Speech by Georges Dassis – President of the European Economic and Social Committee
Inaugural plenary session, Thursday 8 October 2015
Paul-Henri Spaak Hemicycle
"GeorgesDassiswarmly thankedat the time oftheir interventions,the speakerswho preceded him:
Jean-Pierre BOBICHON, witha message by Jacques DELORS;
Jacek KRAWCZYK, President of the EESC Employers' Group;
Gabriele BISCHOFF, President of the EESC Workers' Group;
Luca JAHIER, President of the EESC VariousInterests' Group;
Susanna CAMUSSO, Secretary-General of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL);
Rainer HOFFMANN, President of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB);
Carmelo BARBAGALLO, Secretary-General of the Italian Labour Union (UIL);
Rudy De LEEUW, President of the General Federation of Labour of Belgium and President of the European Trade-Union Confederation (video);
Irini PARI, member of the Committee, on behalf of Theodoros FESSAS, President of the HellenicFederation of Enterprises (SEV);
Ioannis PANAGOPOULOS, member of the Committee, President of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE);
Christos POLYZOGOPOULOS, President of the Greek Economic and Social Committee;
Luca VISENTINI, Secretary-General of the European Trade-Union Confederation;
Conny REUTER, Secretary-General of SOLIDAR and Co-President of the Liaison Group of the Committee;
Philippe DE BUCK, member of the Committee, former-Director General of Business Europe;
Michael SMYTH, Vice-President of the Committee, in charge of budget matters;
Gonçalo LOBO XAVIER, Vice-President of the Committee, in charge of communication matters"
No need to panic. I am not going to talk for long.
First of all, what I have not yet said about my excellent colleagues, Michael Smyth and Gonçalo Lobo Xavier, is that they are lucky. Our colleagues from the previous term of office, Hans Joachim Wilms, who was responsible for the budget, and Jane Morrice for communications, did outstanding work and have left an excellent legacy. I would like to thank Jane and Hajo once again. I am not sure whether they are in the room, but I am sure that this will be passed on.
And next I would like to thank ... If I thank everybody by name, there is a danger that I will forget someone. Nevertheless, as I can see my friend and colleague, Claudio Stanzani, who is here today in difficult conditions, I would like to thank him. Thank you, Claudio, for being here today
Peter Scherrer is another friend whom I have known for a long time and who has just been elected deputy secretary-general of the European Trade Union Confederation. Thank you, Peter, for spending your morning with us.
And many thanks to Sylvia (Gauci) - benvenuta! - a former member of the Committee, secretary-general of the Maltese ESC, and thanks also to John (Bencini), who also comes from the Maltese ESC.
As for Marianne (Nati-Stoffel), I could say many things about her. But I think you know already. Thank you, Marianne, secretary-general of the Luxembourg ESC, for being here.
Paul (Windey), I am sure you will say that, as a Belgian and a social partner, it goes without saying that you would be here, but thank you anyway for spending your time with us.
I have already thanked Susanna (Camusso) this morning for being here.
Roger (Briesch) - ever faithful! Thank you, Roger. At any rate, we will see you regularly, as you are president of the association of former members of the Committee, so there is no danger of losing touch.
Special thanks to the secretary-general of the Committee of the Regions, who is listening to us today. I hope that the cooperation between our two committees will be stepped up, and I would ask you to pass on this message to the president of the Committee of the Regions.
I have already thanked Carmelo (Barbagallo). Nikos, many thanks for being here. Nikos Tsemberlidis is president of the Consumers' Association of Greece, which is represented here by EvangeliaKekeleki.
I have already thanked my colleagues, the group presidents, but I am happy to see other faces in the room today: Kostas Poupakis, André Mordant, Xavier Verboven, Alejandro.
Alejandro Cercas, you do me great honour! A Spanish MEP who has always been there for the Committee and has given us his invaluable support whenever we needed it. Muchasgracias, Alejandro, for being here today.
I am sure I have forgotten someone. Luis-Mi! Who could forget Luis Miguel Pariza? We still talk about the work you did here at the Committee on immigration, which is a highly topical issue today.
I know I have forgotten someone ... ah yes, there is also Zissis Smernos, a friend and colleague from the Greek trade unions, who has come specially from Thessaloniki. Thank you, Zissis.
I do not dare look my daughters in the eye - they will give me stage fright!
But I would particularly like to thank all my friends from Group II. They did me a great honour when they proposed me, unanimously, as president of the Committee, and by mobilising when my name was taken off the list of Greek members submitted to the Council. I will never forget that ...
