’, available at: {http://www.gruposur.eu.org/Resolucion-de-la-Plataforma.html} accessed 1 June 2009.

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26 La Via Campesina, ‘Social movements reject the Free Trade Agreement EU-Central America’ (2009), available at: {http://www.gruposur.eu.org/Resolucion-de-la-Plataforma.html} accessed 1 June 2009.

27 The ETUC consists of a whole range of national confederations as well as European Industry Federations organising workers according to industrial sectors. Unsurprisingly, not all trade unions share the qualified support for Global Europe by the ETUC (see Andreas Bieler, Bruno Ciccaglione and John Hilary, ‘Transnational solidarity, labour movements and the problem of international free trade’, paper presented on the panel ‘Structures and Strategies in the Emerging Global Labor Movement’ at the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg, Sweden (11–17 July 2010). At the same time, without the agreement by a vast majority of its affiliate unions, the ETUC would not have been able to develop its official position on Global Europe and free trade policies more generally. Discussing its position is, therefore, to a considerable extent representative of European trade unions more widely.

28 ETUC, ‘On the Communication Global Europe: competing in the world’ (2006), available at: {http://www.etuc.org/a/3390} accessed 4 Nov. 2008.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 ETUC, ‘Position of ETUC on the 6th WTO Ministerial conference, Hong Kong (13–18 December 2005)’. ‘Resolution adopted by the ETUC Executive Committee in their meeting held in Brussels on 19–20 October 2005’, available at: {http://www.etuc.org/a/1746} accessed 31 May 2009.

32 ITUC, ‘WTO Ministerial: Serious jobs impact in developing countries’ (24 July 2008), available at: {http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article2318} accessed 1 June 2009.

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107 See here also the critique of Frank by Mandel (Late Capitalism, pp. 366–7).

108 Smith, Uneven Development, p. 189.

109 Mandel, Late Capitalism, pp. 66, 359 and 368.

110 Callinicos, ‘Does Capitalism need the state system?’, p. 23.

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112 Kiely, The New Political Economy of Development, p. 18.

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114 War on Want, Trading Away Our Jobs, p. 20.

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120 Ibid., p. 11.

121 In his analysis of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, Trotsky discussed how combined development in Russia, the fusion of advanced and backward social forms, as a result of international unevenness led to a situation of potential permanent revolution. In turn, however, combined development also maintains and potentially increases international unevenness as a consequence of missing developmental catch-up. It is the empirical focus of this article on potential transnational solidarity between various national labour movements, different from Trotsky's focus on one specific national labour movement, which shifts the emphasis on the second moment, the increasing unevenness, in this analysis.

122 Mandel, ‘The Laws of Uneven Development’, p. 25.

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131 Davidson, ‘From deflected permanent revolution’, pp. 13, 17–18; Selwyn, ‘Trotsky, Gerschenkron’, p. 432.