PES: A Global New Deal

03/04/2009 - People first - Time for a Global New Deal.
It’s time to put people first. For too many years globalization has been dominated by fundamental inequalities, instability and unsustainability.


Today’s crisis is not just another economic downturn. Today a systemic crisis is bursting across the globe: a crisis in an unregulated global financial market system that sacrificed long-term investment, jobs, wages, environment and the general well being of the planet and its people for the benefit of a few.

Millions of people in developing and developed countries, especially women, are already paying a high price for the crisis. Global unemployment is expected to increase by at least 75 million. Millions of workers worldwide face a threat to their wages, a rise in the number of working poor living on less than USD2 per day, and an increase in inequality between women and men. Hundreds of thousands of children could die this year because their families will be plunged into desperate poverty.

The crisis comes on the top of other crises: climate change, AIDS, food crisis, poverty, corruption, wars, and a lack of democracy and freedom of expression in many countries. The gap between global problems and global solutions is unacceptably and unsustainably wide: the world response to climate change falls well short of what is required, millions of people are being displaced, a world deal for trade and development is still in painful labour, and inequalities are widening. Millions live in poverty without access to decent work, housing or basic medical care while others indulge shocking greed.

We have a clear choice:

either each country retrenches in individual and isolationist reaction, hindering trade, postponing the transition to a renewable and energy efficient economy and reducing development aid because they seem too expensive for public budgets.
or international cooperation and solidarity between all countries to sustain demand, growth and decent jobs: basing a new future on our progressive values.
Together it is possible to change the face of globalisation. To create a new fairness, and a new respect for the planet. Today we are calling not just for recovery, not just for the unbalanced growth of the past but for a new sustainable development.

Not just the same old inequalities but a new sense that we are all equals. The blind pursuit of short term profits should never again blight the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Over recent decades, progressive forces have been warning about the accumulation of risks and injustices for people and the planet. Now, the fundamental and systemic failures of the current economic system are undeniable: the time has come to restate our values, our vision and our proposals for a new direction, transforming our societies, improving the lives of our and future generations.

Our values are social justice with more equality and equal opportunities, peace and security, respect for human rights, freedom of expression and democracy, protecting the planet, providing people’s needs, ensuring more and better jobs and decent work, regulated markets and better public services, living together in diversity, tolerance and openness. These values are about putting people first and must be the foundation for reshaping globalisation.

We want nothing less than a Global New Deal

The biggest coordinated fiscal stimulus in modern history to turn the world’s economies around, averting unemployment and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
regulating the international financial system in a comprehensive way to serve the needs of the real economy, including cleaning up the banking sector and ending tax avoidance by the financial elite by abolishing tax havens and banking secrecy
fostering the transition to a renewable and energy efficient economy;
promoting fair trade to benefit people and wealth;
strengthening development policies to eradicate poverty;
strengthening people’s own organisations
pushing decent work up the global agenda.
a more equitable sharing of revenue between capital and labour
ensuring women’s rights and women’s representation and participation at all levels
massive new resources to secure development in the world’s poorest countries and shelter their people from the economic storm
The implementation of a Global New Deal with these priorities will require a major overhaul of global governance, giving more voice and influence to emerging and developed countries, involving civil society and rebalancing the four major areas of global regulation: finance, trade, environment and labour.

We are the ‘how’ movement. Now is the time for change, time for a Global New Deal!

Contacts:

Tony Robinson
tony.robinson@europarl.europa.eu
+ 32 2 284 30 61
+ 32 475 25 74 10
www.socialistgroup.eu

Julian Scola
julian.scola@pes.org
+32 486 117 394