SESSION 2 – Successful strategies to implement economic democracy

ℹ️ https://bit.ly/PowerOfEconomicDemocracy
📗 https://bit.ly/BuildingEconDem

Second session of ‘The transformative power of economic democracy’ conference organised by FEPS with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF), to discuss approaches and practices that help build and scale up economic democracy.

Panel 1: Democracy in public spending
• Matthew Brown, Senior Fellow at Democracy Collaborative, Preston (UK) City
Council Leader, former advisor to the Labour Party’s Community Wealth Building
Unit
• Matic Primc, President at Organisation for participatory society (Organizacija za
participatorno družbo)
• Bogdan-Alexandru Chelariu, EU Policy Officer at CEE Bankwatch Network

Moderator: Niccolo Milanese, Founding Director of European Alternatives

Panel 2: Democracy at the workplace
• Sophia Reisecker, Member of the EESC, Head of the Department for European
and international Affairs and corporations of GPA union (Austria)
• Stefan Gran, Senior Advisor at European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
• Giuseppe Guerini, Member of the EESC, President of the European
confederation of industrial and service cooperatives (CECOP-CICOPA Europe)
• Kosta Juri, Head of Research and Policy at Institute for Economic Democracy
(IED)

Moderator: Sara Lafuente, Senior Researcher at European Trade Union Institute
(ETUI)

Panel 3: Democratising public services
• Anne Le Strat, Consultant and Lecturer, former Deputy Mayor of Paris in charge
of the water policy
• Mirco Beisheim, Campaign Manager at #TschüssKohle (Hamburg)
• Milo Fiasconaro, Executive Director at Aqua Publica Europea (The European
Association of public water operators)

Moderator: Tuscany Bell, Policy Officer – Utilities at European Federation of Public
Service Unions

welcome back everybody I have the impression you enjoyed your coffee breaks which is an important part of uh the Democracy of conferences like this uh this is the panel which is going to talk about democracy in public spending uh for the next hour or so and we’ve got um three excellent guests to uh talk us through different aspects of democratizing public spending I’m going to introduce them uh rapidly just on on my left is Matthew Brown uh Matthew Brown is one of the leaders of the uh Preston city council and the well-known model that has been implemented there often referred to as the Preston model he’s going to explain us about uh as well as being a senior fellow with the Democracy collaborative which is an international nonprofit Association promoting the Democratic economy uh further to my left is Bogdan Alexandro shario who’s the EU policy officer at CE bankat Network um and he’s been leading the Brussels office um of uh Romanian uh organization and uh following um the use of cohesion funds notably in an EU context and then on my far left Matic primich is a Slovenian activist and organizer he’s part of the municipalist assembly movement uh in Slovenia and has been advocating in many different ways for participatory democracy and participative Dem uh Society um and if you’re interested in who I am I’m the director of an organization called European Alternatives which promotes democracy equality and culture beyond the nation state and I also work at the European University Institute and together um the European University Institute European Alternatives and many other organizations are piloting a permanent people’s assembly for Europe um starting from September this year and economic democracy is an important part of that uh pilot um so you will have gathered that in this panel we’re going to talk from different parts of Europe uh and also at different scales uh about um democratizing public spending it’s as well to acknowledge um that that is a good deal of diversity on the panel but it is a rather male panel um so it’s lacking in some diversity there I know that the excellent organizers um did their best to try to avoid that situation obviously over the day um there is some diversity but um just by circumstance um this is a all male uh panel which is regrettable but uh better acknowledged than past in silence I think so I’m going to ask a couple of questions to uh each of the panelist and then I want to leave some time for uh discussion um I’m going to start with Matthew who’s just next to me uh who as I said is uh being responsible largely for the Preston model uh it would be great to hear from you what are the key elements of that model perhaps what are some of the challenges that have been um experienced in in implementing it and perhaps most importantly what could be some of the conditions for that model to be copied or learned from elsewhere hi everyone love to be here in Brussels um yeah brilliant question obviously um what we did impressed them was try to look at economic Alternatives and I think we got to cast our mind back why we did this within our communities um there’s been talk today about the imposition of neoliberal Economics within the United Kingdom that’s been the worst form of it uh in the Western World I would say since the late 70s and within our city were a very uh diverse workingclass Community we used to have very well-paid skilled manual jobs 50s 60s 7s 80s that was taken away so the community wealth building approach we did take was based around circumstances that we found ourselves in which was in uh about 105 years ago when the labor Administration took control at a local level it was the imposition of the worst forms of austerity it was recovering from the financial crisis and then also the failure of a traditional corporate L development approach to city center Redevelopment which just didn’t work so this is why we did what we did and what we did do is try to respond to try to build resilience as well as democracy because a lot of community wealth building and I I work for democracy collaborative as well which I’m really appearing with today in this role because we’re impur in our country because of the the general election uh to spread these ideas far beyond a lot of it’s about trying to promote that economic democracy whether it’s public procurement trying to get your big anchor institutions to spend a lot more with uh local businesses cooperatives and secure uh fair and just labor standards whether it’s looking at Municipal ownership of City Center development whether it’s looking at Regional Cooperative banking whether it’s looking at insourcing of Serv Services whether it’s looking as we’re doing in Preston trying to regenerate our city center in Municipal ownership building Cinemas upgrading museums having business spaces in the city center which are in Municipal ownership rather than uh done with you know large developers or Property Owners or whether it’s an expansion of worker ownership and employee ownership which we’re trying to do in Preston we’ got about 10 new worker owned firms and then trying to link that with public procurement so the vision quite clear and it’s actually within the uh within the study that’s been published today but there are huge challenges and I think the biggest challenge we face is uh a challenge to people who are scared of new ideas I think culturally within politics within Economic Development often within uh senior offices in local and Regional government as well as civil servants there are resistance to new ideas but I think what’s been talked about today about how the traditional Center left will actually lose interaction a lot of that is because people people don’t have o ownership and agency within their communities we’ve seen a huge amount of deregulation privatization and de-industrialization and Outsourcing in our country and that has led us to be very very unequal and I think it’s also taken that democracy away and one way we can actually win support I think on the left is by implementing economic democracy and a lot of it with Community wealth building can be done locally and regionally you know the leads can come from uh City governments local councils and we’re seeing big trends in the United Kingdom Beyond with Community wealth building it’s a very exciting movement which is growing thanks Matthew and what would you say would be some of the key elements for people to learn from the model and potentially try and apply it in other places I think Community wealth building needs to be applied in uh circumstances within each country or each region even in the UK it’s very different for example in central London there’s big issues around the the cost of housing people are priced out of the housing market so a community wealth building approach there is often councils like Newan for example with the Roxana fias who are actually purchasing private sector rented properties and bringing them back into public ownership so it’s very different you know it can be about the uh the green agenda can we look at public cooperative and Community ownership of the production of energy uh you know can we look at banking can we look at Finance can we look at land and assets can we make sure that public land is used to say for example example not be sold off to private developers but used for social and affordable housing or social companies you know we need creativity I think the crisis we’re all facing across Europe at the moment we’ve seen the elections in France we’ve seen the elections in uh the European Union I think the crisis is that deep we really need creative minds and I think we need to have a a unified strategy because Community wealth building is about five pillars it’s about fair and just labor markets plural ownership of the economy Progressive procurement socially uh productive use of land and assets and making Financial power work for places whether that’s public Banks Community Banks supporting credit unions and if you put that all together you’re really moving towards a new system that’s going to be more democratic in terms of economic ownership and I think that can win lots of support for us and win support within communities the working presson is very exciting that we have you know women’s organizations we’ve got minority communities we’ve got trade unions even local businesses Faith organizations that getting behind various aspects of community wealth building super I want to I want to bring in mat uh here because you’ve been working extensively on participative budgeting um which is an idea that has arguably come from the global South um as was referred to in the in the opening panel of this and it’s been around for quite a quite a while as a technique and it’s I think fair to say had mixed kind of results um notably um in circumstances where the amounts of money that uh citizens have been allowed to decide over is quite minimal um or where uh there’s no followup on the decisions that have been taken um or even and speaking from my lived experience in a in a place like Paris where um very good projects are sometimes put in competition with each other and one feels like well there shouldn’t really be a competition here we want to do we want to do each of them and so um I’d like to hear from you uh what would make participative budgeting a genuinely Democratic um experience and perhaps also some um elements of the differ scales on which that could potentially work uh from your experience um yeah so uh uh maybe I can tie back into what Matthew Brown said you know I also come from a city that was industrial but then you know got degraded actually of similar size but we haven’t had our Preston model yet but what we do have is a municipalist movement quite strong one based around citizen assemblies that’s been going on for 12 years now and we have carried out about 1,600 citizen assemblies in that time you know and when citizens got engaged you know in this activities trying to you know win changes for the better to improve their lives and living conditions in the city you know they run against a system that doesn’t allow uh that that doesn’t uh uh allow you know much C Democratic citizen participation that has to be uh respected or enact it right and when uh very quickly they looked for mechanisms that that they you know that would allow that and participatory budgeting is uh one such mechanism that came up and uh in maribor at least you know it has been achieved from the bottom up which is usually not the case but it was the case in Brazil uh where it was first implemented right and it shows that the two approaches you know some are promoted like the world bank and they instituted top down for efficiency you know because the mechanism brings a lot of benefits to municipalities that use them you know like more equal uh development in different parts of the Cities you know less social differences in inequalities uh increases uh trust in the Democratic process you know which are all good but often as you mentioned you know they run into limitations uh a lot of these processes are um consultative you know which very quickly you know they’re abused citizens lose trust uh and uh uh and some a lot of them fail you know the citizens don’t take part part into them uh with them anymore um on the other hand you know the better practices uh are the ones and I would argue this should be uh all practices that that are not decision based where the citizens have the decision making power on how to spend that money uh should just be abandoned as participatory budgeting there are some other participatory processes but they’re there shouldn’t be considered participatory budgeting um and uh because in Slovenia the Grassroots organization fought for it you know they created such a model and now uh it it’s been growing rapidly so in eight years in Slovenia now almost a third of all municipalities had it including all of the bigger one we call them like Urban municipalities except the capital you know so uh uh and all of them use this decision making model so in Slovenia you know if it’s not if it’s just consultative it’s not considered participatory budgeting uh anymore um so this quality is much important alas there is still the problem that the funds are quite small and the range of possibilities are also quite limited uh it turns out the municipalities are often scared of when people get too eager to participate you know and they pull back instead of you know leaning into it uh which time is the development you know and uh across Europe I think the the