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For debate in the Standing Committee see Rule 15 of the Rules of Procedure
Pour débat à la Commission permanente – Voir article 15 du Règlement
Doc. 8872
16 October 2000
Development of a new social system
Report
Committee on Parliamentary and Public Relations
Rapporteur: Ms Elisa Pozza Tasca, Italy, Liberal, Democratic and Reformers' Group
Summary
The Assembly notes that the market society involves unwelcome trends that go against values such as democracy, solidarity and citizenship. The Assembly therefore suggests measures not only for a greater regulation of the market but also for a reinforcement and democratisation of international institutions.
In this context, in addition to the role and influence of associations and non–governmental organisations, the Assembly believes that Europe is the most suitable “arena” to try to develop a new social model where public authorities, market and civil society could coexist.
The Assembly therefore suggests to the Committee of Ministers that it begins to give thought to this question, in particular by organising a Round Table, and to take all the necessary measures to help non–governmental organisations continue their task.
I Draft recommendation
1. The Assembly notes, in the light of the conclusions of the Conference on “Market-oriented society, democracy, citizenship and solidarité: an area of confrontation?” that the development and expansion of the market economy on a widespread basis over the past twenty years has had only a very limited effect in generating broader prosperity and growth in employment.
2. Indeed, many countries have seen increasing poverty and social exclusion, accompanied by a weakening of democracy, as a result of a kind of erosion of state power and of civil society’s ability to express its views. In some countries, the effects in the long term could threaten social cohesion and fundamental rights, which are central concerns of the Council of Europe.
3. The Assembly believes that it is necessary to place some restrictions on the free market and to preserve the essential function of democratic institutions, as the market-oriented society does not constitute a sufficiently broad political environment and can involve unwelcome trends that often go against values such as democracy, solidarity and citizenship.
4. The Assembly therefore calls for greater regulation of the market in order to guarantee the economic security of the population.
5. It also underlines the crucial role played by associations, co-operatives and non–governmental organisations in acting as social mediators between the public and representative and decision-making bodies, and as forums for learning and exercising citizenship.
6. The Assembly believes that Europe may be the most suitable “arena” for the development of a new social model based on solidarity and involving the coexistence of public authorities, the market and civil society.
7. The Assembly therefore recommends that the Committee of Ministers:
i. organise a “round table” aimed at launching detailed discussions on the requirements for establishing a civic, economic and social forum for European democracy;
ii. begin giving thought to ways of strengthening participatory democracy and consider the means for facilitating access to information, transparency and communication;
iii. take all the necessary measures in education, law and taxation to help non–governmental organisations fulfil their task.
II. Explanatory memorandum by Ms Pozza Tasca
1. Introduction
The conference “Market-oriented society, democracy, citizenship and solidarity: an area of confrontation?” was jointly organised by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Parliamentary and Public Relations and the Liaison Committee of NGOs enjoying consultative status with the Council of Europe, as one of the events marking the Council’s 50th anniversary.
Since the Council of Europe was founded in London in May 1949 – and indeed ever since it was planned at the congress in The Hague in May 1948 – its guiding principle has remained unchanged: to promote and protect the rule of law, basic rights and freedoms, and pluralist democracy. This was the reason for setting up the Council and continues to be its raison d’être.
After the second world war, the threats facing law-governed states and democracy began to change, confirming that democracy has to be constantly fought for, regardless of progress in giving individuals more freedom and more effective means of participation.
Democracy, which was one of the keywords for the conference, now has to face with distortions of concepts which are theoretically part of the same ideological family. Take free enterprise, establishment of a climate conducive to business growth, reduced state intervention – things which ought to spread prosperity and consequently to propagate the whole range of freedoms but which some of the speakers at the conference - without necessarily challenging the principles underpinning them - saw as having been overdone and as posing a threat to democracy and therefore to fundamental freedoms.
The conference had the merit of opening up discussion on these issues and their impact on social cohesion and the functioning of democracy. As well as generating debate on ideas, it highlighted concrete experiences, presented as ingredients of a policy able to reconcile competition and solidarity between individuals and social groups.
From the discussions it was clear that economic problems could not be dissociated from social problems or questions linked to the functioning of democracy, and that interaction between them had to be taken into account if concrete solutions were to be found.
