Social Europe: between hope and necessity
-Brigitte Favarel-Dapas, Rep. French Ministry of Employment, Paris
At the end of a slow progression that has endowed it with legislation and an
institutional framework, European social policy is at a crucial turning point. The
constraints of globalization, of the increasingly intensive economic integration of the
Community, of the socio-economic changes and the Lisbon summit of March 2000 have put a
series of challenges on the agenda that the French Presidency of the European Union will
have to transfer on to a “European social agenda” before the end of the year
2000.
Social Europe is the product of a slow evolution. Right from the start of the
Community project and in the spirit of the founding fathers, there has been the
conviction, on the one hand, that the Member States’ competence in social matters
should be left to them and, on the other hand, that social progress will very logically
follow from the economic progress brought about by the common market. It is therefore not
surprising that the first and very important achievements in the social field covered the
free movements of workers and the indispensable additional benefit of social security for
migrant workers to accompany the opening up of borders and the completion of the common
market.
It was not until the end of the 70s, when it became evident
that the “Thirty Glorious Post-War Years”-1945-1975- had indeed ended and that
the first social tensions were beginning to appear-notably with the rise in
unemployment-that greater attention was paid to the Community’s social dimension. The
need to strengthen the social aspect in the course of conversion to the internal market
and the advances made in the European construction-the Single Act, the Masstricht Treaty
and the Social Agreement as well as the Amsterdam Treaty-have produced a genuine European
social policy.
A positive achievement: The achievement is more significant than is some
times stated. It needs to be thought about objectively, which is not the often case in as
much as Community social policy calls for cut-and-dried comments. Regarded by some as the
poor parent of European construction, still subject to the economy, social policy is
viewed with suspicion, even hostility, by others who believe that no extra social
obligations should be created at all on a European scale. Today social Europe consists of
around seventy directives or regulations on the equal treatment of men and women,
improvement in living and working conditions, protection of health and safety in the work
place and information and consultation of the workforce It consists of a financial tool,
the European Social Fund-47 billion Euros- that is 10% of the Community budget for the
period 1994-1999. And finally, it is a field of Community action in which the direct
involvement of the social players has evolved alongside the traditional decision-making
mechanisms in working out the Community social provisions. Three framework agreements have
been concluded on parental leave, part time work and fixed-term employment contracts,
which have been translated into Council directives.
The Amsterdam Treaty includes social advances, notably a new heading on
employment. The Masstricht Social Agreement, which was attached to the treaty, has now
been incorporated into it and several of its aspects reinforced. A new article unanimously
allows the measures needed to combat discrimination to be taken.
The process of globalization and technical change mean that economies and
employment will inevitably have to adapt and changes will have to be made in the way
social policies are conducted. Social Europe has itself entered into a renewal phase made
necessary in view of the challenges it faces today: combating unemployment and striving
for full employment again, even if unemployment is falling in every country of the EU; the
ageing of the population; globalization, technological change, the organization of work
and social exclusion.
Finally, the challenge of the new economy-or the innovation and
knowledge-based economy- is today absorbing all the EUs energy. It was the theme of the EU
summit held in Lisbon on March 23 and 24, 2000”’ “Employment, economic
reform and social cohesion: towards an innovative and knowledge-based society”’.
It was in view of these challenges that the conclusions of this summit proposed a
modernization of the European social model.
Employment remains the priority task. In 1997, the Extraordinary Summit on
employment was held in Luxembourg at France’s initiative, which laid the foundation
of a European strategy in favor of employment.
Based on convergence, this strategy relies on common choices,
“guidelines” that are translated into national employment policies that are
analyzed and evaluated within the Community context. A process has been set in motion
which it could be said, is beginning to produce results: the member states as a whole have
begun to modify their employment policies in order to take into account the choices made
at Community level.
The conclusions of the Lisbon summit revealed the subject areas that will
assume crucial significance in a society based on knowledge and particularly on life-long
training and the need to create more, better quality jobs for a skilled and motivated
European workforce.