good results that were for example achieved in Porto alra you know be before they also uh destroyed their experiment uh are not reached you know so the the the benefits are much smaller than uh in the really the Democratic examples where the citizens have influence over vast parts of the budget thanks and M for the for the municipalities that are reluctant or scared of this what kind of arguments do you use as a as an activist to try and persuade them why this would be a good idea um yeah so uh you know sometimes you know municipalities usually approach this from like a deontological perspective you know so they believe it’s right they have this you know moral imperative that we heard talked about in the previous panel which I think is very important and a lot of uh you know Mayors do believe in this but they approach with it with some caution right so when you have mayors that don’t believe in this and it convincing you know as an activist you know I extol the virtues you know that the World Bank identifies because you know that’s the thing think they respond to uh but again uh I think it correlates you know when uh when there is this presence of moral argument why people should have Democratic decision making uh uh in the spending of Public Finance uh they usually make better processes you know and they’re less afraid of the uh of the citizens coming forward uh though it is a bit of a contradictions because you can notice you know that municipalities that already have uh active citizens you know are the most who are then most afraid to uh to give them new tools you know because usually when citizens are active is because they oppose something the municipality is doing you know very rarely in support um so it’s like the when there’s the best ground you know to build on this you know it’s the most resistance also so it has to be kind of our uh enter our political culture you know to welcome this you know not not only uh to try to control it you know so the results that are kind of pre-approved are the only ones allowed so this would be like a big mistake um also uh several and this is not unique to Slovenia right but also participatory budgeting is also instituted in schools uh primary and secondary schools already you know the pupils can Cod decide on how this how to spend the school’s money to improve their learning process or maybe the infrastructure of the school and uh this already you know brings uh you know acclimates people to democratic participation and kind of builds a culture uh of democratic participation which is often quite absent uh in our society because people are very rarely asked or expected to give their input and even less you know to make decisions right so this needs to be built into the culture thanks building the Democratic culture seems like a really important um element for us to keep in mind I wanted um after having heard about two sort of local um experiences turn to Bogdan and and the EU uh level because you’ve been at bank watch um following the um the spending of the EU and notably when it comes to cohesion funds just transition funds and other funds now I think the caricature um of of EU uh economic policy is that there’s very little participative democracy going on at all um and very little public oversight perhaps people in this town know that things are a bit more complicated than that but I would like to ask you uh bdan what’s your assessment of those public oversight mechanisms that do exist um when it comes to the spending of EU money um how can they be made uh more impactful how can more people be uh involved in in deciding over how that funding is spent sure thank you for the question uh is it working yeah yes great so maybe without preaching to the converted I would maybe like to to tell a few things about these monitoring committees so monitoring committee is technically a body that overs sites uh oversees the implementation of certain programs that are connected with cohesion policy funds in general they are composed by quite powerful people like from the member states uh from Regional level local level and so on um but lately by economic and social partners and also by uh Civil Society uh organizations uh the Commit This monitoring committee especially the one uh attached to the cohesion funds is fantastically important it has its work has a lot of impact on billions of Euros in Central and Eastern Europe especially um and maybe a bit it goes beyond the name so it’s not doing purely monitoring and they maybe that’s misleading for some people but deals with assessing the quality of the program but also has a huge role in the project criteria in reviewing the progress of the programs and so on however not all of them are collaborative and they really have to learn a lot about um in inclusiveness let’s say that in general programs that are done in a monocultural way without um citizen in a room without unprivileged people without people that are voiceless and so on um really have low impact the absorption rate is kind of low uh the project quality is kind of low the the expectations are never met uh and also uh they create a lot of public discontent especially from from citizens but also from small businesses um it’s crucial to point out that we are talking about billions of euros and if you have a monitoring committee that is dysfunctional it has a huge societal cost like uh the cost of a of a project of a pipeline of projects that are unuseful is huge uh the cost of reducing monitoring to to rubber stamping is also huge and you’re also losing society which also has a huge financial cost even though we don’t think about it strategic gains are the fact that uh this monitoring committees help a lot with trust building when they really work they untap a lot of uh of knowledge that is in the Civil Society and in in the citizens and maybe I would go through some examples from Central and Eastern Europe I think they’re kind of important I will start with Poland a monitoring committee there it’s it’s still a source of of solutions when it comes to solving uh complexity uh one of our members there Polish green network uh actually managed to push for a lot of positive changes there they managed to to to make a group dealing with do not significant harm principles and um yeah uh dealing a lot with good and bad practices but something that is very important is that they convinced the minister of funds to to extend the technical assistance which means like money from the program towards the Civil Society um um organizations so it means I know it’s easy to have this board but imagine that for a lot of citizens or NOS to go somewhere to a place that is considered democratic to read 3,000 pages of of text to give technical input it’s very sophisticated so it’s kind of it’s a big win for them for the fact that there are some some small money that somehow can uh can Finance their work also just uh Beyond travel money or I don’t know paying for accommodation they even have small grants where they could actually pay to meet an expert a local activist or a pay to pay for a small study that can actually help them fighting for the people in this monitoring committee so a lot has been happening when it comes to to to this uh maybe something positive from Hungary um also there A lot happened when it comes to training the the nonprofits in the monitoring committees uh let’s say that the civil soci Society organizations there received a training where they get like a sort of a landscape of the cohesion programs and how they could interfere and a lot of um peer learning with other monitoring committees uh and there’s a good example in between Hungary and latva uh something also interesting from Slovakia experts from Civil Society have been involved in in in monitoring uh the programming of EU funds for many years without recognition and sometimes without money without proper networking uh a positive change occurred from 2017 where actually uh the the projects related with the partnership uh principle are financed through technical assistance um and um with this projects they really managed to work more on participatory monitoring and uh making more often surveys and reality checks with the state that is actually designing this something interesting from CIA um there was a grant allocated to a to a nonprofit organization that made a sort of a Gateway between the technical needs and let’s say the citizen needs or the the needs of expertise coming from society and the Ministries that need these experts in different one monitoring committees uh so that’s kind of interesting because there’s like an intermediary organization that tries to build B Bridges between the between the the government and and society and last but not least something from Estonia I would say that they have uh a road map on Partner empowering on cohesion policy in in the current programming period um and they talk a lot about te technical assistance that can Finance uh the capacity of Civil Society just to conclude I would say that monitoring committees used to have a rather bad reputation they were considered very formal with an ambiguous uh Mission but there’s a lot of small wins there and I would say that little by little there’s more people that go there and try to change the criteria to make these huge amounts of money more future proof or like social proof and so on um also I would say that we see this as a long-term process to bring some positivity let’s say that the cohesion policy had some reforms in the 80s in the90s and the 2000 and little by little from a state controlled policy it started to make space for stakeholders first to regional and local and later on to right holders ERS and now there’s a there’s a proper recognition of civil society as being a very important actor in this monitoring committees that they can really do a lot of impactful things thank you thanks ban for this um I’m going to open up the discussion um just in a second I want to uh point out though before I do that it was it was brought up in the previous panel that um democratizing the economy is something that we need to somehow learn to do and it’s interesting that um in this panel we’ve heard about different aspects of who needs to learn at different stages so there was talk about building a democratic culture also amongst activists which is arguably about the agenda setting phase setting the priorities um there is learning that needs to be done in actually implementing the policies in a democratic kind of way and i’ I’d love to hear you math you more on that when we’ve collected a couple of of of of um other questions and then there’s the monitoring and kind of evaluation phase where learning is also really important if people are going to know how to do it and B Dan you were just talking about great examples of providing people with um resources and and opportunities to learn how to how to do this monitoring so right the way throughout the policy cycle when it comes to Economic Policy um learning has to be has to be embedded now I said I wanted to bring in a couple of other people so let’s take a couple of questions and then I’m going to turn immediately to Matthew with my question before before I bring in yours does someone have um question questions comments otherwise you may all be thinking my question is so good we want to hear Matthew first let’s do that Matthew so in terms of implementing policies in a democratic way you’ve been running the the Preston model for some time and I guess it was quite a shift for uh the people in the city Administration municipality who are actually implementing the the policies was there a kind of a learning period how did that how did that work in terms of changing the the behaviors and the ways of doing things I think failure’s of previous approaches meant there were open minds to doing things differently which helped so we had obviously there’s always political debates which takes time to win over a new way of thinking and obviously I was behind that with colleagues within our group of councilors within the wider party in the city and Beyond so um so we managed to make strong arguments and convince them but then obviously at the same time it’s the officials who employ as a city Authority and institutions in the city as well and businesses and Community organizations and unions winning them over um I think what helped is just the failure of the traditional Economic Development approach especially in a community like Preston where we were promised so much and so little had been delivered from depending on a large corporate developers say for example City Center regeneration the austerity that we’ve seen you know the lack of funding we’re getting and then obviously just seeing the city in terms of living standards decline I think that helped do something very very different however there is still elements of resistance to doing these things differently so if I’m going to my chief executive saying I want to prioritize expanding worker ownership in our local economy it’s something most politicians don’t come and say they want to do if I’m saying I want to set up a bank it’s something most local politicians don’t say so trying to get them in that mindset is is a struggle I think what’s helped us in Preston is how many in the community whether it’s uh the church in my ward that helping establish a community land trust in you know Community ownership Democratic ownership whether it’s the minority communities saying we need to look at uh further models of economic ownership locally whether it’s uh The Traveler Community which has help we helped to establish a housing Cooperative to prevent them getting evicted you know that is helping we’re actually getting um you know many many layers of Civil Society in Preston behind this really it’s really positive in that respect but I just mean I mean just thinking about this I mean what one interesting element we could look at with economic democracy is um platform technology because you know the exploitation we get in society by often these gig economy corporations it’s it’s exacerbated by often race and gender and disability and I think there’s a huge opportunity working with you know women’s organizations minority communities unions and others to actually harness this technology and put you know alternatives to these gig economy corporations and having municipalities support that