The participants were unanimous in recognising the general “triumph”, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, of the market-oriented society and its consequences for all our societies. Free enterprise, market deregulation and developing competitiveness and technological innovation should have brought widespread prosperity and increased employment. Yet the fact was that the growth in trade and economies had caused poverty and social exclusion to increase and weakened fundamental freedoms and democracy.
This situation, a potential source of tension and conflict, endangers states’ powers of arbitration and threatens social cohesion and the fundamental rights which lie at the heart of the Council of Europe’s concerns.
Ms Méda, the general rapporteur for the conference, recalled that the initiative of debating the prospects for peaceful coexistence between the market-oriented society and solidarity was taken by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, as had the decision to involve NGOs, which in our opinion need to become full participants in political life.
2. The main points to emerge from the conference
For detailed coverage of all these questions, the reader is referred to the proceedings of the conference, which contain the twenty reports and a record of the discussions of the 400 participants and were published by the Council of Europe in December 1999.
My report will concentrate on four questions which were raised at the conference and should, in my opinion, be central to our work of drawing up clear proposals on the roles of public authorities and civil society.
I should like to begin by referring to the three pillars of society, to use the expression employed in Strasbourg by the President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Professor Rifkin 1: government, the market and civil society2.
The first question is whether there can be any arena for encounter (and therefore discussion and mutual recognition) between the market-oriented society and citizenship, democracy and solidarity, and whether such an arena can exist without far-reaching reform of government (and other branches of authority) and the way the market operates. The answer that was given was very clear: the conditions for it must be set up and the reform carried out, and the Council of Europe therefore plainly has a responsibility to give the political guidance essential for establishing such an arena. Given states’ inability to “govern” the economy or society, or respond to the effects of globalisation, the need was stressed to:
- limit the market’s role;
- reaffirm the essential function of democratic institutions;
- widen the definition and scope of the concept of citizenship to take in the international level.
The second question is that of defining – no mere academic exercise, for it has important implications - the market-oriented society. Some participants even opposed the idea of associating the word “society” with the word “market”, rejecting any suggestion that the social order is or should be the fruit of market self-regulation.
The vast majority of participants, whether they came from political circles or civil society, said how attached they were to the idea of the community, of communities with their own cultures and histories, communities with shared rights and duties and institutions, and spoke of their firm belief that the market-oriented society could not possibly be a political goal or a foundation of true democracy.
The third question is the role of national, European and international authorities. For returning the market to its proper place, the conference put forward a large number of proposals which only very marginally concern the responsibilities and the mandate of the Council of Europe. These proposals include:
- an international conference to regulate the market and provide economic security for the world’s populations;
- setting up a world regulating authority;
- introducing a 0.1 or 0.2% tax (the so-called Tobin tax) on international financial transactions3;
- doing away with tax havens and harmonising the European tax system to avoid “social dumping”;
- democratising and reforming international institutions and making their workings more open;
- guaranteeing equal access to public goods and services and recognising that basic resources, such as water, the environment and the natural heritage, are public assets;
- ensuring that wealth is redistributed by taxing hi-tech companies.
In addition to these proposals, the conference demanded nation-states, and especially a politically and socially stable Europe, that once again developed ambitious new social, cultural and educational policies, social contracts, collective agreements and high-value-added industrial policies.
The fourth question is more relevant to the Council of Europe - development of democracy so as to progress beyond traditional forms of political representation towards more advanced forms of direct involvement of individuals and voluntary organisations.
These two forms of democracy were considered to complement each other: the conference agreed that voluntary organisations, NGOs and the third sector generally constituted an instrument for strengthening democracy and giving it fresh impetus.
The participants stressed that voluntary organisations, co-operatives and NGOs were in the best position to know what people wanted, present their demands to governments and act as social mediators between the population and the authorities that represented it and made decisions. They are also bodies in which citizenship can be learned about and practised, a crucial point at a time when it is becoming increasingly important to develop European citizenship, awareness of common values, acceptance of our differences, and knowledge and acknowledgment of one another’s cultures, languages and histories.
