EUROPE: Street Disturbances Form Backdrop to 28-Country Summit

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

BARCELONA, Spain, Mar 15 2002 (IPS) - Clashes between police and protesters provided the backdrop Friday to the start of the 28- nation summit in which Europe’s leaders are debating the future of the European Union (EU) and increasing development aid to poor countries.

The meeting of the Council of Europe, comprised of the heads of state and government of the 15 EU countries, opened with the speeches of the leaders of the 13 applicant nations that hope to join the bloc.

The protests began Thursday when more than 100,000 people showed up for a demonstration called by the European Trade Union Confederation.

Violent clashes occurred both Thursday and Friday between police and protesters, 24 of whom were arrested.

Nevertheless, the protest organisers said there were no incidents at the main demonstrations, which were peaceful.

The EU leaders will commit themselves to increasing official development aid (ODA) in each country to at least 0.33 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2006.

The target for rich countries to assign 0.7 percent of GDP to development aid, agreed on three decades ago in the United Nations, is only met today by Denmark (1.06 percent), the Netherlands (0.82 percent), Sweden (0.81 percent), and Luxembourg (0.7 percent).

At the opposite end of the spectrum in Europe are Italy (0.13 percent), Greece (0.22 percent), Austria (0.22 percent), Spain (0.24 percent), Portugal (0.26 percent) and Germany (0.27 percent).

But if all of the countries meet the target, average ODA would increase to 0.39 percent of GDP in the 15-member bloc, and the amount of aid would be much greater, given the size of the German economy.

The president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, underlined at the summit the need to improve legislative procedures and give the bloc more effective leadership.

Cox was arguing in favour of accelerating the institutional reforms currently being studied by the European Convention, a body that is presided over by former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing.

The Spanish delegation wants the bloc’s six-month rotating presidency to be abolished. A draft document presented by the EU foreign policy chief, Spanish diplomat Javier Solana, advocates a two and a half or three-year presidency to be exercised by a group of four to five heads of state or government.

Cox said the EU could not wait two and a half years to increase employment or free up its markets – a referral to the timeframe set out for implementation of the reforms proposed by the European Convention, which will coincide with the enlargement of the EU to at least 27 states.

Meanwhile, a demonstration staged Friday under the slogan “Capitalism is not reformed, it is destroyed”, carried out by Març-Atack, a group that expresses its “hatred” towards Spain’s conservative Prime Minister José María Aznar, ended with clashes between some 200 demonstrators and the police.

Some of the participants in the protest threw stones and street benches at anti-riot police.

Incidents also occurred in a protest organised Friday by the “Campaign Against the Europe of Capital”, outside the Sagrada Familia church, a Barcelona landmark, and in a march held under the slogan “The Rich Also Cry” on the Ramblas, the city’s traditional promenade.

The anti-riot agents used truncheons and rubber bullets to break up the protests.

Unidentified individuals scattered nails on several Barcelona streets, putting a number of buses out of service, and threw flaming tires on the subway tracks.

The police arrested five protesters who turned over a car to express their solidarity with imprisoned members of the ETA Basque separatist terrorist organisation.

Some 300 young people from the so-called Caza-Lobbies organisation gathered in downtown Barcelona to hold a “playful, festive and peaceful demonstration” outside the locales of several big corporations.

The Aznar government deployed a heavy security detail, bringing in police from other parts of Spain, in anticipation of further protests Saturday.

The summit will study a proposal formulated by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive organ, and Spain, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, that would allow companies to freely choose their electricity supplier starting in 2003, with that freedom extended to all consumers, including households, by 2005.

Germany and France are opposed to opening up national energy markets to competition, although France would be willing to allow companies to choose freely, but not until 2004, and without any commitment to complete liberalisation, according to members of the French delegation.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin expressed his determination to defend the public nature of power companies (all of France’s electricity is produced by state enterprises) and to keep the opening up of the energy markets from moving ahead too fast.

The same differences are seen with respect to proposals to loosen up labour legislation, which Spain and Italy are pushing with the aim of fighting unemployment. France and Germany, on the other hand, which have social democratic governments, are keen on safeguarding labour guarantees, a point on which they coincide with the European Trade Union Confederation.

What the 15 EU member countries do agree on is demanding an immediate lifting of Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestine President Yasser Arafat.