because you know some of the extraction of wealth you get from say an Uber driver for example I mean there’s reports in the press that it’s uh 30% or more profit that’s taken from them or you know other elements of the gig economy it’s very very disturbing in terms of the conditions many of them are working in so I think there’s an opportunity for the movement to uh you know to look at that as well as part of Community wealth building an economic democracy uh I mean David Bowie said this on a news night in the BBC about 23 years ago how the internet was got to really fundamentally change everything and he was right you know at the time it started people didn’t think it would be as big as it is but it’s changed all our lies but I think there’s huge potential for ourselves to look at technology and how that can really promote economic democracy super thanks for this David Boe icon of democratic economy uh amongst many other things that do we do we have questions comments from the from the room yeah so we’ll go here and here over there and don’t forget to introduce your hi thank you uh sopia kuso from um Cen University uh I was wondering how do you elaborate evaluate and eventually communicate the uh your priorities in order then to agree upon them in a Democratic manner maybe you also have some some practical examples and my second question was whether there is a difference in the way you approach these um uh bodies depending on whether they are more political or more administrative let’s say technocratic in um yeah in the way to infuse their decision with this more um participatory Style thank you very much uh my name is Esna Peli and I come here from UT University um and it’s a similar question actually um we’re talking about par participatory democracy which is going to lead to more equality and equity and my question is how are we going to give the resources because it demands basically time and energy from the citizens in order to participate because the most vulnerable uh groups of society that would be most benefited from this are most of the time not in the position to participate and it’s usually the The Usual Suspects so to say that partake uh in those decision-making processes so maybe from your experience how is that possible and especially in a climate of rising polarization and radicalization and populism where the masses can be um influenced severely uh and there is lack also of of information when it comes to lot of topics because of the um um bubbles that are created online thank you great question anyone else want to come in now otherwise we come back here okay so there were questions around uh communication of political priorities in a way that promotes Democratic discussion of them it was about approaching different kinds of um stakeholders and administrative more te technocratic entities and how to democratize those differently and there was questions about uh bringing in uh those who don’t usually take part or don’t feel like they can take part getting Beyond The Usual Suspects so maybe um yeah so uh uh in all participatory processes you know this problem that you mentioned uh you know comes up uh you know people who are most informed usually uh also have confidence uh to like appear in public spaces and speak you know are the ones who show up you know and I think this is a problem because in our political systems there is a lack of a political space for regular citizens to talk to each other you know not uh not to their government or whatever you know um because when the when the citizens you know have to engage in like deliberative democracy you know if the processes are designed solely on the fact that their citizens you know have to like convince the government or whatever uh the people who are as you said you know like disadvantaged in some way will usually refrain from engaging you know the solution I think is you have to create political spaces for where citizens talk to other citizens you know not to the officials or whatever uh people who are the who have the political power in the hierarchical structure right and once you have such spaces and they also have to be built uh on kind of a community that already exists you know so you know on a neighborhood level street level whatever brings people together in C you know in different cities or areas you know it could be different things uh I think once that culture is built uh you have more inclusion you know or even representative inclusion of the less advantage people into these spaces right and uh this is something we tried with our municipalist movement with these assemblies you know because we came just from that analysis you know that we don’t want now all the people who have University education to take part on this process you know but we will leave out all the I don’t know you know the retired people the Roma people the the you know everyone who’s a minority in any way and I think you know that we’ve done some you know there were better results in our but it also touches you know on the what was earlier named you know in the earlier panel activist fatigue you know because people are expected to do this you know after they already work you know and on the other side you know because when even such political spaces happen you know people do agree okay this is what we need as a community you know we should demand it you know they usually the unresponsive political system you know than these people who afterward voluntarily you know give their free time you know then have to fight with people who are actually paid you know do this for work and then you know uh it’s sometimes you know often it works to basically nullify you know all the efforts um so if there’s an opening of space and this element you know of The Liberation where there are spaces created and this is like all government in my experience you know all uh administrative structures are really bad facilitating space places where you know citizens talk to other citizens uh you know if but if we can turn this around I think this effect can be overcome you know I don’t know totally probably not uh but to an extent you know and whenever you you identify you know even when you have such a system and you identify you know some people are you know missing not in rep not taking part in representative ways they do uh you can have like proactive measures you know to go out and seek these people you know entice these people into the political spaces for the citizens right yeah I could maybe add I I think we also have an obsession on diversity and giving the voice to the voiceless person in many political areas but also especially in the monitoring committee and it’s very hard like I must say that that um I’ve been scrolling many minutes of the meetings to understand how power works there why some people talk and some other know why there’s a lot of State people maybe or people with power that don’t have the hostor syndrome and there’s a lot of citizens that have a lot of knowledge that suffer from Hoster syndrome they think it’s not their space and if you look at the micropolitics even though legally there’s an open space is Dem ratic it doesn’t work that way there’s a lot of power in details and I think we we spent a lot of time in the past years to put the people together and to do this peer learning on how to fight power in jargon power in language power in technical aspects power in financial education power as power a bit of power in everything and at the end we talk also about money like as I said said or you were talking also um there is a fatigue but I would not say it’s a activist fatigue I would say it’s a rather decision fatigue human beings these days have to take a lot of decisions every day the same pro programs and finance get very sophisticated so it means that you need a lot of capacity there like people to read to do and for them they have to put a bit their job aside their studies aside maybe they have um maybe they very Left Behind people maybe they are like non um let’s say non majority Roma people disabled people especially in Central and Eastern Europe they they really need a lot of coaching and a lot of support to go there and there’s not enough money for this and for us there was a small win that in some cases we can spend the technical assistance allocated to these huge funds on capacity building but is just a small drop in and huge needs of of of supporting people to to be active thank you yeah in terms of communication of priorities what we’re looking to do at the authority is really use direct language that could appeal to people so uh we do that within our media releases we’re also looking at new things like having podcasts when we go into the community and say this is a worker Cooperative the council supported what’s it like working in it Cooperative energy schemes all the rest of it so we actually get uh these ideas into communities because a challenge we have uh when there are communities that have suffered Decades of uh inequalities and uh having very few opportunities and the living incomes you know falling year after year is that they’ve actually not got much faith in the system to help them they don’t not the less likely to vote uh so it’s getting into those communities and trying to put across a message with Community wealth building directly to them and actually show people in the communities who are benefiting from them and that’s one way we’re doing it with it we’re trying to do it and then also as well try to work say with faith organizations or Community organizations because there’s lots of community groups even in these W less well off communities to get this message of economic democracy and Community wealth building in those communities also doing things like having climate assemblies we’ve done that in Preston that’s very positive that’s participatory that’s having a cross section of uh the local Society coming up with ideas that can then inform the local government and Beyond about how we tackle the climate emergency that’s another way we can do it and then also you know you need a different approach with whatever institution you’re working with so what might be a local Council or an anchor Institution for example trying to get them to say purchase locally support local businesses and cooperatives and other things you know you need a bit of a different approach to working say at the Grassroots with community organizations and trade unions and you know um Grassroots organizations I think you need to adapt it to whatever that is and I think you need to monitor what you’re doing in terms of how much you spending with local businesses are you shifting spend locally how many more democratic institutions do you have in terms of economic democracy you know do you have an expansion of worker ownership do you have more people in credit unions and alternative banking arrangements and if you put that together I think it’s very powerful super I think maybe have time for two more questions and some quick answers I see one already uh please Andrew hi yes it’s Andrew wat here from the currently at the imk in in dor and soon to be joining the European train Union Trade union Institute here in in Brussels um so I have a a question related to public procurement which Matthew you mentioned and it was mentioned in in the in the previous panel maybe a slightly annoying question um I mean because I I mean I understand the logic from from a local development perspective uh you know to take the example of Preston to to direct public procurement contracts to to local firms um of course from a from a sort of macro perspective one can question the the the logic of that right and there are I presume you were you were implementing these strategies when when the UK was still a number of of the of the single Market in the EU I mean there are explicit rules to to actually stop that I to limit the scope for for this sort of uh this sort of use of public procurement so I’ll be interested to to hear how how that impacted your your scope for using these sort of strategies and also maybe as a as a as a as a half Brit at least whether having left the EU has actually made a difference in that uh in in that case or whether there are national uh laws that that also restrict your your scope there thank you thank you is there a last yeah there’s one more of that and then we’ll come back uh hello I would want to hear perhaps some examples of cases in which uh feedback has changed uh the way how feedback in the in the both ways has changed either the way that the structures work themselves so for example how participating in local councils or participating in the monitoring committees has changed uh the the Committees themselves how participants have uh contributed to the rules of procedure and also examples perhaps of the other way around how participating in these institutions has changed the kind of participants you get or the attitudes of the people taking part in them I would just like to hear some examples about this thank you thank one minute uh each to to respond there a specific question about public procurement and then asking for examples of how this changes uh structures so should we go back in that order Maybe you public procurement first uh we did it within the European Union uh there’s not been a huge change I don’t think since leaving we managed to do it things like breaking contracts down into pieces helped in the sense that the the larger businesses were not always that interested in smaller contracts so a lot more local businesses win them uh meet the buyer days simplifying documentation a lot of the increasing procurement going to local construction firms so you have a more diverse supply chain rather than say the the main Lodge players often which are not reportedly that you know supportive of local Supply chains locally that they have uh but a big thing in terms of the Trade union agenda is we do promote real living wage within many of these procurement Arrangements we got things like encouraging Trade union recognition and access and on the cinema we’re building in public ownership we’re promoting Trade union membership as part of that and then even when we procure from firms say you know weight them in terms of social value they go beyond the statut Tre uh you know sick pay maternity paternity pay and things like that so you can do a lot to actually firstly have a more