I would also like to thank Susanna Florio and the members of the Group II secretariat most warmly: we have worked together for a long time, 7 1/2 years, during my time as Group president and, as Paco Soriano has said, the work got done.
I would like to thank Nikos Alexopoulos, deputy secretary-general, who has done me the honour of agreeing to act as director of the president's private office.
My friend and colleague Denis Liégeois - we have been friends for a long time - who has always been active in Group II, when anything needed to be done quickly, with Nikos, particularly in connection with the events mentioned this morning.
And I would like to thank the secretary-general, Luis Planas, and all his colleagues most warmly for their work over the last few weeks in particular, because the plenary session has taken place in difficult circumstances - the list of members was received from the Council only a short time ago. Thank you, Luis, and thank you, Maria, Domenico and all the others.
And finally, I should like to express my gratitude to all of you, members of the European Economic and Social Committee, for the confidence you have shown in me, not only in difficult moments, but in the vote yesterday.
There were six votes against me. Just as well, otherwise I would have been accused of being a Stalinist. Well, for me it is a great honour, and although I had intended to do it anyway, it obliges me to continue to work in the same spirit of consensus, as I have tried to do as president of Group II. Jacek and Luca can testify to this, as can Philippe and Irini.
I am not going to read you a president's programme today. But I will say that I enjoyed listening to you today, and you said many things which are in this paper. I call it a "paper", because it is not a president's programme, but rather a few ideas, a few guidelines to follow during the term of office which begins today.
I am not going to read it to you but I would like to share a few thoughts with you. This is perhaps a first for me, but, out of respect for you, I more or less wrote a speech yesterday evening, so as not to go on too long and so as to be able to say a few words about our Committee. Because, as well as Committee members present today, there are also guests.
As it says in my "paper", our Committee is the expression of a genuine European value. It was set up by the Treaties, based on a model that already existed in countries like France and Italy.
The economic interest groups of civil society made a major contribution to reconstruction in the years following the Second World War. Today there are people who tell me that what I say is all very well, but that today it is not easy to be a European - in fact it is difficult. My reply is that, in those days, it was much more difficult for the people of Germany and France, and their politicians, to make peace and to propose something other than conflict resolution by force of arms. Today, in civil society we have a similar role to play in building the Europe of tomorrow.
The very existence of the Committee is a guarantee of democracy, a guarantee that the Union, and thus the decision-making European institutions, should make more use of in their dealings with the public. In a democratic system it is a good thing to finance a consultative body like ours, which can, among other things, criticise the decision-makers. We make proposals but, at times - and this is quite normal - we make criticisms.
An authority which is not afraid to give trade unions, employers' organisations and associations of citizens a voice through an official European Union body is an authority which can genuinely pride itself on being democratic. An authority which is not afraid of contradiction or criticism.An authority which does not seek to silence those who criticise it.
I would like to clarify things, on the subject of financing, because there are a lot of rumours doing the rounds. When you instructed me to draw up a proposal for the Members' Statute, I defended our proposal with the Council, as it had been adopted unanimously by the Committee. On that occasion a member of the permanent delegation of one of the Member States - I will not say which one so as not to cause problems - said to me in a rather ironic tone: "Mr Dassis, you members of the Economic and Social Committee do pretty well for yourselves, I see". I replied to him: "I imagine that your government pays you badly. If you would like to be better paid, I suggest you pass a competition or find a way of becoming an official of the European and Economic and Social Committee, and then you will indeed be doing well. As for the members, they receive reimbursement for their travel and subsistence expenses, which represents an extremely small percentage of the Committee's budget, and the Committee's budget is in turn an extremely small percentage of the EU budget - at a rough estimate about 0.013%. So let's be clear about it: the participation of the members of the Committee in the democratic process costs very little.
Another characteristic of the Committee is that it is designed to express the views of the whole of organised civil society. Employers, workers and citizens' associations are consulted together and have to express their views together. This is another original EU feature.
There have been other large-scale unions - remaining in our part of the world, one might mention the European Free Trade Association - but they have dwindled away. These were trade associations, the main purpose of which was to trade in goods while reducing customs duties.
If our Union exists today and has continued over time, it is because it has an original feature, which can be traced back to the fact that it is governed by a system which is, I think, unique in the history of humanity.In this system, our Committee offers real added value, because it is able to draw up truly consensual opinions. In order to arrive at these opinions, we, the three Groups, are obliged to remain at the table, to conduct dialogue and to draw up a position before addressing the decision-makers, the European authorities, represented by the Council and the Parliament, or the Commission, when it is preparing draft legislation.
