Belgrade - Report 1: first plenary workshop

The first of the three plenary meetings planned in the framework of the European Project took place in Belgrade from the afternoon of 19 June to the morning of 21 June. It was a very intense meeting, both for the complexity and in-depth discussion of topics and for the active participation of speakers and attendees during the four half-day sessions.

In this report we will do our best to summarize this extraordinarily intense exchange. Of course, it will not be possible to report all of its contents in detail. At the end of the Project, we will draw up a comprehensive report, which will be based on the systematic collection of the ideas and proposals submitted during the 5 collective events (3 Plenaries + 2 meetings of the Steering Committee) and in preparation for them.

First of all, it is important to mention the attendees who took the time to come to Belgrade, worked hard for 3 days and contributed to the success of the first Plenary:

• representatives of the national trade unions of the financial sector from 6 of the so-called “new EU Member States” (Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Malta) and from 2 EU Candidate Countries (Serbia and Albania)
• representatives of the national trade unions of France, Spain and Belgium: these are the countries where the parent companies of 6 of the 8 transnational groups involved in the Project are based (the 2 remaining groups – Unicredit and Intesa SanPaolo – are based in Italy) 
• EWC representatives of the 7 transnational groups in which workers are represented in EWCs (Unicredit, Santander, Groupama, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, Bnp-Paribas, KBC)
• trade union representatives involved in collective bargaining within the Intesa SanPaolo group. This group has yet to set up a EWC, but the procedure to create one has just been launched
• Fisac-Cgil staff in charge of the management and implementation of the Project, together with the National Secretary for International Policies. (Agostino Megale, President of ISRF LAB and former Secretary-General of Fisac, was not able to attend the meeting because of post-operative convalescence. I collected some of the observations he would have made and I included them in my introductory remarks)
• the Head of UNI Finance and the Policy Officer of UNI Europa Finance
• the Secretaries-General of Fisac-Cgil in Milan and in Tuscany, who have specific experience in the fields of Finance 4.0 and changes in work organization
• the academic expert who is supporting us in the analysis of Directives on employee involvement and their actual implementation in the transnational groups involved in the Project.

These 8 categories of participants will also be involved in the following 2 Plenaries, which will take place next November and in June 2020. During these upcoming meetings, we will also involve another 2 categories which we consider essential for the purposes of our Project:

• employers’ representatives from the European Federation of the banking sector and from some – if not all – of the 8 transnational groups
• a representation of MEPs to discuss with them proposals for the revision of some of the EU Directives on employee involvement 

We have been in touch with both of these categories for some time. In particular, in Belgrade we received a message from the European Banking Federation, whose representative could not attend our meeting.

But let us go back for a moment to the location where we organized this Plenary, i.e. Belgrade, and let us focus on the countries of this European region which take part in this Project:

Belgrade is the capital of the most important Candidate Country destined to join the EU (Turkey is obviously larger and more significant from all points of view, but it is clearly destined to remain a Candidate Country for a longer period of time).

Slobodan Mihajlovic, Secretary of SFOS, the Serbian union of finance industry workers affiliated with UNI, made an explicit reference to the past and to the berated Socialist regimes. Slobodan reminded us that Yugoslavia distinguished itself from other Socialist regimes for the self-management of factories – and of production facilities of goods and services in general – by workers. I would like to reflect upon Slobodan’s notable remarks. He expressed his bitterness about the dismemberment and destruction of Yugoslavia (which was – in his own words – “brutally killed”) and about the advent of a liberalist capitalism that has been far less radiant than what propaganda publicized in the past decades. 

One may certainly disagree – even strongly – with this uncommon approach. Yet, Slobodan should be given credit for lifting the dusty veil of hypocrisy from the social and political evolution of Candidate Countries and of the so-called “new” EU Member States (most of which joined the EU 15 years ago, some 12 years ago and the latest – Croatia – in 2013). There, the trade union movement has had to tackle very difficult organizational, cultural and political challenges. Still today, it is faced with obstacles and refusals to recognize the role of trade unions in collective bargaining. The most common aspect in these countries is indeed the lack of national, industry-wide collective bargaining. Yet, this kind of negotiations did exist in some of these countries until some years ago and Romania is about to implement it. A notable exception is Malta, the smallest of the “new” Member States. However, it is also geographically distant from the other 7 countries that take part in this Project and its political history is much closer to the one of Western Europe.