diverse less extractive set of suppliers uh through public procurement but do things around workers rights as well together great with some examples of how participation changes things yeah maybe I can say just two examples like um we’ve seen a big difference in countries where the monitoring committees in some parts of Central and Eastern Europe are still 90% run by Central and Regional administrators and we have some cases in the baltics where more than 55% of the members are civil society organizations and there’s a totally different Power Dynamic and I’m saying that this also a very immediate impact is Al Financial loss you have for instance if we talk about climate or social inequality these days uh there are topics that in in programming it goes in a lot of technical details about engineering uh ethnology sociology it’s more often that you find a lot of complex expertise in in society than in the in the public administrators sometimes and uh you see that in the places that allow a lot of participation the CR the project criteria is is uh more updated is more smooth to give you an example in some places you might find criteria that it’s so much update outdated that they allow projects that according to to the to the European rules are just UNF financeable which means that there was no reality check there was nobody there to D to say that you have to wake up you have to follow up a bit there’s taxonomy there’s green deal there’s so could be social taxonomy there’s a lot of other things uh so that’s that’s kind of uh kind of important thanks good example more examples um yeah so uh speaking to participator budgeting you know I can speak on both sides of what you asked you know there are benefits to particip budgeting that come you know to organizations not necessarily only municipalities you know but maybe municipalities are the most quintessential example you know where they uh decrease social inequality they uh you know make more equal development of the Cities uh and bring a number of other uh other benefits which have been you know studied and documented for I Don’t Know by World Bank or un habitat program um and they are context dependent you know so it’s unfair to just list them because they will not happen in every context um but there are numerous and changes are observable and measurable uh but also what is often unstated you know is the other part you know how do the citizens change who take part in this you know and I have a very concrete example because uh the people who took part in this uh uh in maribor you know have been studied by uh Slovenian University of lublana uh over like SE 70 bench marks you know and the uh how this process changes you know like their social values and perspectives and this has been replicated in other places so it can be generalized to an extent I suppose and what was noticed you know that people who take part of this uh process you know uh the the most uh marked changes in their like World Views and personal preferences is that they become uh more attentive to needs of their commun Community you know to the needs of other people uh they develop more respect from the for the opinion of others you know they they Place greater value in community engagement um develop more uh respect for Democratic processes you know more for like uh uh increased uh culture for debate you know they they start relying more on arguments rather than you know like sloganeering uh so but if you take it so it’s like 72 I can’t list all of them you know uh um uh you know in our case you know the one that was most negatively affected was like trust in the political structure of the municipality you know went down like uh a lot uh after taking Park in part in the participatory processes because when they did this the municipality just betrayed the whole process you know it went through and then implemented none of the projects that were voted in right so this is like the death nail of participatory budgeting but anyway you know the the good benefits that come you know from engagement from working the community the the interaction between citizens you know is like very good as a foundation you know to start building on this you know with uh with more uh more expensive participatory practice practices you know that go beyond you know like small amounts of budget you know and very shortterm micro projects uh that could go into more strategic you know and when you have this community built it’s really good Foundation uh to start building other processes on top of it you know and that I think is the the real hidden benefit you know of participatory budgeting and generally other participatory processes as long as they are deliberative you know and they give actual power to the citizens super well look I think we’ve had a really rich discussion over the past hour or so about democracy and public spending what keeps on coming back I would say is precisely the point we just ended on about the putting the community and the reinforcement of the community and its capacities at the center of this that’s one of the elements that uh is crucial for democracy and being credible and following through um when one is providing opportunities for participation for people otherwise the trust level um collapses so I uh think that was a very good example of participative discussion as well I believe we’re going to move immediately on to a topic that came up here actually democracy at the workplace but before we switch around the panels join me in thanking the three speakers here for an excellent input okay thank you very much so we’re now going to start with our second panel after this very interesting discussion we had uh all this morning we are now addressing democracy at the workplace uh sharing the power through employee participation and ownership so I will ask ask if I don’t know if people went out for a break but uh please take your seat so we can uh restart again uh so we have one hour to address this uh these two questions employee participation in the workplace and work workers ownership and uh we have with us four uh practitioners and then and real experts on these both topics so I think they’re very well positioned to address uh these these two question questions we will address here uh I’ll start by introducing myself by the way I’m Sarah lafuente I’m a senior researcher at the European trade Union Institute here in Brussels and uh this topic of democracy at work is really close to my research as well and close to my heart so I’m very happy to that this panel and this whole project brought together here uh experts from uh from the realm of trade unions of workplace democracy but also of worker cooperation atives uh the public and and remunicipalization so I think we have very very interesting uh project and program ahead uh so let me start uh by introducing our speakers I had them here in different order but doesn’t matter I will present you as you as you stand now in the panel so starting with jeppe guini he is the president here in my left president of the seop Copa uh Europe uh so it’s the European Confederation of industrial cooperatives and social cooperatives um and Mr guini is also vice president of the F commun bergamasca which is a philanthropic uh Foundation that provides funding for social cultural uh sectors in Bergamo uh and he’s also a member of this house of the European economic and social committee uh dealing with social economy social Enterprises employment Finance uh for for small uh Enterprise Rises as well what else can I say he was also National president of the Italian conf Cooperative uh fed solidar uh for some years so I mean he’s really into these topics of uh worker cooperatives uh then we have uh Sophia raka who is also a member of the European economic and social committee here she’s involved in the sections of single Market employment and social affair Affairs um and uh also in the consultative commission of industrial change she is also the heads uh in the department for European and international Affairs of the Austrian Trade Union uh of the white color so GPA and uh well she holds numerous functions in various European trade Union federations dealing with multinational companies uh in the manufacturing sector um next uh to her we have Stefan Gran who is senior advisor at the European trade Union confederation so again coming from the Trade union background uh he is a specialist particularly on workers participation and digitalization dealing with democracy at work issues and Ai and before joining thec he was also uh head of the Brussels Office of the German Trade union Confederation dgb and he worked as a parliamentary assistant uh in the European Parliament so he has this this background Trade union background as well and to finish uh with uh our p panel we have here with us Costa jurri who is head of policy and research at The Institute for economic democracy in Slovenia and uh uh well where he works of course on uh on all these issues of industrial democracy but before that he served as a member of the Italian national Collective of the Democracy in Europe movement 2025 so DM 25 you may have heard of of this movement of course uh and uh uh yeah he joined the Institute as a researcher to then pass to the policy and research Department uh so thank you very much for being here and uh as in the previous panel uh I have some questions to the different speakers here I will will post to them they will have some time to respond and then we will end with some Q&A session uh with the audience if that’s okay so I was thinking starting with the with the middle of the panel actually with the two colleagues that are more expert in in workplace participation from a trade Union perspective because I had the impression reading also the paper the report that brought us today here that uh this this topic or this level of participation was not so profoundly addressed right and that’s probably because um well this this level of representation was mostly developed in institutions and in traditional debates on workers control and Industrial democracy so perhaps that’s why it was a bit left aside but still since our purpose here is also to to develop and to think of how to scale up these different uh possibilities for participation I think it’s still feels quite Central in our debates to see how workers participation can happen and is actually happening in multinationals in current capitalist firms right in the in the current system we live in so a question for uh both to Stefan and Sophia but let’s start let’s start with Stefan and and and we’ll back to let Sophia complete perhaps or bring a different Insight um I would like to to know from your insight and your experience how does codetermination meaning information consultation participation rights I mean those more traditional rights of collective bargaining as well uh that appear to to be present in in current uh capitalist firms how do they make a difference for workers and under one what conditions perhaps if something is still missing there and also what could the European regulator uh provide to improve these levels of participation if you can please elaborate on that thanks yeah thank you thank you very much for inviting uh me for the etuc to uh give you a little bit an overview on our position on that um I think codetermination or if you want to make it broader not because codetermination we normally think about the the representatives of employees at the board level so supervisory boards or if you have different board structures also in another way um um I think that makes indeed the difference but the difference of course is here also always how it is designed in the end of the day because we have very different models of codetermination in Europe as it is always the problem that we have if you speak about it or workers participation democracy at work especially in Europe that we not have one system they all let’s say have same features let’s say we always talking about the same features but in different strengths and with the different rights it depends on the member states where you you are the social contacts where you are and there of course we have uh very powerful uh codetermination rights if you look for instance uh to Germany which you have even in the in the old coal and steel industry even that is a very old industry maybe even uh yeah get get uh get get them less and less we have even parity in the in the supervisory board where we have the same amount of workers representatives and um cap representatives of the shareholders um nevertheless even there it is always the the chair of the supervisor but has two votes if there is a if there is a party so that means the the the capital side has always the one vot more let’s say at the end of the day but is of course a big downturn if you to take about of democracy here uh but in these structures of course we can uh do a lot and where we have it also in in the big uh for instance Industries we see that uh you have better conditions for workers in the industries you have a better pay you have better working conditions it depends on working time he and safety issues but you have also a better participation of workers in the company through the different structures the board level is of course the highest but we have of course below of it we have works councils we have Trade union structures also here depends on the country what is more dominant for instance in Belgium we have a both somehow but this Trade union structure is more dominant has more rights and the than the works Council structure and other countries is other way around I can Germany The Works Council more powerful let’s say as as a trade Union structure um and indeed The Works cc is mostly if you want to say it’s the constituency of the of the um company because that is elected by the staff so everyone in the in the in the company who’s working in a company is electing their representatives most these representatives are unionized but it’s in most countries not the must so there can be also candidates running who have not affiliated to a trade unit but also happening in many countries but I would say if at least what I oversee mostly let’s say the the unionized a little bit more successful maybe they have a better program maybe they’re better trained I don’t know but it is as it is so that is also democracy at the end of the day um