They pretend that nothing is happening in order to continue to serve the European Union and the interests of capital.
Starting tomorrow, the leaders of the European trade union organisations affiliated to the ETUC will meet in Berlin to celebrate the extraordinary congress called after the very serious Quatargate scandal involving the top management of the ETUC and ITUC.
However, corruption is absent from the central themes of the congress, with no mention of the scandal of the 50,000 euros paid by emissaries of the government of Qatar to the ITUC General Secretary Luca Visentini until November 2022.
Above all, there seems to be no discussion on the agenda as to why the Italian trade unionist accepted the money: to avoid any criticism, any denunciation of the treatment of workers involved in the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Together with MEPs and key NGO representatives, the ETUC, through Visentini, promised to avert a condemnation by the European Commission, which could have damaged the image built up around the sporting event, in exchange for the 50,000 euros in cash handed over by two men from the Qatari government.
The European Yellow Union, which has not issued any statement in recent months to explain what happened, is today renewing its leadership in the presence of Ursula von der Leyen and Nicolas Schmit, the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, to whom it will hand over a union that has been formally purged, but which is determined to continue its work of accompanying and being complicit in the European Union’s destruction of the trade union and social rights of European workers.
Moreover, in a conference organised as part of the congress work, the ETUC will hold a debate entitled “East-West trade union relations during the Cold War”, confirming its Atlanticist loyalty and in full continuity with the break with the decisions taken in 1949 within the World Federation of Trade Unions by some of the largest European organisations alongside those of the USA, in a pathetic and unsuccessful attempt to exorcise the strengthening of the WFTU, the international class union, also in Europe.
Eurof-WFTU