There are two important reasons why this Project has decided to highlight the role of trade unions in the countries of this geographical area:

first, the production cycle of the European financial system – and, more specifically, of the 8 groups involved in the Project – relies on extensive and well-rooted branches in all of these countries, whose main strength from a corporate point of view is the combination of low labour costs, flexibility and productivity;

the second reason – partly intertwined with the first one – is the political need for our trade unions to include in a European Project on changing work within the 4.0 finance industry representatives of countries where industrial relations are very different. Indeed, the trade unions of parent companies and EWCs are faced with the key challenge of reducing – if not closing – the gap between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe in terms of union rights, workers’ rights, collective bargaining and related legislation within the same transnational group (these geographical definitions may sound obsolete, but they are clearer than the terms “new EU Member States” and Candidate Countries).

In my introduction, also in the light of the exchange of views I had had with Agostino, I presented our Project in the new framework that emerged after the European elections of 26 May. Populist and sovereigntist parties did not win, but the European left lost ground and had mixed results across the continent (collapse of the SPD, victory of Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist party in Spain, victory of the Danish left, which combined welfare state policies with a strong attention to security issues and the control of migratory flows). The European Parliament now has a potentially wide and complex – if not unstable – majority. Trade unions must now be able to find political common ground and to adapt their organization to focus specifically on the impact of technological innovation and the changing work environment. All this in an international scenario in which US policies on customs duties and Chinese reactions relegate Europe to a passive role in the middle, with lower growth rates.

In the EU, Italy’s growth is more and more sluggish. Despite narrowly avoiding an excessive debt procedure, the policies of the current government have led to worsening inequalities and to Italy having a more marginal role in the EU’s strategic decisions.
In Italy, the finance industry is going through a period of uncertainty, which is linked to the change in the ECB presidency and the ongoing discussion on the banking union, the revision of bail-in rules and the effects of bank resolution measures.

In this framework, our Project is aimed at making a realistic analysis of the impact of digital innovation on employment and at elaborating proposals to maximize the effectiveness of European legislation on employee involvement. We intend to pursue the latter without changing the mission of EWCs as information and consultation bodies into negotiating bodies. However, we would like to introduce some instruments that could help EWCs to govern change (and not so much to anticipate it, considering that we are already experiencing change).

 
In this regard, it is important to underline 3 fundamental elements of this Project:

1) speed of change in the 4.0 era in the finance industry, i.e. speed of change in work organization and in the workplace(s) which companies create for their employees;

2) speed of change in the nature of the employment relationship: from typical employees to parasubordinate workers (i.e. formally self-employed but dependent on a single employer for their income);

3) speed of change in working hours, in two directions. On the one hand, working hours are more flexibly distributed across the day, the week, or the year. This has led to an extension in the time period between the beginning and the end of work, so much so that Italian trade unions have claimed the workers’ right to disconnect from the tools (phone, email, etc.) which employers can use to contact them.

On the other hand, flexibility is combined with a sort of self-management of working hours which is functional to the achievement of production and sales targets.

However, in my opinion there is an underlying trend to the speed of change, which is pushed by the digitization of the production process of banking and financial services.

To understand this trend, it is helpful to make reference to the old and bearded Karl Marx, who – in this respect and in many others – proves to be more modern than many presumed modern economists and sociologists.

I am thinking about the rapidity of rotation of working capital, i.e. the money out of which banks must be able to make a profit as quickly as possible. At the same time, they also need to dispose of growing shares of fixed capital, fixed assets like facilities, buildings, obsolescent machinery, offices and branches. These fixed assets have an impact on what Marx called the organic composition of capital and they lead to the tendency of the rate of profit (in this case for the bank) to fall.

After all, what is the open, smart branch about? What is the process of divestment and sale of huge real estate assets about? It is just about banks getting rid of costly fixed assets for years, albeit with mixed results.

And, after all, what is digitization about? It is about the possibility of offering banking services with the least possible amount of fixed assets, using working capital and making it rotate more and more quickly.

This whirlwind and radical reorganization of the production cycle in banks is pushed by the need to radically change what Marx called the organic composition of capital and to increase the rate of profit in two ways:

• first, the aforementioned drastic reduction in fixed capital, together with the exponential growth of the rapidity of rotation of working capital;
• second, the strong increase in work productivity through quality improvement and the readiness of workers to accept different working hours, schedules and targets. This acceptance is then rewarded through increased independence, less hierarchy, more opportunities of professional growth and pay rises.

