[fse-esf] Re: [time_for_change_europe] URGENT :FW: Common key demands for the G20: please send your feedback before the 6th March

[waleseuropa at yahoo.co.uk]

Dear Vesna,
Kathrine motivated you well ! But why not be BOLDER with your re-thinking of the
European Feudal Imperialist Capitalist System.
Support Indigenous European Peoples' Collective Land Rights, European People's Collective Land Rights. Feudal European Colonialists stole by Military Conquest the bulk of Collectively Owned European Lands - They still own ('Privately') at least 60% of it !! :
http://www.whoownstheworld.com/
In the context of 1Billion people being threatened with death by starvation in the coming months on a World Level  - The World, European Peoples' demand for Bread(Food Sovereignty),Peace and Land(to produce the Food and space for a roof over everbody's head) is an Immediate Demand !!
The Expropriators need to be Expropriated
 !!
Hwyl,Salud,Cheers,
merlin  xxx
http://www.openesf.net/projects/esf-activists-news-network/blog/



--- On Mon, 9/3/09, Vesna Tomse <v.tomse at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Vesna Tomse <v.tomse at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [time_for_change_europe] URGENT :FW: Common key demands for the  G20: please send your feedback before the 6th March
To: time_for_change_europe at rezisti.org
Cc: amelie.aitec at reseau-ipam.org
Date: Monday, 9 March, 2009, 12:07 PM

Dear all!

Thanks Knut for your proposals, which are well elaborated, as usual. Katharine motivated me to also send my proposals, which you already commented and amended (thanks for that, too), to this working group. They are demands
to the financial system from a radical housing and land rights
perspective. Some of the ideas are rather bold (e.g. socialising land)
and would not only need a restructuring of existing institutions, but a
quite radical rethinking of the capitalist system itself.


Here some of my thoughts:

No
favoring of property over renting, individual over collective
management. Co-operative and non-profit housing should be stimulated by
tax exemptions, progressive property taxes discourage from accumulation
for profit.



Allowing and
promoting public land  control systems: Communal land trusts, which
lease the land. No private ownership of land should be allowed: Stop
the commodification of natural commons!The
same communal institution leasing the land - a communal land trust -
could give out long term mortgages at fixed low interest
rates, disallowing securitisation. These mortgages could be
cross-financed by the leasing money; real estate of failing clients
would go to the commune (instead of banks), augmenting communal
non-profit housing.So the communal land trusts become simultaneously
housing
investment trusts, which could hold shares of public housing
associations.Money from leaseholds and rents should flow into investitions in infrastructure and renovations. 
Discouraging
speculation: Regulation of real estate trade. Ban of global real estate
trading; prescribed minimum time span before resaling real estate (e.g.
10 years)

No international trading of housing space
Subsidiarity
as an empowering instrument for the local level. Bottom-up rather than
top-down decision making processes: no undemocratic implementing of
programs of the EU, the World Bank, the WTO and others on the local
level. Participatory planing bodies, involvement of affected citizens.

Public service instead of Public-Private-Partnerships:
Financing of public projects under democratic control and through taxes
for public use. Preserving public spacesPublicly owned communal services (heating, power, water, sewage and sanitation)"Green" upgrading of houses and infrastructure as counter cyclical
anti-crises measures. Decentralised production of renewable energy
bound to housing (e.g. solar panels or geothermal energy)I hope, people are not detered by my partly quite radical ideas, but I think we have to be creative to overcome the impasse this system brought us in.


Best,

Vesna



2009/3/8 Knut Unger, Mv Witten <knut.unger at mvwit.de>


Dear Nick,



Thanks for you support on housing demands and as well for your improvements on the text. Especially regarding „new green deal“ it is very helpful.



Regarding housing and land demands at EU levels I think we could focus on these five points (you may just include keywords into the text):



1. The EU should allow and promote the re-strengthening of pro-active public and social housing and land policies.



The massive lack of affordable decent housing for rent or at fixed low mortgage rates was one of the main reasons why poor or mid-income households in the U.S. (but even in Spain or Britain...) were forced into debt which they could not pay back. Instead of providing affordable housing by public entities or through subsidies the state even supported the development of subprime mortgage lending a business which – via derivates and securitisation soon became subject of a globalised real estate speculation bubble.



Thus, the provision of satisfying affordable housing through public policies is a key element of a real-estate economy which meets the housing needs without forcing people into dependence from speculative markets.



In the EU-countries since decades we are experiencing the same trend towards private home owner ship and weakened public or social housing, resulting, in many countries like France, Spain and many metropolis, in a heavy housing crisis plus speculative prize and rent increases. Today in the EU even remaining public housing systems and non-market orientated land policies are under pressure of the EC competition rules.





Public or social housing policies can (and do have) various forms.