My distant ancestors, the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle to be precise, wrote that a human being was a "zoon politikon", a political animal, in other words a social being. Living in a city-state involved interaction with others, solidarity, association, union. What is more, for the Ancient Greeks, individuals not involved in politics in the broader sense of the term, in other words those not involved in the life of the city-state, were useless citizens. The Europe of tomorrow should be like a city which has struck the right balance between the individual and the collective, avoiding both social tyranny directed at the individual but also individual tyranny directed at society.
Every individual must be free, respected, with full rights, but at the same time the right to organise freely in the society in which you live, and to negotiate collectively, must be encouraged and given the weight it deserves.
According to the Treaty, the Committee "shall consist of representatives of organisations". It is thus not a committee of experts. I would like to clarify that point, because we are often compared to experts or even lobbyists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Again, according to the Treaty, the Committee's role is to communicate the views of employers, the employed, trade unions and other parties representative of civil society, notably in socio-economic, civic, professional and cultural areas. Luca Jahier and Conny Reuter reminded us of that this morning.
The European Economic and Social Committee also offers a solution to the question of lobbying. Each of us represents, with the greatest transparency, the organisation from which he or she comes. We do not hide the fact that we are working for businesses - Jacek talked about that this morning, as well as Philippe, Irini and others; and we, the representatives of employees, never hide the interests that we represent. Luca and the members of Group III have never hidden their membership of their associations, their work on behalf of the interests they represent.
We are proud to carry the standards of our associations and we act with transparency. We do not haunt the corridors of power in the hope of influencing some official or other in the way he drafts some piece of Union legislation. We publish our opinions in the Official Journal; our debates are public and our documents can be consulted by all members of the public. And so, dear members of the Committee, please never allow people to compare us to lobbyists: we are representatives of organised civil society.
I could go on for quite a long time, but then I might be accused of "talking my own book" and speaking only about the Committee. And so I will say no more about the role of the Committee in the Union and go on to say a few words about Europe.
As you know, there were some good things in the Treaty of Rome, but more recently Article 2 of the Treaty of Lisbon states that, and I quote, "the Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples". Since the establishment of the first European Community, the European Coal and Steel Community, in 1952, we have gone from six to 28 Member States and, who knows, in the future we may be 29 or 30 and we may succeed in turning a geographical Europe into a political, social and economic Europe.
The Community of six was genuinely attractive, so attractive that more states wanted to join, not fewer. For various reasons. I will not quote them all, but I will quote some, which were very simple: the area of the European Communities was an area of peace, freedom, democracy, dignity and well-being. An area which, little by little, put in place measures to guarantee a degree of economic and social cohesion. The Union was so successful at that time that it came to be regarded almost as "for ever", as Jacek correctly pointed out this morning. Unfortunately, as you know very well, nothing is for ever. Nothing.
The love you have for your partner, your wife, or your husband as the case may be, is not necessarily for ever. As you know well, love has to be maintained. It has to be nourished. Similarly, the Union has to be maintained if it is to last. But for the last few years, our Union has been sick: it is experiencing a deep and serious crisis. The economic and financial difficulties have highlighted the weaknesses in its governance, the inadequacy of its integration, the tangible risk of serious dislocations and the loss of that which constituted the strength of the European project: the support of its peoples and the enthusiasm of a large proportion of the public.
I, together with many others - my friend and colleague, Jean Lapeyre, who is here, for example - can remember a time when the people of Europe were virtually unanimous in their support for European integration, the time of the Europe of nine, ten or twelve - I did not know the Europe of six. Isn't that right, Jean?
Our Union today is not so united, and as the president of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, rightly said, it has meaning only if it focuses on people.
It is through entrepreneurship, work but also solidarity that the European Union is being built. There has been a terrible lack of solidarity in certain areas in Europe recently, particularly with regard to the admission of refugees. It has even been completely forgotten, although it is one of the pillars of our Union. Is not through becoming inward-looking that we will achieve the competitiveness that we are always hearing about. It is not by becoming inward-looking that we will reduce unemployment and poverty, that we will stop the nationalists, the extremists, the racists from winning over vulnerable people with false promises and "golden dawns", to use a phrase which is sadly much used in my country. These forces want only one thing, for the Union to be broken up, dismantled. We can, however, stop those who preach hatred in their tracks by sending a clear signal to show that the Union is there for the people, by showing, with courage and ingenuity, that there is strength in unity.