In this framework, trade unions have taken an approach which Nicola Cicala, Director of ISRF LAB, defined as “constructive”. He identified this approach as the evolution of the approaches which prevailed in the past decade, which were based on the acquisition and defence of workers’ rights. 

This constructive approach was further analyzed by Roberto Errico, from ISRF LAB. According to him, the strategy of the European banking system in the past decade (in terms of employment, number of branches, number of companies, etc.) can be summarized with the phrase “Less for More”. While there are cuts in fixed and variable costs at all levels, as well as cuts in interest rates, the formidable push of technological innovation is determining such an increase in work productivity that it even compensates for falling interest rates and helps banks to make profits. However, there is also the looming power and size of Big Tech (Facebook, Amazon, Apple Card and others), which offers financial services that are in direct competition with banks.

The Belgrade Plenary focused on the connection between the analysis of material processes carried out by IRFS LAB (in collaboration with the national trade unions, the trade unions represented in Intesa SanPaolo, and the Fisac sections of Milan and Tuscany) and what we called the legal pillar of the Project. By that, we mean the “fitness check” on the implementation and effectiveness of European Directives on employee involvement, on which we will continue to focus also after the Belgrade meeting for several months. In particular, we want to assess the past and current results of European Directives in terms of employee involvement through EWC Agreements and European Social Dialogue.

Filip Dorssemont, Professor of European Labour Law at the Catholic University of Louvain, presented his analysis of EWC Agreements in the light of relevant European Directives. Later, there was an intense exchange of views with EWC delegates, who replied to Professor Dorssemont’s observations and explained the various contexts in which EWC Agreements are implemented.

Professor Dorssemont also gave us a very useful suggestion, i.e. to check if the existing EWC Agreements in our 7 groups contain an explicit reference to the subsidiary requirements of Directive 2009/38. More specifically, the Directive establishes that the information and consultation of the European Works Council shall relate in particular to the substantial changes concerning organisation, introduction of new working methods or production processes. This wording cannot be disputed and it would allow EWC representatives to demand information and consultation on everything that is related to changes in work organization.

A fundamental observation for the purposes of our Project concerned the meaning of the expression Fitness Check for the European Commission. From our point of view, assessing the implementation of the Directives on employee involvement should logically lead to re-writing them or to adopting better implementation measures, if we conclude that they are not effective. However, Professor Dorssemont warned us that, from the point of view of the European Commission, the rules which would turn out to be ineffective should not be re-written nor accompanied by alternative implementation measures, but – with a typically deregulatory approach – they should simply be abolished.

This radical criticism further encourages us to continue with our collective analysis and to deepen it with the EWC representatives involved in the Project.

Angelo Di Cristo (Head of UNI Finance, but also past President of the EWC of Unicredit) gave a very useful reply to Filip Dorssemont’s presentation, which he essentially organized in 3 points:

the first one concerned the role of TUAs (Trade Union Alliances), the transnational alliances which UNI Europa and UNI Finance in particular have been building for some years “around” existing EWCs or in the groups where it is necessary to encourage their creation (such as in the case of Intesa SanPaolo). Without going back to previous discussions on the role of TUAs which took place in other meetings and in past Projects, Angelo pointed out that TUAs can effectively support the action of EWCs by strengthening their role and dynamism. This is quite the opposite of those who feared an improper interference and overlapping with the prerogatives assigned to EWCs by the Directive;

the second point made by Angelo highlighted the extraordinary potential and opportunities which EWCs and the trade unions of transnational groups are offered by this European Project led by Fisac-Cgil. Indeed, the Project gives us the opportunity for an exchange of experiences of different trade unions, companies, information and consultation procedures and to learn from each other about possible solutions to common problems and challenges. These are opportunities which these representative bodies do not normally have during their activities, given that they necessarily have to focus on their internal problems and dynamics. Instead, the managers of different companies and groups have more of these opportunities and they exploit them to exchange information;

the third point was about the need for constant and persistent monitoring to assess the actual implementation of Agreements and Joint Declarations. In this respect, Angelo mentioned the possibility of considering a collaboration between EWCs and TUAs with regard to Transnational Company Agreements. We are going to get back to this point in view of the next Plenary, which is scheduled for 13-14-15 November in Rome.