3. Civil society, the future of Europe
The discussion on the role of civil society in Europe was the Council of Europe’s most significant contribution to the conference, possibly even its most significant contribution to date, along with protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, to European construction.
The conference emphasised that neither globalisation nor the emergence of civil society is anything new: as far as civil society in Europe is concerned, one only has to think of the movements for peace, decolonisation, women’s rights, the environment and consumers’ rights of the 1960s and 1970s.
Like a river which sometimes disappears underground and then flows back to the surface, civil society, after a dormant period, reappeared when the Soviet Empire collapsed, and played a key role in the development of democracy in central and eastern Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly took various initiatives in this area and adopted policy positions of the greatest importance for all European countries.
In response to market excesses and the hazards of globalisation, civil society recently made a forceful reappearance in Seattle, then in Davos, Washington and London and finally in Brussels, gearing up for the summits in Geneva (the United Nations General Assembly special session on social development), Prague (the annual general assemblies of the IMF and the World Bank), and Biarritz and Nice (meetings of the European Council under the French presidency)4.
We are witnessing a further stage in action that began in Mexico twenty-five years ago (at the United Nations summit on the role of women) and went on to make its mark at all the major international conferences: Rio (on the environment), Peking (on women’s rights), Copenhagen (on the social dimension), South Africa and Brussels (on the information society), Cairo (on demography) and Stockholm (on culture).
In Seattle, although many contradictions were evident, European civil society had a hand in establishing common values which Europe can uphold at international level.
Events in recent years have shown Europe to be possibly the most suitable place for developing a new conception of solidarity and coexistence between government, the market and civil society.
This is possible for the “smaller” Europe of the European Union, which is now opening its doors to the new democracies in central and eastern Europe, is advantaged by its political and economic programme and the rules it has established over fifty years of Community integration, but also has the disadvantage of a system which does not yet have clear underlying common values or clear political, geographical and cultural boundaries.
It is even more possible for the “greater Europe” of the Council of Europe, which must put forward ideas and proposals on more advanced forms of participatory democracy.
The two Europes, each acting within its own field of responsibility, can temper the disordered and unruly expansion of free trade and the free market by imposing an institutional and regulatory framework on it.
The two Europes, each in its own sphere, must develop the mandate laid down in treaties and conventions (the Treaty of London, the Rome Convention and the Turin Revised Social Charter in the Council of Europe’s case, the Treaty of Amsterdam in the European Union’s), European legal insstruments which, thanks to the machinery of democracy and the influence of civil society, represent a considerable progress.
One of the reasons why Europe has become a social, cultural and environmental model with common regulations is that European civil society has fought ably for values which today underpin all European law.
In order to understand the role which civil society has played over the ten years that separate the end of the Soviet empire from the beginning of the third millennium, and to help define its role for the future, three factors, in my opinion, must be taken into consideration:
- “global” 5imits and opportunities, particularly the risks of unregulated globalisation and the possibility of developing new forms of international solidarity 6a
- a balance between ideology and politics, plus the priorities of civil society at the start of the third millennium, especially as a form of “resistance” to the power of government and the market;
- civil society as a network for solidarity and agency for dialogue and partnership, an asset for 21st-century Europe.
The conference confirmed that the time has come to complete the “European home” by adding a third pillar alongside government and the market: civil society, which will give Europe new resources to draw on7.
4. Conclusions
Many of the conclusions drawn and proposals made during the conference exceed the scope of the Parliamentary Assembly’s political and institutional responsibilities and, more generally, of the Council of Europe’s functions and authority. One of the most important conclusions, however, was the emphatic denunciation by all the participants of the gulf between the effects of globalisation and governments’ lack of vision and failure to offer proposals.
For their part, NGOs, and especially European NGOs, should strengthen their action capability and ensure greater co-ordination so as to be able to play an important role if governments are incapable of realising how “alienated” they have become and the consequences of this alienation (corruption, the undermining of the authority of the law, ineffective laws, and so on).
The Council of Europe, through the discussions and proposals of the Parliamentary Assembly, can help to establish an arena – the conference’s central concern - where the market can be challenged by civil society. With that in mind, the Assembly stresses the importance of a socially responsible economy and the need for the priorities of economic policy to be set by elected representatives of the people and not by the market8.