Affordable and decent housing for all in general requires deep state interventions into the real estate market, regulations of the mortgage market and a specific publicly controlled systems of financing affordable housing. In addition it is allways necessary to keep or to build specific and satisfying sectors of affordable non-for-profit housing under public or social control, which must be protected from general markets. Finally, the housing rights by strict laws must be protected against the powers of market and home owners.





Closely related but also important beyond housing is the question of land markets. The EU does not allow pro-active public land policies if they violate the competition rules. For instance, municipalities today cannot sell land for social needs at low prizes if someone would offer more. National control on property is broadly prohibited.



Instead of that the EU should allow and promote pro-active pubic land policies. Examples are communal land funds or leasehold of communal land.

Socialisation of land resources is a key factor for the overcome of speculative real estate markets and for sustainable and sufficient developments.



2.

The general architecture of finance as well as it's regulations and institutions must be orientated on human rights (ESC-rights) including the right to housing. Public investment must focus on the improvement of the implementation of social and human rights standards.



At EU levels such principals must by implemented cross-sectoral in all policies, regulations and programmes, even with regard to local and sub-local levels.





3. Housing finance and mortgage lending institutions under public control.

Regulation of mortgage and promotion of mortgage lending systems orientated on long term mortgages at fixed (!)low interest rates, disallowing securitisation





4. Stimulation programmes should include local participatory processes and focus on

(a) socially needed social and physical infrastructure under public/social control like education, housing, public spaces etc.

(b) improvement of the energy efficiency and ecological sustainability of buildings, technical infrastructures, public transport and spatial patterns

(c) local capacity building for the development of sustainable and socially managed local economies

(d) strengthening the financial capacities of municipalities

(e) democratizing institutions and planning.



5



Any global investment programme ("Green New Deal") must include aid for the improvement of the living conditions of at least 1 billion slum dwellers through bottom up programmes with rights based approaches and food sovereignty.







I started to go through the document searching for places where I could add these orientations. Doing so I again discovered that the chapter on public services really is quite weak and far away from the orientations and campaigns of many social movements and NGOs in Europe and beyond.





Below, I started to re-draft the intro. But I think, there are many here in this list who could do that better.



“

The current crisis is not just of the banks. It is also an outcome of three decades of radical privatisation and commodification of many public services and state tasks, of public property and spaces, of social security systems and public planning, of common goods and natural resources. The long term trend to privatisation and deregulated markets lead to a broad process of dispossession of many people from their income and labour. It undermined the access of an increasing number of people to social security, health, education and affordable housing. It even undermined the capacities of public institutions to meet social needs and environmental challenges. It weakened the capacities of states to fulfil their human and social rights duties. At the same time this process substantially contributed to the enormous concentration of capital in the hands of institutional and private financial investors like private pension funds and private equity funds. A
 concentration of financial capital which must seek for high returns in speculative investments.





Building on numerous struggles for the defence of public and common resources – from the defence of public social security systems via the defence of public health, education and housing to the struggles against the privatisation of water, forests or genetic resources - European civil society should use the crash of financial market driven systems to start a broad offensive for redefining the role of the public sectors. In this context it is needed to tackle the question of how to re-build and reform public sectors , in order to construct the needed capacities for social, sustainable and democratic development.





Today public and private sectors partly are so inter-linked through the same market approach and revolving doors between the authorities and corporations that a new vision for the public sector has to be developed.



Concerning the European level it is clear that Maastricht budget deficit parameters put a huge limitation to the possibility of public intervention and the development of new form of public support, including at a more decentralised level. A fundamental overhaul of Maastricht parameters – at a time when most EU countries won't respect them – is central as well as an overhaul of monetary policy. Most central banks focussed too much on inflation due to wages and consumer prices and not on the inflation of assets. Low interest rates would make it easier for governments to borrow; at the same time credit markets should be strongly regulated to prevent new asset bubbles.





Another crucial point are EU competition rules, which produce pressure on member states to privatise public sectors and which disallow democratic governance of public resources as long as it does not follow market rules.





If the EU would overcome it's orientation on negative economic integration through a liberalized common market and if it would engage for the further development of the social union, it fundamentally had to redefine the role of the public services and public common goods and even public property in order to achieve social, sustainable and human rights standards.





Not only related to public services, even regarding the need for acceptable market standards, the intensification of the already ongoing struggles for the implementation of such standards at EU levels – “put social rights and environment first” – could become a major sphere for alliance building among social movements across Europe and fundamentally could help to overcome the neo-liberal hegemony.





Regarding the further development of EU funds it is urgent to overcome the given trend to global competitiveness at all levels and to re-orientate subsidies on the achievement of social and environmental goals and on the improvement of social and territorial cohesion in the meaning of strengthening solidarity and cooperation.