We intend to achieve, together with UNI Finance, the central objective of the first Plenary, i.e. the elaboration of some proposals (not guidelines, which are typically the prerogative of management) for the stipulation of TCAs. These agreements can be an important evolution for the protection of the rights of workers of transnational groups, who have to deal with the challenges of change in the 4.0 era. In this area there are no guidelines nor specific proposals like the ones which we intend to draw up through this Project. Rather than our right, it is our duty to do so, at least to demonstrate that we can make an effective use of the financial resources which the DG Employment allocated to our Project.

Another very interesting presentation on the Fitness Check was the one by Susana Aranda Vasquez from the trade union Servicios/CcOo in the Santander group. She talked about the acquisition of Banco Popular by Banco Santander back in 2017, an example of best practice also for the effective implementation of Directive 2001/23 on transnational mergers and acquisitions. The group was indeed able to minimize job cuts and to preserve workers’ rights, prerogatives, conditions and classifications in grade, as well as the rights of union representations. The group also has an interesting, extensive and comprehensive system of social guarantees, which bears many similarities to the Italian fund for redundancies of the financial sector.

Filip Dorssemont highlighted an alarming risk of transfers, mergers and acquisitions. Transferees may circumvent their obligations under Directive 2001/23 concerning the employees of the transferor and related legal restrictions and classifications in grade simply by letting the acquired company go bankrupt. This would eliminate all the guarantees contained in Directive 2001/23 concerning workers’ rights. In the case of the Santander group, this risk did not materialize, also because the bankruptcy of a company in this sector would imply a systemic instability that could not be compared with a bankruptcy in other sectors.

Filip analyzed the connections between Directive 2001/23 (with its provisions on the right of information and consultation), with the “mother” Directive 2002/12 and the one on collective dismissals (transposed into national law in Italy through Law no. 223 of 1991). In the end, he expressed a very positive judgement about the Santander/Banco Popular case.

Another paradigmatic case of transnational merger which we discussed was the one between Unicredit and the German bank HypoVereinsBank. There is indeed a gap in the level and timeliness of access to information between the German workers’ representatives (who benefit from the German law on co-determination) and the Italian ones – and of other countries – who do not have access to the same information. 

This gap is present not only in the cases of transnational merger, but in general in all the EWCs having a German representation. This causes major contradictions, which are often impossible to solve within a EWC. These points were raised by Angelo Di Cristo and Claudio Cornelli respectively.

At this point, I mentioned the need and urgency to renegotiate all the surviving EWC Agreements based on art. 13 of Directive 94/45. It is indeed very easy to disprove the typical objection of managers who consider the so-called voluntary Agreements signed between 1994 and 1996 as “immortal”.

After this observation, there was a fruitful exchange of views among attendees about the items on the agenda. We took the opportunity to give the floor to the Italian unitary trade union representation of Intesa SanPaolo. In particular, we asked them to inform us on:

1. the 2018-2021 Business Plan
2. the Agreement on Sustainable Development

Silvia Boniardi, Claudia Fumagalli and Caterina Dotto took the floor on behalf of Uilca, Fisac-Cgil and First-Cisl respectively (the three unions in the unitary representation).

Their speeches were perfectly in line with the key points of the Project and, in particular, with one of its fundamental political pillars, i.e. the new composition of the workforce of banks following the evolution towards the 4.0 industry. Change is causing major employment issues in the entire traditional segment of the production cycle. Most standard jobs with none to little added value have been outsourced or completely automated. However, some still exist, as is the case in traditional branches and in the back office of Central Departments. These segments of the production cycle employ relatively old workers, who can hardly be redeployed to tasks with a higher added value. As trade unions, I think we can only negotiate a number of guarantees that can protect the income and the pensions of these older workers. This has been the case, for instance, in Italy in recent decades.

However, at the same time industry 4.0 change leads to the emergence of a new workforce in banks, or to the renewal of part of the existing workforce. Through smart working, digitization, teleworking, new jobs which combine the characteristics of employees with time management schemes and tasks more typical of self-employment, this new workforce is necessarily more flexible when it comes to working hours and place of work. However, the added value of this new workforce is based on specialist professional skills, which can open up important opportunities of career advancement and pay rise.

The role of trade unions at a national level and, even more so, at a company level is to represent both types of workers: the traditional workforce and the “smart” one of industry 4.0. In other words, trade unions must protect the former from the repercussions of marginalization and expulsion from the production cycle. At the same time, they must meet the needs and expectations of the new workforce. If trade unions fail to do so, this new workforce would only have management (up to the top levels) as its only interlocutor.