and this of course leads and also to strategic decisions in the company and so on so I think indeed codetermination is uh is an important issue for bringing let’s say democracy at work and strengthen democracy at work but indeed as we also asked about the question about what could the European reg regulator do is of course it could strengthen those systems we we we would never ask let’s say as to set up one uh single system because um as I said the systems in the member states are quite different and they’re working in the social context for instance we have uh trade unions uh who have more based on membership other trade unions let’s say for instance if you need the French trade unions they are not very have not many members but they’re very strong and they can organize and if they want to go to the strike people follow other trade unions are more based on membership uh to build their strength so there is also different systems and that you have always have in mind if you speak about it so it’s not not the way to have one system for all but uh what the European regulator can do to protect the systems because we see that especially due to European uh company laws European the the single Market those system got under stretch because um there are ways now for companies to avoiding sometimes certain National rule uh legislation on workers participation just BEC coming forming a European company form for instance the SE or other company forms um so there is indeed a problem and um I think to to build and that’s maybe also a little bit on the on the uh to reflect my last few words on the paper because I also read it of course it’s a very interesting paper and uh I would also subscribe to many issues here inside I think cooperatives can be part of the solution I’m not so sure about if there’s only cooperatives if that is really working out um in the system uh because sometimes I have the feeling if if I read between the lines it’s it’s somehow proposing here kind of new capital system which building on cooperatives I’m not sure if that is really uh working out I have at least my doubts um and um I think if if he if you looked on this one case what was you presented from from UK um where they even started now to to privatize even with partly the the the company again it seems to then they said the the workers against us I’m still asking how is it possible because if they have a say they should have stopped it now uh so there maybe is also not the the the Democracy so far in the company as it is and I think that’s why um building on structures which are there because I think we have to deal with with the system as it is of course we want to change it um I also subscribe um uh to many things but um if you are realistic it will be hard to change totally the capitalistic system I have the feeling it will stay uh in a certain kind of let’s say shape um I always let’s say I’m I’m still also maybe to the F very first panel I’m still a supporter of uh let’s say if you want to call it a social democratic system I would say call it social market economy uh because I think that have all features what we need but I have the feeling indeed and I think we all see it and it’s also criticized highly by all trade unions and all on the left side uh the balance has shifted to the wrong direction over the last decades and we see it’s not so social anymore it’s more Market driven so we have to bring the balance back let’s say and bring it back to the kind of Social Democratic or social market economy we have a strong State we have a strong protection lines where we have strong trade units and uh democracy at work where we can really build on and where we can also have have our say in the companies on the strategy of the companies how the workplace is uh uh developed and they also would fully subscribe democracy as such can only work if you have democracy at work because how can you feel and lift democracy if eight hours a day you don’t have democracy because that’s where we mostly at least at the moment I would also hope that our working time goes down and also with campaigning for it as a trade unionist but at the moment we we have most of our time we are in the company somehow and doing our work and uh that is it can’t be a democracy free free free room and then uh Only If you experience there what you can do then then then then it’s then it’s done and maybe let’s stop here first and then more later in the thank you very much Stan uh yeah it’s a very large topic so hopefully later we’ll will be able to discuss on the more Global issues uh Sophia then I’d like to to raise the question to to you from your perspective what would be coming back to the the the the essence or the more concrete difference that these rights at the workplace can make for workers how do you see that and what is missing there well thanks um so I’m a bit in a dilemma right now because I’m here as a trade unionist on the one side and the other side as a ESC member so I’m trying to keep those roles and hats separate and I will start off with the with a trade Union um role to get us settled um and I think Stefan already explained quite a lot but um to build on that um I think there are really a lot of studies especially in Germany and in Austria that um companies with worker participation with codetermination are actually more competitive than companies without proper broker participation um and I think this is one evidence that we actually need to build on because quite often from the employer side um worker participation rights and in particular um um the the qu determination are seen as as um hindering their their free market their moves their their their competitiveness and um so here we have a completely different position and also a lot of evidence that points in exactly the other direction um then maybe one example is U of course collective bargaining um from the aome perspective for instance in the past few years our government has not been doing a lot when it comes to inflation and fighting inflation so prices have been increasing massively and they didn’t really counter on the energy price Market or um on consumption um so workers were quite left alone when it came to higher prices uh and here the collective bargaining system in Austria really played a crucial role so this is not um fully related only to the workplace but to the um collective bargaining model we have in Austria uh that we have sectoral collective bargaining multi-employer collective bargaining but that of course also means that we need strong organized workplaces in order to have strong collective bargaining and in the past few years we really managed to match inflation with our Collective agreements so on an annual basis with um negotiations our condition was we won’t agree on any collective bargaining if we don’t match inflation rates um or are even higher so this on the one hand of course put a bit of a pressure on the companies on the other hand um workers in Austria did not feel a price increase that much and we really tried to balance um uh with with um collective bargaining here so I say Trade union systems um can play a crucial role especially if governments go um to the right or yeah to a place where the the interest of the people of the work workers is not really at the core um and having strong collective bargaining is only possible when we have um strong worker participation we can see it in those occasions where we had strikes this is always easier when we have a strong Works Council strong um democracy at work where also the workers feel that their voice is heard and they are willing to participate in strikes and in other kind of action um so looking to the parts that are still missing and um from the ESC perspective here we do have a few opinions um where we also clearly state that we need to strengthen the codetermination um and similar as the ETC we also say that we can’t have one harmonized system of course so we still need to consider the different um structures in the countries but to have a general approach on European level to strengthen codetermination especially on board levels I think um is something that we should keep in mind for European legislation so to have some kind of harmonized EU frame work on this um and I think we also really need to be careful when it comes to changes in the company law um so this is not a typical Trade union perspective maybe but company law is extremely crucial um when it comes to their rights and also to the rights of workers and to protect their rights and right now we see quite um a lot of evidence especially in Germany um that um board level representation is avoided or eroded with structures on the European level with these European companies so I think we really need to put a stop um on this on the European level then I think um there is also some space um to rather increase other um stakeholders Civil Society organizations as well because the more information rights workers and work Representatives receive the more knowledge they will need um and this can be quite specific knowledge so from the ESC perspective where we also have the Civil Society organizations included Within this can also enrich the whole discussion that um when workers are allowed to uh cooperate with with other experts with um other organizations that this could increase um the content and their participation as well um then um I think another area where we need to be careful in the future is of course the whole digital space platforms um digital markets and so on um there has been some improvements in the past few years with a platform workers directive but there is still a lot to do um and I think these kind of new models of companies of economy also can endanger existing codetermination um structur so it’s not even only that much about looking ahead and strengthen those structures but unfortunately always um a question of Defending current structures as well and finally um I think the one aspect that we really need to tackle on European level is the transnational um aspect and um well capitalist companies do not operate in one country alone decisions are made somewhere in China or in the United States or someplace else they are implemented on a local level and there is of course still some use to have local um information C opinionation rights but when a decision has been taken to close a branch there is not that much you can do you can of course negotiate a contract um to ease the burden on on the workers but you can’t really have an influence on the decision making itself um so I think we really need to look at transnational bodies and decision making here here we have right now the European Works Council um directive in place which only focuses on information consultation rights which is a first step um but I think we really need to be um aware of the more and more transnational character here um and strengthening codetermination really on the transnational um level um on on supervisory boards also on European level if there are some I think is is crucial um to really tackle these corporate decisions um in a in a sustainable way and I will leave it with this thanks and um it’s great that you brought the the question of the transnational because indeed capitalism is is operating at the at the transnational level so it’s a lot of of pressure in terms of how we can bring and and make sure that participation happens at local level does it have sufficient counterbalance there um so I’ll bring this links with a question I had actually for for jeppe uh you’re Specialist of course in worker cooperatives how how do you see I mean are there challenges for the worker cooperatives movement in term of how to balance the values of the The Cooperative movement in such a Global capitalist economy I mean how to how do cooperatives deal with that uh what are the challenges and and possible solutions uh you see in practice I the same thank youor uh thank you thank you very much uh to invite me and also thank you to Sho to be there in the European economic and social committee to organize this conference really interesting let me say some word about the work that we do here in this house about democracy and the economy and this we are realizing many opinion about this issue for example during the the Spanish presidency there is an opinion dedicated to the Democracy of work for example very interesting I suggest everyone to to find this in our web page but also we do a lot of work about social economy Organization for example in the last 10 year we are realized more than 20 op opinion on social economy uh in different aspect and then again we work a lot on the economic section about social cohesion economic cohesion econom uh cohesion policy in European Union so this is a very important uh aspect that is we need to have in consideration because we are inside an ecosystem and I use the the the means of ecosystem system ecosystem also to say of course it’s not only the Cooperative uh form that warant the Democracy on the in the economy it’s true but we we say we need to have a very large biodiversity on the economic entrepreneurial system to have more Prosperity we need guarantee more diversity so uh I come back to the the question of course uh in the Cooperative around the world almost 12% of humanity uh is connected by some cooperatives and 28 million people work in Cooperative or Draw their main source uh of income from Cooperative so it’s a very large uh present around the world but so yes the the the the Cooperative resist and continue to resist also to be competitive in the capitalist uh world and uh but if uh we talk about the the the the participative uh world or the industrial sector we need to talk about workers cooperatives workers Cooperative is the uh main important part of Cooperative movement about the participation involvement of workers to guarantee the economic protagonism of the uh the people and so uh we are very interesting example around the world also in the in the in the study that you are published is mentioned the MRA Corporation in The Basque Country these are very interesting because in this Cooperative group employing 70,000 people in 500 different countries of course it’s not whole Cooper the heart is the the best country is the cooperatives but in different country they use also different form of Enterprises to realize this business but is an example to use