Consequently, the Parliamentary Assembly recommends that the Committee of Ministers:
1. organise a round table aimed at launching detailed discussions on the requirements for establishing a civic, economic and social forum for European democracy. At the round table the Council of Europe and NGOs will have to look closely at the whole question of partnership between the Council of Europe and civil society, take stock of relations between the Council of Europe and NGOs during the first fifty years of the Organisation’s existence and suggest appropriate improvements, given new European realities and the increased responsibilities of “Greater Europe”;
2. begin giving thought to how to strengthen participatory democracy9 as being the essential complement of representative democracy. Among matters to be taken into consideration, particular importance should be given to access to information, transparency and communication;
3. in education, law and taxation, seek ways - taking whatever measures are necessary - of helping NGOs fulfil their task;
4. take part in discussions on the drafting of a “contract for society”10 at European level as a stage in constitutionalisation of European construction, thereby acting on the proposals made by the Committee of Wise Persons chaired by Mr Mario Soares.
*
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Reporting committee: Committee on Parliamentary and Public Relations
Reference to committee: Order No. 489 (1993)
Draft recommendation adopted by the committee on 26 September 2000
Members of the committee: MM. Mignon (Chairman), Loutfi (Vice-Chairman), Michel (Vice-Chairman), Wielowieyski (Vice-Chairman), Adam, Attard Montalto (Alternate: Debono Grech), Ms Auken (Alternate : Mrs Soendergaard), Bartoš, Mrs Belohorska (Alternate : Mrs Angelovicova), MM. Browne, Brunhart, Sir Sydney Chapman, MM. Christodoulides, Dagys, Dimas, Dokle, Dzasokhov, Eversdijk, Gogava, Gross, Haupert, Kuptsov, Laakso (Alternate: Korkeaoja), Lacão, Lauricella, Lekberg, Mularoni, Myrvoll, Nagy, Niculescu, Mrs Paegle, Pahor, Popescu, Mrs Postoico, Mr Provera (Alternate: Mrs Pozza Tasca), Mrs Ragnarsdottir, MM. Santkin, Skrabalo, Mrs G. Smith (Alternate: Hancock), MM. Tanik, Westenthaler, Wodarg, Yanez-Barnuevo, N… ("the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia") (Alternate: Mrs Markovic-Dimova).
N.B. The names of those members who were present at the meeting are printed in italics
Secretary to the committee: Ms Nolllinger
1 This expression is also used by the Permanent Forum on Civil Society in its “Manifesto 2000” and applies to the whole of society and not just its economic aspects.
2 There is now a huge amount of international and national material on the concept of civil society. One of the main publications at international level is Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato’s “Civil Society and Political Theory”, published by Mit Press/Cambridge (Fourth edition: 1997). The first publication on civil society in Europe was “Vers une société civile européenne”, edited by Jean-Claude Boual (Editions de l’Aube, Paris, October 1999), which contains a series of major articles on civil society in Europe (see, for example, the chapter on Germany by Jutta Hergenhan).
3 See Mr Tobin’s paper to the conference on this subject.
4 These initiatives used the instruments of globalisation and particularly the instruments of the information society. Information on the preparatory phases of Seattle, Davos, Washington, London, Geneva, Brussels and Prague can be found on NGO Internet sites such as www.ifg.org, www.50years.org, www.globalexchange.org or www.j2000.org. The International European Movement (www.europeanmovement.org) and the Permanent Forum on Civil Society are organising a major conference on European citizenship to be held in Nice just before the meeting of the European Council, at which decisions are to be taken on reform of the European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
5 Edgar Morin used the expression “first global generation”.
6 On these issues, and in particular on the relations between globalisation and individuals, see Zygmunt Baumann, “Globalization: human dimension”, Cambridge, 1998 and Noam Chomsky, “Profit over People”, Boston, 1999.
7 See the European Commission discussion paper “The Commission and Non-Governmental Organisations: Building a Stronger Partnership” (Brussels, 18 January 2000, COM(2000) 11 def.).
8 See the conclusions on Theme 2 of the conference.
9 See the conclusions on Theme 1 of the conference.
10 See the conclusions on theme 3 of the conference.