In this
guest post, written on request, Jan Willem Goudriaan, Deputy General Secretary
of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), updates the
experience with the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on the Human Right to
Water. Based on a discussion of the struggles over water privatisation in
Thessaloniki/Greece, he assesses how the ECI has been linked with local
struggles and demands for an alternative Europe (for the earlier post see European Citizens’
Initiative on Water and the alternative to Austerity Europe).
Privatisation is a truly fantastic thing. Privatising public services
would result in four benign consequences, we are told: (1) the production of
services becomes more efficient and, therefore, cheaper; (2) the quality of the
services is improved; (3) the cost of services for the consumer is reduced; and
(4) companies providing these services can still make a profit. And this all as
a result of private services being subject to the competitive pressures of the
free market. Like a perpetuum mobile, a hypothetical machine which continues to function once activated,
privatization would have an inevitable and continuing positive impact once
implemented. In this post, I will critically evaluate these claims
against the background of my research on the Italian water movement against
privatisation (see Road
to Victory and La
lotta continua) and discuss why it is that this discourse continues to
enjoy such widespread acceptance, although it is empirically so obviously
wrong.
Victory in the 2011 referendum against water privatisation had been emphatic.
More than 57 per cent of the Italian electorate cast their vote and both
questions related to water had been approved by a majority of more than 95 per
cent (see Road
to Victory). And yet, those who expected that these decisions, legally
binding according to the Italian Constitution, would now be implemented, were
disappointed. Based on my interviews with leading activists of the Italian
water movement, in this post I will assess the situation since the referendum
in 2011.
Against the background of the global and Eurozone financial crises as
well as austerity sweeping across Europe, the pressure on privatising public
services is immense. The story of the Italian water movement, a broad alliance
of social movements and trade unions, which successfully mobilized for a
referendum against the privatization of water in June 2011, is a story of hope
for alliances involved in resisting privatization elsewhere. From 25 March to 8
April, I conducted a series of interviews with members of this movement. In
this post, I will report on the emergence and ultimate success of this movement
in the referendum.