the Democracy uh owned uh organization also to compete in the global system this is a good good example also because they realize uh benefit for the whole people in the community and they uh work in the industrial sector in the huge level competitiveness for example for uh technical machinery for electromechanical part but also bicycle we are on the this day we run for the the tour the France and uh there is a one team where run Victor Camp art is run using an Ora bike Ora is a one uh uh Cooperative on the group monton that produce bicycle and we are many other example in Italy for example to have very interesting industrial Cooperative that uh compete in the technical uh issue for example to produce machinery for the ceramic the the saki or Safa producing uh device for medical uh sector and then this one part industrial sector but we are are also other important part of Cooperative that work uh using the participatory method is the social cooperative for example to provide service for general interest and Care during the last conference work in Geneva for the the high there is a part dedicated to the uh care economy and we are a lot of Cooperative only in Italy we are more than 14,000 social cooperatives and 7,500 Cooperative provide service for absent to 7 million of people in Italy and this a very interesting part of our uh rule okay thank you very much um the last sentence about a new form of Cooperative that we are meet is the Cooperative platform to represent our response on the uberization of the uh work this is very interesting and for example we work together with the union and the Cooperative organization on the the the the legislative project for the uh digital platform workers in the last year that is an example that we work together and uh in the digitalization uh evolution of the work sector I feel think that digital platform Cooperative can be very interesting uh tools to democratize also the digital economy I stop here and I come back with the next uh thank you thank you very much uh yeah let’s turn to to Costa to complete this part and maybe later uh we can have a bit of discussion as well so uh for Costa I know your Institute uh is very active promoting employee ownership right in particular in Slovenia if I understood correctly so could you please uh tell us a bit about the model of employee ownership that your Institute is promoting and uh yeah whether you have any cases of how it works in practice perhaps to share thanks yeah um first of all well thank you for the invitation it’s really great to be here uh you know uh together with such an amazing group of co-panelists I’m I’m kind of a rookie here uh but it’s uh it’s you know more exciting because of this uh so before uh yeah deling into into the details of of the model that we’ve developed at at the institute for economic democracy I would like to make a just a few premises um so the Institute as as as you said is a Slovenian based organization and um for several years now we’ve been trying to find a ways to um really scale up uh Democratic uh forms of ownership um and and and and by doing by doing so Advance economic democracy not just in Slovenia but but more more broadly as well and um we believe that democratizing the firm is is a very important element when when we’re talking about democratizing the economy because in the case of the firm we’re talking about the the basic unit of of unit of economic production um and and and sort of the best proxy that we have uh of a democratic Enterprise that that we’re aware of is is a worker cooperative so our our work is really directed towards uh promoting a meaningful scaleup of of worker cooperatives um what we try to do is to be very pragmatic uh with our work and and to act with urgency now here I would perhaps like to challenge uh a point that was raised by by my co-panelist Mr Gran about uh the possibility of returning to a sort of golden age of capitalism or or um a capitalism where social dialogue functions well uh where um we can rely solely on the welfare state and and on collective bargaining which I’m not questioning their importance but as capital has become more mobile more agile um as technology has advanced I think the possibilities of uh exploiting you know if you want working people uh by by companies have have increased massively and unless we have the ambition of returning to a sort of global governance you know even a similar discussion can be made when we talk about taxes for instance uh or in the case of of unions to a global or transnational collective bargaining uh we will struggle to go back to to a more Social Democratic economy uh I think so I think you know one of the important elements of a future proof economy is also a more diverse uh ownership landscape um I’m not you know talking about the complete transition but greater diversity I think is is is very very important now uh as I was saying um we at The Institute we we we think worker cooperatives are are great we love them and and not just because they provide social value and create um better working conditions even if we look at them from a merely productivist perspective which is something that I would never encourage but they they often out compete um traditional forms of ownership conventional companies uh when we talk about productivity and and resilience so they’re really amazing but precisely because we love cooperatives and the Cooperative sector so much I think we have to also acknowledge um a reality and that is that the the worker C is that the sector as such has not been able to really challenge the dominance of of uh conventional forms of ownership um you know throughout the centuries if if you want um so um even in countries that have a really well-developed Cooperative sector as as jpe gini was saying Italy is a you know the perfect example but also Spain and France Etc um it’s still somewhat in the margins despite all the support that has been granted so we have mutualistic Banks uh supportive legislations uh promoting worker biot but all of this hasn’t really translated into um a meaningful transformation of the whole economy as such so um we’ve been asking ourselves well why is that so um there are two ways in which Democratic firms can be created as you know they can be formed from scratch um there are several issues that can arise uh in in that process um you know there is a matter of it is a matter of business culture for sure and lack of supportive infrastructure there is a sort of ownership monoculture that is permeating institutions and and and consultancy firms and the public sector if you will but also from from the standpoint of an individual or a group of funders it is a bit more economically rational to opt for an ownership model that will grant them ownership rights for life if you will without the need to share entrepreneurial profits or or decision making with all the workers that that end up joining the company so so there’s that and and the other way of uh establishing Democratic businesses is to conversion these have proven a bit more successful um if you look at Global practice in in scaling up worker ownership uh but even there there are some issues um the models that we that we know of of Cooperative conversions usually involve a 100% conversion and a full conversion of the actual company now this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case as I will discuss later um we have some great examples of um conversion mechanisms such as the Maro model in Italy the pag ecosystem in Spain and scops in France they have been somewhat successful but at least when it comes to the Spanish and Italian model um they are mostly aimed at saving companies that U are at risk of of closure um they allow the capitalization of unemployment benefits which is I think a great policy but even there with the marora model being often an example of of good practice which it is we’re talking about around 400 Enterprises that have been converted since the Inception of the law so if we look at the proportions it’s not really changing the economy it has changed you know concrete lives and and and and firms but but not really scaled up um and in France where uh we have a model that hasn’t allowed just failing C companies to convert but also it has worked in cases of succession but even there we have to keep in mind that it’s a very very specific environment where Cooperative Banks function really well uh and are also willing to finance these types of buyouts it remains a fact that conversions Cooperative conversions involve several legal and organizational complexities they might that may deter not just the workers but only especially when we talk about succession um the owners to sell their company to the workers through aist like in in a very radical Way by transforming the company as such so um we’ve asked ourselves well does it have to be this way is are we destined to just you know not not be able to scale up Democratic ownership um not necessarily so precisely when we talk about a succession of businesses I think we’ve really dedic dedicated a lot of time to to studying that and to seeing what the potential of of promoting democracy at the workplace is as part of that process so um in the EU around 450,000 businesses undergo a transfer of ownership every year this affects roughly two million um work uh um like two million jobs uh and and as especially in light of of the rise of private equity in Europe this process can really lead to disembed dis embedment of of companies from local communities and pot that can potentially uh threaten the stability of local economies so around the world there are some models that have been able to really address the ownership succession issue um through employee ownership uh here I’m talking specifically about the eot model in the UK and the ESOP model in the US uh there are uh six 6 500 esops in the US uh employing roughly uh 10% of the uh country’s private Workforce that is around 14 million workers uh and then in in the UK which I think is even even a greater story uh since the Inception of the eot model in 2014 uh there have been, 1500 uh new such companies employe owned companies uh and just in the last three years um a thousand of them have been created because of a change in the tax system which has made it more advantageous for the owner to sell their business to an OT which is this employee owned company the problem with this models is that they are kind of paternalistic and do not really establish a democratic Enterprise because they are based on a trust so the the employees are more than owners we would say beneficiaries of the model uh especially when we talk about about the eot model it’s it’s a profit sharing scheme more than yeah more than anything so what we’ve done to conclude is we’ve looked at these good practices um what they bring to the table is the possibility of financing the buyout with leverage so with the profits of the company and they also allow for partial conversions because they are based on a separate legal entity that is the trust that buys the operating company what we’ve done at the Institute is we’ve replaced the trust with a cooperative a worker Cooperative that ensures that there is the possibility of having a gradual conversion there is a possibility of having a leverage buyout which kind of solves the the financing issue uh and allows workers to to become owners without investing their own money uh but through their work but at the same time it is it establishes a democratic form of ownership and Democratic governance which is typical for cooperatives based on the one Member One vote so thank you thank you very much also for bringing the limitation and and potential Solutions uh on this so I think we are uh we still have some time for questions uh like 10 minutes uh distance us from lunch so I would like love to hear from the audience uh questions comments for for the speakers here I have some uh yes please let’s collect at least three of them uh so please again hi my vpa I have a a question for um Costa Yuri uh for what regards the element of the buyout and the creation of cooperatives does it work and again to the question of the scale up um I have some in mind some examples of uh of let’s say concrete plants you know that like production plants and uh um and also you were mentioning the element of the connection to the issue of local local territories but has it worked also in context of multiplant uh um Enterprises that have so there therefore basically it’s say an industrial expansion that goes beyond one local community and uh and and this is also linked to the let’s say complexity of the workst Democracy if you want in uh in a multiplan work is democracy if not in a transnational one if we think about multinationals thank you or crossboard any case uh Enterprises thanks uh other questions here around okay I I can add then one of my own if there if no one uh feels complied so I I really wanted to ask uh perhaps coming to back to the workplace uh traditional democracy uh institutions and so forth it was somehow discussed uh in previous panels about the the problems that perhaps trade unions or traditional ways of of representing workers have in terms of participation themselves so I don’t know if from a trade Union perspective there have been some debates or you could uh a bit mention about what kind of of debates uh proposals are there going on to make this level of representation more inclusive perhaps or more part participatory itself I I think it’s uh it’s it’s a crucial matter as well uh to look into at the workplace um and uh perhaps for the the so either Costa and and jpe uh would you how would you approach so apart from ownership are there own other forms of worker representation possible in the work worker cooperatives movement are there different ways of of uh channeling voice of workers in the cooperatives because you mentioned the monagon case for instance and uh if I’m not mistaken well not all workers have perhaps the same representation or ownership status in there so I would love to to see what you think of this uh so please I leave the floor uh first to ask the question about the scaling up uh of the colleague over there sure um I I cannot really speak from experience because um and that is something that I forgot to mention while explaining uh presenting the model we we so far have implemented the model in