International Branch of the British Labour Party
PES and sister parties
FEPS ‘Call to Europe’ event on 29-30 June
Jun 23rd
If we did not have a united Europe nowadays, would there be any reason to bother creating it?
This is the fundamental question which FEPS, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, will try to answer during its Call to Europe conference on 29-30 June in Brussels. Through this conference, FEPS, a progressive think tank that seeks answers about the future of Europe and to better promote the European project, aims to find a new vision for a political, social and international European Union.
More information is available here.
Brussels Co-operative Party AGM
May 24th
The Co-operative Party in Brussels will hold its AGM on Tuesday 7 June at 19:30. Should you wish to attend, please contact the Brussels Labour Secretary, who will send you the address for the meeting.
Joint meeting with Irish Labour Party this Wednesday
May 24th
Join us for this week’s Brussels Labour meeting:
Wednesday 25 May – PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE!
Joint meeting with the Irish Labour Party, with guest speaker Proinsias de Rossa MEP
CHANGE OF VENUE: Le Frère de Martin, Rue Charles Martel 6, 1000 Brussels
CHANGE OF TIME: Venue open from 19:30 – Meeting at 20:00
Also coming up:
Wednesday 29 June
Policy Forum input with Ellie Reeves, CLP representative, National Executive Committee
An opportunity to discuss Brussels Labour’s contribution to the Labour Party consultations ‘Partnership into Power’ and ‘Refounding Labour’
Carpe Diem, Avenue de Tervuren 13, 1040 Etterbeek (near Merode Metro station)
19:00: Venue open
19:30: Meeting begins
Join us on Thursday for the sister parties reception!
Feb 6th
Here’s a look at some of our upcoming events:
New Year reception of Democrats and Socialist sister parties in Brussels
Thursday 10 Feburary 2011 | Residence Palace restaurant, Rue de la Loi, 1000 Brussels (just behind the Justus Lipsius building) | 18:30 – 21:00
Please click here for more details
Brussels Labour AGM + Commissioner Štefan Füle, European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy
Wednesday 23 March 2011 | Further details to follow
‘Treat the cause, not the symptoms’ – Damanaki’s antidote to ‘austerity mania’
Oct 26th
Maria Damanaki, Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries
Social justice, solidarity and the danger of deep public cuts were the issues tackled by Maria Damanaki, the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, when she spoke to Brussels Labour in September 2010. The timing of her speech on the European Debt Crisis and the European Left was particularly apt: the Commissioner had just emerged from talks on the financial package of responses to the banking and financial crisis, while the debt crisis in her native Greece remained a core concern for the European Union.
The Commissioner’s frank and critical approach to the subject reflected one of her main messages: the need for socialists to speak out and tackle the debt crisis head-on so as to reclaim ground lost to the centre-right in diagnosing and treating the problem. For Mrs Damanaki, socialists have understood better that the problem lay in poorly-regulated financial markets, but somehow our voices have been drowned out in the argument over solutions. It is painful to see how centre-right governments are putting forward our diagnosis and claiming it as their own whilst at the same time gambling with jobs and livelihoods of working people through proposing deep public sector cuts which may put future growth at risk. More >
Labour Party conference: FEPS meetings
Sep 26th
Next Left: Insecurity, fairness and the new social democracy
Monday 27 September, 0800 to 0930 // Lord Mayors Parlour, Manchester Town Hall, 2 Albert Square, Manchester M60 2JT
John Denham MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,
Dr Alfred Gusenbauer, Former Chancellor of Austria,
Catherine Fieschi, Director of Counterpoint
Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society
With the support of the Fabian society
European Social Democracy: The Path Back To Power
Monday 27 September, 1230-1430 // Midland Hotel, Alexandra B
Roger Liddle, Policy Network
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Party of European Socialists
Claude Moraes MEP, EPLP Deputy Leader
Roland Rudd, Business for New Europe
Rushanara Ali MP
In cooperation with the European Parliamentary Labour Party
Commissioner Damanaki’s speech to Brussels Labour in full
Sep 24th
On Wednesday 15 September, Maria Damanaki, the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, spoke to Brussels Labour. Here is the full transcript of her speech:
The European debt crisis – lessons for the left
Dear colleagues/comrades, I would like to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to address you today. I think it is very important that we increase our cooperation inside the European socialist family. I know that the Brussels branch has been very active all this years, and has played a historic role in our political family. I thank you for it. Such collaboration is particularly important in this period when the majority of European governments are led by more conservative voices.
I agreed to speak today about the European debt crisis, a fundamental problem that we need to tackle urgently. Many in the socialist family insist that the European debt crisis is one element of a much wider issue, namely the European economic crisis. And rightly so. Look at the forest, not just the tree.
We should be careful however not to let this very valid point dilute the importance we ascribe to the debt crisis, and to the concrete responses we must take. Look also at the tree, not just the forest. More >
Sp.a conference
Apr 4th
by Belinda Pyke, Chair, Brussels Labour
Sp.a, the Flemish socialist party, held its annual conference in mid-October in Brussels. Frazer Clarke and I took part in the programme for international visitors on behalf of the Labour Party. The Party’s international secretary, Said El-Khadraoui MEP, greeted visitors and chaired the opening session, a panel on social democracy in Europe. The other panellists were René Cuperus from the Dutch socialists (and an unsuccessful candidate in the EP elections) and Javier Moreno, MEP between 2004 and 2009 and now Secretary General of the Global Progressive Forum.
The central question for the discussion was why, despite some political successes in recent national elections (notably around the edges of Europe – Greece, Norway, Portugal…), the overall results for socialists were still poor – cf the EP election results – so how can socialists become once again the biggest political force in Europe. Not surprisingly there were no clear answers, and the discussion swung between the pessimism of Cuperus (whose thesis is that socialism is threatened by a pan-European populist revolt to which Christian Democrat parties are seen as offering a more stable solution: see his recent article) and the optimism of Moreno who pointed to the basis for the PSOE success ( a leader, a programme, a plan to mobilise the voters – and a record of delivery once in government). Their views differed too as to whether the EU was an obstacle (Cuperus seeing it as inherently technocratic and illiberal) and Moreno arguing more for the opportunities it presents if underpinned by a clear social democratic vision. He gave the example of the financial crisis and the Forum’s recently launched campaign on financial reform.
The afternoon was devoted to workshops. One of these, on family policy, included a speaker from the UK, Kate Green from the Child Poverty Action Group, who reported on the development of family-related policy under Labour. She described the impact of the minimum wage and of the childcare strategy pointing out that, however, the focus on work as a way out of poverty had meant that greater attention was being given to the quantity of jobs and not enough to their quality. She noted too that there can be contradictions between policies for children and those which support greater labour market participation, citing the example of pressure on lone mothers to return to work yet incentives for mothers in couples to stay longer out of the labour market. In her view, there is an opportunity for a new debate on the left on all these issues especially at a time of recession.
