Brussels blog

Monday’s meeting of EU leaders is meant to focus on growth and jobs, which makes it all the more ironic that it will likely be heavily disrupted by a general strike called by Belgian unions on the same day.

The timing of the strike is a coincidence, unions claim: this is a Belgian rather than a European strike. It was called for in response to clumsy pensions reforms by the new government, led by the Socialist Elio Di Rupo, rather than as a protest against the EU’s austerity measures (though the unions don’t like those much either.)

The impact of the strike is unclear. One high-ranking official in the secretariat of the Council, which organises the event, told Brussels Blog yesterday that there had been serious talk of moving the entire meeting to Luxembourg, where some EU ministerial-level meetings are regularly held.

But assurances from the Belgian government that the show could go on convinced Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs the summits, to push ahead. As a Belgian who championed (and partly enacted as premier) the reforms that are being disputed, he was perhaps unlikely to yield to the street.

“Inside the building, it will be business as usual,” the source said. The subtext is that outside the Justus Lipsius venue it will be impossible to get to Brussels, find a taxi or even a sandwich.

There are reports in the Belgian press Friday that some unions are quietly recommending to their members go to work Monday. But it is unlikely that there will be much in the way of public transport, and widespread disruption at Brussels airport is expected (the military airport will be open for national delegations). For the rest, it will be a matter of wait and see.

David Cockroft of the International Transport Workers’ Federation predicts chaos, and explained the reasoning in a statement:

By striking, the workers and their unions are showing their opposition to the austerity measures imposed by a government which is showing a patent lack of prudence to satisfy European [public finance] criteria”

The dispute that caused the strike is too parochial for unions to claim that this is an indictment of EU policies by the entire labour movement. It looks like that might come at the time of the next summit, however. This week, the European Trade Union Confederation, which speaks for workers at EU level, announced a “day of action” on the eve of the next summit on March 1st. They are coordinating EU-wide protests against the new “fiscal compact” which they see as entrenching job-killing austerity measures.

Last time a day of action was called in September 2010, 100,000 workers from across Europe descended on Brussels (pictured above). The focus of their ire then was the “six-pack” of measures that imposes semi-automatic fines on countries running excessive deficits. Though the unions made plenty of noise and paralysed much of Brussels’ EU district, the six-pack passed with few concessions to the unions.