in in four companies in Slovenia it is is a relatively new social Innovation so we haven’t had cases of you know um transnational uh corporations uh I think I think perhaps Jose Pini would know something more about this uh given that there have been I if I at least you know if if if my mind Serv memory serves me correctly a cases of companies uh of local branches that have been converted through workers buyouts uh in Italy for instance with the with the mar model so I think when it comes to these kind of kinds of Enterprises uh it’s usually the democratization happens at the level of the local branch where also the state and and the supportive organizations have have authority over or or competence over um so yeah I hope this answers the questions more or less okay then maybe I will I will I will pass on um if it comes here to the the question about um how to make let’s say the traditional model more inclusive I think that is something trade unions are thinking um let’s say over the last years or maybe even longer already what what they have to do in their own structures to make it more inclusive as all big organizations of course we have kind of all structures work well and you think everything is fine but of course normally if if you come to big organizations sometimes inclusiveness is is a bit lacking but also there it depends very much um as I said from also from the national context how the trade units are are structured I just said it also at the beginning but there is of course a lot going on already so instance um I know from from many trade unions for instance like like like ver and Germany they have a very participatory approach if they come to their um demands in Collective agreements uh for collective bargaining that I were normally starting to discuss with the members in the companies what should be our demands what is uh more important to set also the priorities um the same happening of course if you want to scale more in in the structures of works councils that you are I mean in the works council is even obvious because the works Council are elected by the staff and normally you are as a Works council member you have to reflect with your colleagues what they want Even You elected you like like like if you want to say kind of politician of the company you have to see what your members want and you have of course your your your your assemblies and your your ways how to bring in and to to feed um everything in and then also to inform them um maybe one thing about uh ownership I think the the the system is is very good I think if if if you can have workers ownership of companies that is is a is a good system as long and that is very important here I think that we have to make make distinction because the of course then you also get the kind if there’s not too much risk for the workers itself because at the end of the day if you even put your own money in or even if let’s say part of your salary is getting in because that’s why how you buy shares or whatever it depends of course very clear the system that would be interesting to hear how the system is there managed because at the end of the day if then the the the company bankrupt and then part of your of your let’s say savings or whatever you could have saved is also gun then you have both you have the risks uh and uh you lost your job and you lost your money so um there of course uh it’s very important to to to have clear look on this kind of ownership that there’s a clear distinction that uh that there is no no much risk for the for the worker and such and then of course for me the question is if it democratization because I think that was also the case of these this um buas uh uh Cooperative how if it’s only democracy for those who owning the corporation or is it also ask you some said it already that they’re using different kind of um legal company models in different countries and what is then for the workers working for the company uh who are not part of the cooperative and how is democracy at work organized for them or it’s actually only democracies for those who owning it and that is of course also a question uh let’s see at least a good question here thank you thanks Stefan so Sophia do you want to I will try to add a few more things um So within my trade units we do represent white color um workers in in all of the private industri so we have um some manufacturing and some um um some well yeah Finance for instance or Commerce so those are completely different sectors so for instance when it comes to to gender we don’t have one clear rule within our Trade union um that there has to be at least 40% of women in in the representation bodies within our our Trade union but to rather have a sector specific um rule that when that you look at the um percentage of members so if there’s only 20% of female members in this sector especially in the manufacturing Industries then um in the bodies it only has to be 20% and in other Industries um such as Commerce um with the majority of workers being female that mainly female um Representatives will be included in the bodies um this also means that we have quite sector specific strategies um so we did a lot of work in the Commerce sector this is one of the sectors where is mostly females a lot of part-time work um lower wages so we really tried to Target this sector to to build power also on on the company level um to have strong works councils there but also to improve the collective bargaining um for workers in these sectors to be more empowered to have more power over their working time um so they don’t have separate shifts one in the morning one in the evening um maybe difficulties to get home at night because there’s no bus going anymore so those were some some issues that we looked at where where I think that the workplace can never be separate from society um as a whole um and I think and it will close with this time working time definitely I think is um one of the big topics also for the future um because in order to be active and involved you need time and um you can see people having multiple jobs um for them it’s difficult to be involved in in Civil Society or in in in a on a company level or in trade unions um people with um having problems meeting the ends it’s also an issue so I think Fair pay and uh shorter working hours um is is a huge step also towards conclus inclusion for for different um kinds of people and then I will hand over to you okay thank you that is is very interesting uh question and and issue because of course when you choose you decide to practice democracy on the organization and the democracy and participation of the member is the way the best way to manage a Cooperative of course we choose some value and so we need also to apply when you are not using the Cooperative because you are open and enterprising in other country for example this is first issue in my experience in my history I think it’s really important to have the awareness that is very complex to play in the same time the role of uh owner and the role of workers but also it’s really interesting that but we need to maintain the value it is not easy that because democracy is fragile we see also in the political way on the governance on the state no democracy need care democracy need investment in education democracy need investment on grow up the responsibility for the people and so we can we can’t do this uh only by our yourself I say in my history I was President for cooperatives I was President for very huge Organization for social cooperative and in every time I think that I need to wave a good partnership and also an alliance with the uh Trade union for example on the social Cooperative in Italy I know very well this my history I play my many here working in the social cooperative and we are a colletive bargaining it’s fundamental and the alliance between cooperatives and the union is fundamental not only to defend the the the workers of course this is the first but also to defend for example welfare system we play very important uh uh activity together with the Union in Italy to defend the welfare system to defend a right for disadvantaged people and this is the way because democracy can be only owned by myself yes because also the the owner the anet owner in the philanthropic way uh everyone know olivetti for example history very interesting very passionate history using democracy on the management of a traditional Enterprises but also olivetti if don’t work together with the community with the AL people with the uh The Scholar creating a culture cannot resist and so this is more important for Cooperative we need to invest it’s not a case for example if in the the social economy action plan we ask into to European institution to uh organize uh education training system to grow up uh the the competence on the social economy organization and one of the main important competence is how we can play my role in Democratic way we need to invest a lot of time a lot of uh also a lot of money because is not natural I is is is very hard that I say but also the last election show that democracy is not natural democracy need intention need culture need invest a lot but we need to create this Alliance uh Union and Cooperative is is is born in the same uh in the same uh ecosystem we need to to protect workers we need to protect uh economic protagonism and we need to RT this Alliance because I am convinced that there is not political democracy without economic democracy and we need to work together because by our our uh lonliness we don’t do nothing thank you thank you very much so I think it’s a very good note to end up this panel and and go for launch the idea that democracy is of course a challenge we need to keep working on it but there is this potential of Alliance and and cross-learning I think we we saw it here a bit from the Trade union and worker cops uh perspective so thank you very much uh and I ask for a round of applause to our panelist please please now let’s go all for launch is served until uh 1350 uh and then we will have the panel three on democratizing public services and urban planning thank you very much hello good afternoon everyone and welcome back to this third panel of the day on democratizing public services I hope you all had a very nice lunch break um and you’re back feeling energized and ready to listen to our three panelists uh my name is tuskin Bell and I’m responsible for the utilities sector at epsu so utilities includes energy waste and water and epsu is the European Federation of Public Service unions so I’m very Greatful to FEPS for organizing today’s event and for inviting me to moderate this panel on a topic which is really Central to everything we do in epsu and that is on how democratizing local public services can be achieved through remunicipalization and just in case there’s anyone in the room who’s not so familiar with the term remunicipalization it’s when cities towns uh or even Regional authorities take formally privatized Services back into public ownership in sectors as diverse as water energy transport Health housing and many other aspects of local government and to date Europe has actually been the epicenter of re remunicipalization with over 60% of cases worldwide in Europe and the new FEPS policy study uh that we’re here today to discuss building economic democracy in Europe includes a number of examples of democratization through remunicipalization across different sectors and different EU countries often as a result of democratic mobilizations and citizen engagement so today on this panel we’re going to hear some of the case studies from that report but before we do uh we’ll start with a very short video um on how to overcome opposition to remunicipalization faith in the capacity of the market and competition to deliver Public Services remains strong there is a biased assumption that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector for decades International Financial and multilateral institutions many governments and influential economists have been advocating for privatization as a Panacea they have portrayed it as an essential element of modern and open economies however there is no proof that the private sector inherently performs or delivers better than the public sector when it comes to Public Services besides public services such as water energy and health can constitute a lucrative source of profit for private investors and shareholders as they are always needed to overcome these long-standing ideological assumptions trade unionists need to know and be able to convincingly explain the reasons why privatization does not deliver they need to support their arguments with fact-based evidence mapping private sector performance is therefore an essential first step of a campaign for bringing a public service back into public hands audits company research community and public inquiries will be useful tools to raise questions and change narratives the main cause of failure to provide access to Quality Public Services can be linked to profit extraction private providers seek High Financial gains from services that people need while we’re producing to the minimum costs linked to labor and long-term investment in infrastructure and maintenance as a result profit maximization can lead to excessive payments to shareholders higher costs for users and public authorities poor working conditions and anti-union approaches there is plenty of evidence of the failures of privatization and with the global pandemic that evidence has become even clearer this is why increasingly public authorities are taking the decision to bring Public Services back in house a compilation of deprivatization cases across sectors and from around the world can be found on the public Futures database as of November 2023 and since the year 2000 public Futures counted 1,672 verified cases of remunicipalization or nationalization in 76 countries worldwide across 111 different essential services for people and the planet the database covers a range of sectors including water energy telecommunications transport local government and Health Care the overall total is likely to be a significant underestimation as many more cases are not documented the main motivations for taking Public Services back into public hands have been the demand for improvements in quality of service provision cost reductions taking back Democratic