The unitary trade union representation of Intesa SanPaolo has accepted these formidable challenges and it is addressing them through constant collective bargaining. In this way, it is somehow governing the inevitable job cuts. Redundancies are not traumatic, thanks to a more or less immediate transition towards retirement. Furthermore, workers who have yet to reach their retirement age are gradually retrained and redeployed. Finally, the demand for qualified workers, with the new skills required by innovation 4.0, attracts young and motivated people. Now the key challenge for the future of trade unions is to effectively represent these young workers. These segments of workers are changing the internal labour market towards an Anglo-American model – albeit with a major difference. Within Intesa SanPaolo, the unitary trade union representation keeps on playing a key role in collective bargaining and for the protection of individual rights.

The so-called Mixed Contract described by Claudia Fumagalli on behalf of the unitary representation is a completely new tool that bears testament to the courage of trade unions, which took up a difficult and unpopular challenge. The unions came up with an example of best practice in terms of collective bargaining for these hybrid forms which combine the characteristics of employees and self-employed. Otherwise, management would have unilaterally controlled relations with these workers, thus excluding trade unions not only from collective bargaining, but also from the possibility of effectively representing these more dynamic, younger and more qualified workers. The latter are the first wave of a new, changing workforce, which requires trade unions to change at the same speed.

Intesa SanPaolo now has more than 91,000 employees, 68,000 of whom in Italy: almost 6,000 of them are financial advisers, i.e. purely self-employed. Furthermore, according to the Business Plan, 70% of activities will be digitized by 2021.

The 23,000 employees working outside Italy account for 11% of the group profits, i.e. almost 1 billion Euro. The Business Plan foresees growing revenues in particular in foreign subsidiaries.

It is in this framework that procedures for the setting up of the EWC of Intesa SanPaolo were officially launched. The letter drawn up in accordance with Directive 2009/38 and with the Italian transposing act was signed by 11 trade unions from 7 European countries.

In Belgrade we specifically dedicated some time to the exchange of views and information among all the union representatives of the group from the 7 signatory countries. This interaction somehow anticipated the future preparatory meetings for the setting up of the EWC.  

The room we have given to Intesa Sanpaolo unions had two main meanings:

• Taking advantage of the Belgrade location to gather union delegates representing as many countries as possible, where Intesa Sanpaolo group employs workforce. As a matter of fact, we had delegates from Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, Serbia (among the most relevant countries for this group apart from Italy) and of course delegates from Italy representing the five main unions holding industrial relations with the centralmanagement.Therefore,thiswidegroupofIntesaSanpaolounion delegateswasasortofembryoofthe T.U.A (TradeUnionAllliance)which we finally created in October 2019, as already pointed out in the box about the goals of the project.

• This was the first opportunity to have an articulated exchange of information and experience in the matter.

The fourth and last session of the Belgrade Plenary began with the speeches by Gabriele Poeta Paccati and Daniele Quiriconi, the Secretaries-General of Fisac-Cgil in Milan and in Tuscany. 

Their presentations were extremely relevant to our European Project. They informed us of the results of two field surveys carried out among 1,000 workers of the financial sector who are experiencing the changes brought about by industry 4.0 in their daily work. 

First, Gabriele explained the survey methodology. The study was carried out in collaboration with a specialized research institute which made sure that everything was scientifically and statistically correct. The workers were interviewed directly by union representatives, in order to help trade unions independently acquire information to be used during dialogue with the social partners. In this way, trade unions would no longer have to rely on information pre-packaged by others (including by external research institutes) and would be more autonomous for analysis tasks. 

The fact that we are experiencing a change which we wanted to anticipate is due to its speed. The finance industry is a sector in which digitization has advanced more pervasively than in others and with a stronger and sharper impact on employment. Hence, trade unions are now inevitably called to strongly improve their ability to listen to workers, in such a way to improve their organization and to be able to represent the demands of this new workforce segment. The training of union officers is a fundamental aspect of the survey carried out by the Fisac-Cgil section of Milan. The goal of training is to empower union officers to represent both the workers worried of being marginalized by digital innovation and the workers who are positively motivated by innovation. As we have been saying since our presentation of the Project to the European Commission more than one year ago, this innovation is promoting an increased autonomy in time management and work goals, richer work contents, more flexible borders between the typical employee and the self-employed, fewer space and time constraints compared to traditional workplaces, and more prospects and opportunities of pay rises linked to performance. However, contradictory elements to what is listed above surprisingly remain: more controls on workers, excessive bureaucracy, as well as more intense working patterns, combined with strong pressure on sales results.

