Closing off markets betrays EU ideals, McCreevy says

"When enlargement came, what did the core member states understand that they were agreeing to? One of the fundamental freedoms of the whole Treaty is the freedom of movement of people and people being able to work", the ex-Irish finance minister told EUobserver in Strasbourg on Wednesday (8 June).

"The countries who signed up for the deal coming in will feel short-changed that those that are in the club for a while will want to keep the club as it was", he added. "That's not what the deal was".

The commissioner's remarks come in the context of a heated debate on the services directive - one of the main files in his brief.

The Polish plumber

Some supporters of the free market model are fearful that France and Germany could try to kill off the bill in response to voters' concerns about the Polish plumber and so-called social dumping, with the plumber coming to embody French ideas of undesirable competition from eastern Europe in recent weeks.

Mr McCreevy suggested that European leaders should have the political courage to take the long-term view on Europe's economic health instead of focusing on day-to-day opinion polls.

"You will often find that the leaders who took the tough decisions, despite all the hostility that came from the media, the protest groups, I'd be surprised if you didn't conclude that they're the people who survived and got re-elected", he noted. "By the time the elections came, people seemed to have more respect for them".

The commissioner voiced concern that in the current climate of high unemployment and the "trauma" of the French and Dutch referendums, some old member states are beginning to lapse into nostalgia about the social and economic conditions of the previous few decades.

"A big worry is, in this whole debate, that we go back further and try to retrench", he explained. "We all get very happy, most of us anyway, drinking out of the same cup and we all have a favourite part of the house".

He added that the services directive has become a victim of the very economic problems it is designed to address.

"If unemployment in Europe was at four and a half percent today in the major member states this directive wouldn't get two hours of air time", Mr McCreevy said. "People would be seeing it as an opportunity, like what's happening in the member state I know best [Ireland]".

Services bill to release economic potential

But with 70 percent of the European economy based on services, the sector should be opened up in order to "release the economic potential" of Europe in the face of powerful competition from the US, China and India.

Ireland, together with the UK, are among the few old member states that opted to open their doors to workers from eastern Europe instead of plumping for the transition period clause in the accession treaties.

"I don't ever say that this type of way of doing things [the free market model] is the only way, but I believe it's the way that has brought success and wealth", the commissioner indicated, while pointing out that the extreme form of European economic socialism, the centrally-controlled Soviet economy, "didn't work".

The commissioner believes that the EU's social model cannot be sustained unless the way is smoothed for international capital to flow back into Europe.

"Standing still and the status quo is not an option, therefore we must endeavour to do something, that at least should be accepted as a starting point", he stated.

He noted that it is a "supreme irony" of the services directive debate that the bill was put forward in good faith by a socialist commission under Romano Prodi and is currently being put through by an executive that has signalled willingness to accept amendments.

The commissioner voiced optimism that, despite the recent negative turn in the discussion, many European leaders are "accepting that change has to take place" and there remains a possibility to agree on "a few simple things" to drive economic change forward.

"The debate that we have in the European Parliament and the wider stakeholders realise that there should be a directive", he said.

Some will suffer

But Mr McCreevy was at pains to point out that the economic problem is too complex to be tackled by any single "prescription" or by "pontificating" from the ninth floor of the European Commission's Berlaymont building in Brussels.

"I know from my own political experience, how difficult it is in a representative democracy, in any developed democracy, to implement these changes", he indicated, adding "what will work in the French economy may not necessarily work, say, in the Polish economy or in the Irish economy or in the Swedish economy".

The commissioner admitted that certain groupings and areas will "suffer worse than others" in the restructuring process, expressing sympathy for less competitive individuals who might lose their jobs in old member states.

"It's the real people with real jobs, families, mortgages, children to feed and educate, that are affected", the father of seven from the small Irish town of Sallins said.

Mr McCreevy stressed that in his vision of European society, people who are not able to look after themselves "will have to be looked after well and given dignity".

He added that "Despite criticism of me in the Irish media, I would not be the arch-liberal, the best man wins, the best woman wins. I'm not like that. I personally come from very humble stock".