This method of convergence, which has proved itself in the employment
context, I cited today as an example for other areas of Community policy, including that
of the social welfare system.
Finally, the stronger social-dialogue between the social partners is a factor
rightly regarded as essential, particularly for everything relating to the modernization
and reorganization of employment.
It is these issues that touch on the everyday concerns of the citizens of
Europe which the French presidency will be covering throughout the second half of
the year 2000. In order to set the broad outlines of EY policy in the social area, France
has suggested to her partners that a “European social agenda” is drawn up.
Through a medium-term program of work, this will involve defining practical objectives for
European social policy after detailed consultations- particularly with the European
parliament and the social partners- and in close cooperation with the Commission.
2000 – the Year of Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont in Poland
- Piotr Rudzki, Polish Embassy, New Delhi
This year Poland is celebrating the 75th death anniversary of Wladyslaw
Stanislaw Reymont that is why on 5th January Polish Parliament declared the year 2000 as
Reymont’s Year. This is second honour being bestowed upon this great writer in less
than 50 years. Thirty-three years ago his birth centenary was celebrated under the
patronage of UNESCO.
Reymont was the second Polish writer who received the highest prize in the
field of literature, and the first one who got it after Poland regained her independence
in 1918 after 123 years of partition. The Nobel Prize given to him in 1924 for a novel
‘The Peasants’ was the best conclusion of his long and fruitful literary life.
Although, at that time Polish book-lovers expected that the other writers from other
countries would be awarded, passing-by time proved that the Swedish Academy had chosen an
appropriate work for its prize. But before Reymont became a famous writer, and even before
he became Reymont himself, he had to live through a lot of difficulties, changes of jobs
and names as well. Needless to state that later on all of these experiences was utilised
by him in his writing.
He was of a peasant origin, born on 7th May 1867 in a village Kobiele
Wielkie, central Poland, as Stanislaw Wladyslaw Rejment. His father was a village
organist. A future writer spent his early childhood in a small town Tuszyn, and then from
1880 he lived in Warsaw. Very little is known about his school education. The only
certificate which prooves that he was a student of any educational institution was issued
in 1883. It states that he was a student of third standard of Sunday Craft School in
Warsaw. Before this he worked as an apprentice in a tailor parlor run by his
brother-in-law. He was also a novice in a monastery. Probably in 1884 he joined a
wandering troupe of actors as an extra. But one can not find his name on any placards
announcing performances, because he took a nickname Urbanski. He concluded his
actor’s career in 1887, and next year he was employed as a senior worker in
Warsaw-Vienna Railway. Among places where he was sent to do his duties was also Lipce.
This name
appeared later on as a name of a village where an action of his main novel
takes place. Probably in 1888 he changed his surname into Reymont, because from 1889 he
used this form to sign his letters. That time he met spiritualists in
Czestochowa who fascinated him and influenced his life as well as writing. In
December 1893 he finally shifted to Warsaw and concentrated only on writing.
As a teenager he used to write poems, especially about everyday life in
tailor parlour, but then he gave it up. In December 1892 he made his début as a reporter
of Warsaw newspaper ‘The Voice’ as well as a writer. His short-story
‘Christmas Eve’ was published in Cracow newspaper ‘The Thought’.
During the period 1892-1894 he wrote seventeen short stories dealing with the topics which
would be explored by him deeper and better in his later works. One can name five such main
topics, which are related to: the actor’s circle (e.g. The Adept), everyday life in
the city (e.g. In the Drugstore, The Shadow), the life of the peasants (e.g.
“Bitch”, “The Death”, “Windstorm”), the noble’s circle
(The Meeting, The Idyll), the railway experiences of the writer (Work!). In two of his
first novels: Comedienne (1896) and its sequel Ferments (1897), Reymont recalled his
observations on actor’s society. The novels brought an adequate description of life
of young women, ex-actress, in a lazy and meaningless small town. She had to face there
all obstacles from which she wanted to escape by joining a wandering troupe of
“comediennes”. The writer was able to present precisely a conflict between an
artist and a philistine as well as to investigate a philistine in an artist. The stories
destroyed a myth of a Gypsy life of the artists too.