Facing the worsening consequences of the crisis for ordinary people and local authorities it especially is important to strengthen the decentralized capacities and competences for the development of more sustainable and sufficient local/regional economies. A “Green New Deal” which would not be based in cohesion, local democracy and a redefined role for public management of territorial resources easily could lead to new forms of authoritarianism and/or new speculative bubbles.





Restrengthening public local capacities implies that municipalities and sub-national state levels get enabled to finance their tasks and duties. This requires an adequate redistribution of national budgets and efficient local taxation and service charges, which can be designed in a social and acological way.





…."







Nick Hildyard schrieb:


Dear Amelie,



I agree with Knut's comments on bringing in housing rights/land issues.



A few minor edits and a couple of more substantive suggestions:



- On the green new deal - would propose being specific about using any fiscal stimulus (subject to Knut's braoder point about accompanying this with deeper strucural reform) to move away from fossil fuels and halt further investment in fossil fuel exploitation. Would suggest: *Promote a green new deal where cheap money provided by the central banks is used to finance sustainable developments aimed at curbing the use of fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, instead of subsidising tumbling commercial conglomerates. As a priority, further investment in fossile fuel exploitation, particularly by banks which have been nationalised, should be halted.





- On regulation of derivatives. The more I grapple with this, the more I have come to view regulation of derivatives as a Sysophian task: in my view, most are unregulatable - and making them trasparent won't remove the ssyetmic risks they pose. I would suggest including a call for a moratorium on the use of derivatives until national governments have undertaken a review of all derivative instruments, with full public participation, to assess their potential for creating systemic risk.



*

Best wishes,



Nick





Amélie Canonne - S2B wrote:


dear all



you'll find below an important email from Marta Ruiz following the coordination call we had last week.

It's about the draft document that has been worked out during the last weeks and which gathers analysis and proposals regarding financial and economic aspects of the crisis, see attached.

This document provides the basis for a shorter one which will be widely shared and published ahead of the G20.



Please read Marta's email to know further about the process and the feed backs which are expected

DEAD LINE TO REACT = -Next friday 6th of March

Best

a





-----Original Message-----

From: Marta Ruiz

Sent: Wed 25/02/2009 16:57


To: 'time_for_change_finance at rezisti.org'

Subject: Common key demands for the G20: please send your feedback before the 6th March



Dear all,







As agreed in Paris, we have been working in the WG on the finance aspects of the crisis on a first document along the lines exposed in the WG report there. Yesterday, the coordination group that is preparing the next meeting has had a conference call to follow up on the outcomes and to start planning for the next meeting in April.





We have agreed on the following next steps as regards the draft document that has been worked out:



The current draft contains specific demands on 6 different areas: global and corporate governance/ banking sector reforms/ speculation/tax havens/strengthening the public sector/impacts on the global South. See attached document.





The next step now is to share this draft for feedback with the participants of the Paris meeting, until March 6th.



We kindly ask you to look at this paper and to send back the following:



-three to five key priority demands that you think should be used in the short document



-other key demands that are not necessarily covered in the document but that should be addressed.



Based on this, we will try to rework this paper until mid march.



The aim is to produce ahead of the G20 meeting until mid-march a paper with a common set of priority demands that many European networks and groups share and support. Once this reworked document is ready we will share it and propose next steps.





At the conference call some key priorities had been suggested to be taken up (some of which are mentioned in the paper, some are new):



- A response to the outcomes of the Berlin meeting last Sunday (meeting of key EU countries) and our responses to it



- Socialization of Banks



- a proposal on the role of the ECB and needed changes, taking up the potential Bankrupcy of EU countries



- a response to the emerging debate on Protectionism/Liberalisation



- a response to the current rescue packages and their effects/New Green Deal (building on the joint formulations we already had in the final declaration of the Paris meeting)





The parts of the attached documents that will not be picked up in this document will be kept as a background document, to be further discussed in our next meeting in Frankfurt 18-19 April





I hope this makes sense to all of you and look forwards to your feedbacks on priorities







Best regards



Marta





Marta Ruiz



Policy and Advocacy Officer



EURODAD ASBL/VZW



We have moved. Our new address is: Rue d'Edimbourg 26



B- 1050 Brussels



Tel: +32 2 894.46.48



mruiz at eurodad.org



Skype: eurodad-marta



www.eurodad.org <http://www.eurodad.org>















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Seattle to Brussels Network

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http://www.s2bnetwork.org



The S2B network aims at challenging the corporate-driven agenda of the European Union and other European governments for continued global trade and investment liberalisation. The S2B network is the European part of the global 'Our World Is Not For Sale' network (OWINFS). It includes more than 60 organizations : development, environment, human rights, women and farmers organisations, trade unions, social movements as well as research institutes.















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