Daniele Quiriconi, Secretary-General of Fisac-Cgil in Tuscany, presented the results of two surveys carried out by his section. In particular, he highlighted the following points: the impact of change on stress at work, the negative consequences for workers’ health, the subjective perception of workers, with a prevalence of feelings of insecurity, precariousness and sales pressure, which leads them to ask for more protection – both of their current working conditions and of future work prospects. Therefore, the key point is to use collective bargaining to make the most of the flexibility of smart working. While innovation responds to the workers’ need for increased independence and work-life balance, it is also necessary to build new forms of protection (including for individuals) and new forms of workers’ representation. However, during negotiations, we must be able to establish the workers’ right to disconnect as quickly as possible. It is only in this way that trade unions will be able to meet the new demand for protection and to respond to the isolation of workers, the flip side of the increased autonomy given by smart working.

The participants of the concluding Round Table on the possible proposals of this Project to the Agenda of European Social Dialogue in the Banking sector were: Angelo Di Cristo (Head of UNI Finance), William Portelli and Adrian Soare (respectively the Coordinator for UNI Finance Banking Social Dialogue committee and a member of the working party on Banking Social Dialogue) and Claudio Cornelli (National Secretary of Fisac-Cgil).

Because of a sudden health issue, Jens Thau, President of the Banking Committee for European Social Affairs of the European Banking Federation, was not able to attend the meeting. However, he sent us a presentation which we are going to share together with all the other presentations of the Belgrade Plenary. It is important to underline at least one point of his presentation, i.e. that the biggest European Federation of employers in our sector seems open to a constructive dialogue on our proposal for the Agenda of Banking Social Dialogue.

In the Round Table – albeit indirectly – we replied to Jens Thau’s presentation. 

Angelo Di Cristo pointed out that European Social Dialogue in the Banking sector cannot address collective bargaining. However, it can at least lead to the elaboration of Joint Statements and Guidelines, which will be effective in so far as they are implemented in National Agreements. Giving continuity to, monitoring and evaluating the actual implementation of the results of Banking Social Dialogue is fundamental to assess its effectiveness and substance.

I deemed it important to underline that, in the framework of Banking Social Dialogue, the sense of this Project lies in the involvement of transnational groups. This is indeed where change happens and where dialogue should occur first. It is in transnational groups that European Social Dialogue in the Banking sector must be concretely implemented – of course keeping in mind the different roles and levels of representation of both parties.

All the participants in the Round Table agreed with this approach.

Adrian Soare, on behalf of the Romanian trade unions, stressed the battle which trade unions of Central and Eastern Europe must wage to counter the anti-European attitude of corporate managers and of national employers’ associations, as well as to demand the full implementation of the results of Banking Social Dialogue in their national companies.

Claudio Cornelli highlighted the contradiction between the constructive attitude of the European Banking Federation and the actual behaviours of multinational companies, which have ignored workers’ and trade unions’ rights, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. In this regard, political institutions – starting from the newly elected European Parliament – must take the responsibility of making these rights and the procedures laid down in Directives binding.

In our Fitness Check we are going to directly involve MEPs who are willing to collaborate with us, as well as employers’ representatives from major transnational groups. Angelo Di Cristo, on behalf of UNI Finance, immediately expressed his willingness to work with Fisac-Cgil to have this conversation at the next Plenary, which will take place in Rome on 13-14-15 November.

Claudio Cornelli, on behalf of the National Secretariat of Fisac-Cgil, closed the Belgrade Plenary. In his closing remarks, he highlighted the value and potential of this European Project, which will require our trade unions – including Fisac-Cgil – to work hard and to seek the collaboration of the European political institutions.

Of course, our work must be supported by UNI, UNI Europa and UNI Finance. Furthermore, we need to constantly insist in order for the role of European and international trade unions which have received a transparent and democratic mandate from their affiliates to be acknowledged in negotiations with employers.

Claudio also proposed another two points to work on:

• to fight in all the EWCs which are still stuck on voluntary Agreements based on art. 13 of Directive 94/45 to adapt them to the provisions of the current Directive 2009/38;
• to constantly promote cohesion in every transnational group, in such a way to have homogeneous rights, guarantees, working conditions and industrial relations. Of course, homogenization should strive for higher – not lower – common standards.

Both points have been contemplated in the drawing up of our Project and we have committed ourselves to working on them also in the contract we signed with the European Commission, which funds the Project.

Mario Ongaro • Project Manager