His next work ‘The Promised Land’ (1899) is a great novel-reportage
bringing a panoramic picture of a industrial town of Lodz where the textile industry was
developing. The biblical phrase as the title was used ironically. Lodz is “the
Promised Land” only for those who can easily forget about moral values and
concentrate on “making money”. For the author this town was a “polypus that
sucked (...) [people] in, crushed and chewed up people and things, the sky and the earth,
giving in exchange useless millions to a few and hunger and hard work to the masses”.
Such the anti-urbanistic and anti-industrial feelings of Reymont corresponded with the
opinions expressed earlier by John Ruskin, William Morris and a French naturalistic writer
Emile Zola, and later by Gilbert Keith Chesterton and many other European as well as
American writers and thinkers who were convinced of harmfulness of uncontrolled growth of
industry to human beings. The novel was very well received by critics as well as ordinary
readers. It was translated into fifteen languages and twice adapted by Polish film
directors: in 1927 by Aleksander Wegierko and Aleksander Hertz, and in 1975 by Andrzej
Wajda.
During the period 1899-1908 Reymont was mostly concentrated on writing his
main work The Peasants (1904-1909). But in the same time he published a few short stories,
which were prolegomena to this most famous and longest novel (e.g. In Autumn Night,
Justly). Apart of them he released a couple of short stories related to 1905 revolution
(e.g. I Am Waiting, At the Edge) and his stay in Bretagne (e.g. The Storm, The Last One,
The Return).
“The Peasants” is a novel describing ten months of a life of
inhabitants of village Lipce in four volumes entitled: The Autumn, The Winter, The Spring,
and The Summer. In this tetralogy one can find three orders. The first one is an order of
story of main characters as well as a whole village. This order is written down in a
framework of liturgy, customs and rites, some of them were of pagan origin, performed
every year by peasants in old times, and they build up the second order. The third one is
related to a concept of time in the novel, which could be represented not by a line but by
a circle. An existence of nature is immutably repeated to the rhythm of changing months
and seasons of the year. This rhythm defines an existence of peasants, whose work depends
mainly on nature. “This three orders – wrote Kazimierz Wyka – gave The
Peasants an epic character, which means that there is a particular gradation in the novel:
faith and adventures of an individual are depended on society and on a kind of work done
by it, and this, on the other hand, is depended on nature, time and biology which is
present in human being existence.” The novel was translated into nineteen languages
and twice adapted by Polish film directors: in 1922 by Edmunt Modzelewski and in 1973 by
Jan Rybkowski. The writer himself valued The Peasants very high: “Everything, which I
wrote before The Peasants, was my literary introduction”.
In a novelistic sketch The Dreamer (1908) Reymont came back to his
experiences as railway worker giving a remarkable portrait railway cashier who is bored
with his work and dreams about another life. As a result he defrauded company money and
escaped to Paris where he committed suicide disappointed that reality had very little in
common with his dreams. Three of his next works deal with spiritualism, mediums,
hallucinations and dreams: Dream History (1908), The Strange Story (1908) and The Vampire
(1911). In the same time he published a play The Loss (1911) which was not a success. Just
before the First World War he started to write a historic novel The Year 1794, which was
supposed to join a past with present time, but he was able to complete only a trilogy
dealing with past: The Last Diet of Respublica (1913), Nil disperandum (1916) and
Insurrection (1918). During the First World War he wrote a few short-stories dealing with
the war experienced by villagers. Later on they were included in a volume Behind the
Combat Zone (1919). During the period 1921-1924 he wrote novels as well as short stories
on America and on situation of Poland after regaining independence in 1918 (e.g. The Fate,
The Return, The Confess, The Revolt). His last works were not as valuable as the previous
ones. Reymont died on 5th of December 1925 in Warsaw. |
