"Running dry – Protecting the right to water in Europe"

 

[Greenwich Park parched by the heat and lack of rain on 12 August 2022. Photo by Alisdare Hickson. Source: Wikimedia Commons.]

"Water privatization has catastrophic results, as shown by France and the United Kingdom. Citizens across Europe are increasingly opposed to the liberalization of essential services. But with climate change worsening droughts and heatwaves, public ownership is only the first step towards just and effective water management.

European policy has traditionally treated water as an abundant commodity to be extracted for profit. The severe droughts recently experienced in Europe indicate that this era of abundance is over and have brought home the true value of water as a precious and scarce resource. It is time to look at water in a new light.

This new situation requires a radical change in our approach to water policy and management. Former attempts to integrate water resources into the European single market now appear short-sighted at best and potentially disastrous. In order to build the resilience necessary to overcome the climate-related challenges ahead, we can no longer allow water to be exploited by market forces for private gain. The neoliberal water policies in place in many European countries need to be reversed, and water must be subject to public or commons-based governance. Only in this way can we build resilient water systems and keep water universally available and affordable.

Privatization and resistance

The current era of water privatization first began to emerge in the 1980s when, under the conservative rule of Margaret Thatcher, the UK government oversaw the transformation of water facilities into private assets. Water was privatized in England and Wales in 1989 as part of a wider liberalization agenda for public services and resources. Ten regional water authorities and their proprietary infrastructure were completely transferred to privately owned companies. As a result, water companies became ‘permanent regulated monopolies’, facing ‘public sector levels of competition and risk’ with ‘private sector levels of profit and return’.1

The result was a complete collapse in investment in water infrastructure with serious consequences for water losses. Private company Thames Water, which provides water to the London metropolitan area, has been criticized for its inability to deal with huge leaks from its pipes. The estimated water loss is 600 million litres per day – almost a quarter of all the water it supplies. This quickly becomes a severe problem in the context of drought-induced water scarcity. Thames Water and Southern Water, another large water and wastewater company, have also been criticized for unacceptable levels of sewage pollution and spills, which seriously affect both valuable ecosystems and public health."

Read more (especially about Italy and remunicipalisation of water in France) from source at Eurozine here.

"By land and by sea: Salvini’s war on immigration in Italy"

[Piazza duca d’Aosta, Milan, Italy (2016). Photo source: Wiki Commons]

"Salvini’s war against immigration is being waged by land and by sea. 


It is a war against a section of society that makes up over eight per cent of the country’s population. 

By sea, the war is being waged through a criminalization of humanitarian rescue operations. 

The decree recently approved by [his] Italian government restricting the right to asylum is the terrestrial counterpart to the criminalization of NGOs operating in the Mediterranean. 

This not only pertains to operations carried out by foreign NGOs, which are accused of failing to observe the sovereignty of national borders, but also to operations carried out by the Italian Coast Guard itself. 

This is a schizophrenia typical of authoritarianism and amounts to a call on the state authorities to close ranks.
The climax to Matteo Salvini’s ongoing campaign against humanitarianism, it will have a fundamental impact on the management of migration within the country..."

Read more from source at EuroZine here.

"Competing for victimhood: Why eastern Europe says no to refugees"

[Slovenia, 25 October 2015. Photo: Janossy Gergely / Shutterstock.com. Source: Shutterstock]

A thoughtful and balanced piece of writing from Slavenka Drakulic that helps explain bigotry in that part of the world...

"The constant meetings of EU leaders concerning the refugee crisis in Brussels have not so far yielded any solutions. Decisions and documents, yes, but the question remains how many of these are going to be implemented in reality. One of the reasons is that former communist states in eastern Europe are more or less openly defying a common approach, in particular the sharing of the burden of refugees through quotas.

Until recently it seemed that eastern and western Europeans were getting closer, that the new EU member states were slowly adapting to western democratic standards not only in form, but also in practice and mentality. 

But the refugee crisis has demonstrated how deep the division among Europeans still is. Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia reject quotas, Bulgaria was first to build a fence along its border with Turkey, Romania is not offering refugees safe havens either, and Slovenia and Croatia claim lack of capacity, while also lacking the will to keep them. 

It looks as if Poland, with its newly elected government, will reinforce this defiance. Not to mention countries outside the EU: if Serbia and Albania are willing to perhaps show a kinder face to refugees while guiding them towards western borders, it is with an eye on possible membership of the Union. Macedonia is in the worst situation, penniless, overrun and desperate. It is obvious that these states are not very eager to, or capable of, demonstrating solidarity, to say the least." 

Read more from source at Eurozine here.

"If Greece falls..."

[Special meeting of the European Council on 23 April 2015. From left to right: Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament; Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece; Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. Photo: European Council. Source: Flickr]

"As the Greek crisis continues, Steffen Vogel reports that a majority of German business leaders look upon a Grexit as a favourable option, according to a survey published last month in the German business daily Handelsblatt.

At the same time, Vogel draws attention to the political price of a Grexit, summed up best he says in the words of Reuters European affairs editor Paul Taylor: "If Greece falls, no one wants their prints on the murder weapon".

"That applies to the German government too", Vogel continues, "long held up on the international stage as an example of a party that is blocking a lasting solution to the crisis.

Some weeks ago, The Economist mocked Wolfgang Schäuble as an 'ayatollah of austerity', thus reversing the rationale upon which Berlin claims to be acting pragmatically." "

[Source: Eurozine.]

 

A Spaniard asks "How?"

"Today, headlines from around the world resonate with the news that there are nearly six million Spanish citizens currently unemployed. Spaniards are in the process of losing their quality of life, along with their access to health, education and even food...

How is it possible for the country to accept that over half its population of under 25-year-olds are unemployed? How does a society sustain itself with over a million members living in households where not so much as a euro comes in by way of a monthly salary? How sick is a society when the only social group not to lose its purchasing power in recent years are the retired and when there are more than 150 home evictions per day?

Juan Luis Sánchez gives some answers in this article for Eurozine.

"The freedom of the fox in the chicken run:" (A metaphor for Europe?)

"The great welfare states as they now exist in some of the countries of Western Europe are also built upon an economic lie...

When those preaching the free market are in fact using their power simply to protect their interests – or, in the case of the real intellectual naifs, to protect the interests of the already powerful – then the only freedom we might talk about is the freedom of the fox in the chicken run."

Nicholas Bradbury made his literary debut this year with the novel "Market Farm", a reworking of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" for the free market era. He talks here [at EuroZine] about influences for his satirical take on the current financial crisis and potential grounds for hope for the future.