Why Do some Labour Alliances Succeed in Politicizing Europe across Borders? A Comparison of the Right2Water and Fair Transport European Citizens' Initiatives

Abstract

Under what conditions can organized labour successfully politicize the European integration process across borders? To answer this question, we compare the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECIs) of two European trade union federations: EPSU's successful Right2Water ECI and ETF's unsuccessful Fair Transport ECI. Our comparison reveals that actor-centred factors matternamely, unions' ability to create broad coalitions. Successful transnational labour campaigns, however, also depend on structural conditions, namely, the prevailing mode of EU integration pressures faced by unions at a given time. Whereas the Right2Water ECI pre-emptively countered commodification attempts by the European Commission in water services, the Fair Transport ECI attempted to ensure fair working conditions after most of the transport sector had been liberalized. Vertical EU integration attempts that commodify public services are thus more likely to generate successful transnational counter-movements than the horizontal integration pressures on wages and working conditions that followed earlier successful EU liberalization drives.

The impact of direct democracy on policy change: insights from European citizens’ initiatives

“…In closing, we should note that our relatively positive assessment does not mean that we are uncritical of the ECI as an instrument to overcome the EU's democracy deficit (Kandyla and Gherghina, 2018;Greenwood, 2019;Kandyla, 2020;Szabó et al, 2021). We do not oppose scenarios for hardening the weak instrument of an ECI and making it more binding (Papadopoulos, 2005).…”

“…Considering that it was the member states' opposition that prevented the adoption of a European policy on soil protection, the ECI served as a justification of the revival of the political attempt to overcome the impediments that may have existed previously. Thus, this case clearly demonstrates the importance of having political allies (in this case most importantly the EP) that support the demands of a given ECI (see Greenwood, 2019;Szabó et al, 2021). The transformative potential of the policy change that could materialise in response to these recent developments and the ECI is relatively low.…”

“…First, in line with their formal design, we contend that ECIs can directly bring about policy change at the EU level. This perspective has been assessed by several studies (Kandyla and Gherghina 2018;Kandyla, 2020;Szabó et al, 2021). The overarching finding of this body of research is that there exist only few instances of direct policy change induced by the EU.…”

“…A second illustration for outcome 2 is provided by Right2Water. This initiative is the most successful and best examined case in the literature (Kandyla and Gherghina, 2018;Kandyla, 2020;Tosun and Triebskorn, 2020;Szabó et al, 2021;Tosun and Schaub, 2021). The initiative formulated a wide set of policy demands, which most supporters and the public primarily associated with forbidding water and sanitation services to be privatised.…”

Book Review: Social Class in Europe. New Inequalities in the Old World

“…The numerous difficulties involved in organising a unified European social movement are rightly underlined by the authors. But in our view the legitimate call to create such a movement has greater chance of being heard and followed if the conditions under which 'organized labour [can] successfully politicize the European integration process across borders' (Szabó et al, 2022) are highlighted and discussed as well.…”