What began as a meltdown of the global financial system in 2008 has been transformed into a new political reality of austerity which threatens over six decades of social solidarity and expanding human rights protection in Europe, says the Council of Europe in a recent report, while Eurostat found that a quarter of EU’s population is at risk of poverty and social exclusion.
Together with its three Belgian affiliates (CSC, FGTB and CGSLB), the ETUC launched a collective complaint in 2009 before the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, against the practice of judicial intervention into the exercise of the right to strike.