and public control using remunicipalization for wider policy objectives linked to Local Economic Development thank you for watching if you would like to go further on this topic additional resources are available below the video so that’s just a nice little video um to set the scene before we dive into some more concrete examples and as I say we have um two case studies from from the report um that we’ll hear on this panel the first is from Dr an lrat who is a policy maker a consultant and a professor at the Agro Paris Tech University and as a former deputy mayor of Paris who was in charge of Water Sanitation and canals and as the chair of odap pahi the Parisian water operator and successfully led the remunicipalization of the water cycle creating one single publicly owned water operator in charge of the whole water cycle uh she also for 13 years from 2001 to 204 led a new water policy in Paris focused on economic social environmental and Democratic sustainability which was accompanied by many Innovative initiatives and in 2008 she co-founded and chaired aquap publica Europa which is a Eur European network of publicly owned water and sanitation operators uh she’s also been a consultant and a leurer abroad first in East Asia and then in the US and was a research fellow at NYU and a senior consultant at Gua un habitat so she’s going to talk about um her work in Paris and then after that we’ll hear from Meo beheim um who from 2010 to 2013 was active in the campaign for the largest citizen Democratic remunicipalization of energy companies in Europe and since 2014 Meo has been politically active in relation to the phase out of coal in Hamburg in Germany and around Europe and who is a founding member and a founder of several associations so that’s two um kind of presenters of of case studies in the report and then from there we’re going to zoom out a little bit and here from Milo fasanaro who very kindly um agreed to step in actually only yesterday uh as one of the other speakers was unwell but luckily uh for all of us here in the room Milo is very relevant to this panel and very knowledgeable has lots of experience uh he is the current executive director of Aqua publica um which an was the founder off um and so prior to that he also worked for local public authorities especially in the field of innovation local development and environmental policies and he has an extensive knowledge of EU policy and of their implication for local governance so he’s going to speak more broadly about why joining a network of peers at National or International level is important for the remunicipalization 6 to 8 minutes um we’ll have a first round and then we can open up the floor to questions so we’re going to start with Dr an Strat an could you please tell us um as a former deputy mayor of Paris who successfully led the reform of water remunicipalization can you give us kind of an example of what personal leadership um this takes because a lot of remunicipalization campaigns are driven by Grassroots organizations not by the public authorities so it’s a very interesting case so we’d like to know your your personal experience and also what it takes to bring back Public Services like water into public hands and finally apart from the fact that the service is transferred into the public sector what are the Democratic elements of that project thank you okay uh thank you very much T and thank you very much for inviting me um I I hope I will be uh very clear to be honest as I said uh to Milo I I’m I I am in a specific modood because I am even if I’m not more an elected official I’m still very involved in politics and in France now it’s quite chaotic and I I I cannot stop thinking how we can uh deal with that with this uh so incredible situation and I I I slept uh badly and very little since Sunday so uh to even if it’s so it’s not the topic even if it’s related to our topic because we discuss about democracy also and so to to reply to you uh to your question it’s true that uh usually and I was invited in many places all around the world to explain the remunicipalization process in Paris and um and always the same question but did you have some grassroot movement and social campaign and I and and I always say no uh no we we have some uh activist to be honest of course there some but personal individuality some for example Danielle miton Daniel miton and I work after for this for her foundation the Widow of the our former president uh involved in um in a human rights and uh and right to Waters and sanitation but except this kind of uh personalities we have no social campaign no uh no grassroot movement and there are many reasons for that uh because uh because there there there were no crisis no Water Crisis uh the the water tariff is included in the housing rent so more or less the consumers uh don’t pay attention to the to the bill and uh and the network is invisible so but there are many many reasons and so why we decided to remize because we we we are not obliged to do that um because when we arrived uh when we came into power in 2001 it was a new uh new Coalition left and green Coalition I was uh and I’m still involved in Green’s party so I I was in uh elected in a in a green uh in green party and we we discover we discover over also how the uh the Water Service um worked or I would say dysfunctioned and uh and especially me because I was appointed by the mayor to chair the the mixed ownership company uh which was in charge of the supply uh of water supply so I discover uh I discover the um you know the technical uh the technical lack of Maintenance uh no TR Financial transparency no monitoring no control and and so on and we decided uh and especially on my side to to try to put this issue on the political agenda and uh and to to make short long story uh finally I I succeeded because you asked me about personal leadership it’s true that it was a strong uh involvement from on my side because I was an elected official and as I said the chair of the of this mixed ownership company uh in charge of the water supply and we put this uh issue on the and the political agenda for the uh for our reelection in 2008 so this theme was in the in the program in the municipal program and the mayor the former mayor bero uh told uh citizens okay if I am reelected uh we we will remize but at that moment to be honest nobody believed that uh it uh it will happen because it was hard for especially because we uh we are in the country who uh which Outsource a lot and we we we have we had two very big major companies now more one they uh but the biggest water and uh water and sanitation and companies V uh they shared the uh the Water Market in Paris so of course they are very powerful so the lobbying the yes very power powerful company with a strong lobes so it’s um it was um not so easy to explain why it was so important to remize and it was a a top down uh decision a political decision because I I was fully convinced means that it it will be much more sustainable in many ways so uh socioeconomic environmental and also Democratic but the point I would like to stress uh today is why um why and how uh did we succeed first uh we we and I succeeded to convince the mayor and why uh uh why he decided to do that also because we show that it was not only uh a will a political will to oppose uh water management and a privatization but it was also um a political will to show and to demonstrate that it’s possible to build a new public service and for me it’s very important because if we are only in the opposite opposition and denunciation but we without any uh credible and concrete alternative I think it doesn’t work so and uh and not only for this uh for this reform but from many and we and we build this new organization and also another point I would like to stress because it’s true that after as a result of this remunicipalization we we democratize the service but as a chair of the mixed ownership company after transformed in a in a new publicly owned company odari I I wanted to to is that to to share this reflection on the new organization with the staff uh and in and during uh no for more than one year uh we uh involved staff uh and since know technical staff from you know from technical staff to to top Management in thinking how we could organize the new service the yes the new service the new operator and we we for me it was very important to draw up uh upon the the skills and the competence of the staff and also I think it helps the transition because the staff you know were involved in this project and I think it was also one of the key of the success because it’s too long also to explain that we we’ve uh we faced a lot of impediments and especially coming from uh the major companies because they didn’t want uh they really didn’t want uh we succeed we to succeed us to succeed wife you understand um so it was um uh a political will and uh even if we put that as I said in the political agenda for the campaign uh and but one of the results uh because it’s also another question uh we now and just after that and still now we have much more uh Civil Society organization and Association involved in the service because first we decided to set up a democratic governance for the board of directors so now the board of directors we have elected official but also NOS uh you uh consumers Association and also a member of The Observatory um Parisian water Observatory we decided to launch uh uh observator this Observatory uh he’s a platform of debiles and consultation on water issue we uh we implemented also new uh kind of uh activities and in I have to conclude a man okay so just to conclude um so I would like to conclude also another point okay even if it was top okay the the top uh top down uh decision and political uh decision we um it’s it helps uh to increase paradoxically uh social movement and Association to be more involved and now even even outside Paris because it it was like you know like yes it fueled it fueled energy for for militants and for activism and not only in Paris but all yes in France also uh to defend public management and and to push uh and to push this kind of new policies so it’s it’s a paradox but at the end uh and still now we have uh for for 14 years uh later uh more efficient uh Democratic and and the socioeconomic uh service thank you thanks um a lot and and yeah well hopefully we’ll have time to hear some more in the in the questions from the audience afterwards it’s very interesting um to hear about how it was entirely topped down with no kind of grass roots movement to to encourage it at the beginning I think it’s um yeah really interesting to start with that case because now we’ll hear from kind of the opposite from a grass Moots mve M which I guess is much more usual for this kind of remunicipalization uh so we can we can kind of contrast the two um so then we’ll go to moo and uh the question for you moo is you were once involved in the successful campaign to reize the energy Grid in Hamburg and this is it’s gone off sorry it was on uh it’s G sorry um yeah so so um moo you led this this grassroot Roots campaign um in opposition to many corporate interests uh but also opposition from trade unions and from the political establishment so can you tell us how you did it um and do you think that this approach can be replicated in other cities uh yes thank you for the for the uh POS possibility to to uh participate here in the evening and to begin with the second question because I think it’s a more important question uh yes you can replicate it uh and in every case so in every city in uh every case we see in the presentation the uh different sectors um I believe in that and even if there’s always I think and high possibility different frames and in which uh it can be achieved or right directions top down uh or with a grassroot uh campaign uh it’s possible and uh we used to say in these former days of these uh re REM reation um different Rec as we say in in in Germany um so the privatization is not an eternal destiny um very special Lobby groups they want to say it’s uh one time privatization now it’s it’s a destiny forever uh no it’s not and uh in our campaign the opponents they used to say okay if we now go back and bring it in the um in the uh back to the community uh then we have to go back to the caves and the lights go out and the world stops turning it’s not the case as we are lucky to see it’s 10 years ago and the world still goes around and we have light and as Anna said I can agree um we have uh even more efficiency energy grids in uh in Hamburg than in former times so less uh Power outakes um it’s a better uh heating grid and uh also in the in the gas sector so um to make it clear um to that the most opponent um voice that we that we had to to fight strong word but to fight against was the uh argument of fear and it comes from the from the private company which which was in that case in button file which is a little funny itself because I don’t know if anyone from you knows vfile vfile is a state-owned company it’s 100% Swedish company and they had the uh the German daughters who run in former times nuclear power plants but also the uh the Hamburg heating grid with the huge uh cold fired power plant and that they want to say that a state-owned company couldn’t run the energy companies it was it was uh not it was silly so but it was these big emotion it was about fear that the lights goes on as I already mentioned and everything is broken down and I think like Anna you also already mentioned it that it’s not a coincidence that we are have to opponent these working with this strong emotion of fear also in other sectors to in our whole democracy now and I think these right National parties there only uh also operating with this fear um um so uh and there’s also uh very very interesting um coincidence with your water grits like our grits like there’s no more boring thing in the energy sector as a grd you can’t smell it you can’t see it it’s under the ground so it doesn’t move maybe uh who from Germany here um we will know the others also we have huge discussions in the enery when with the windmills but you can see them and some say you can hear them and this is all the discussion it’s moving so there’s emotion if a GD there’s no emotion um so this was one of our points in the campaign and it’s it’s was based on the facts that uh together with these grits they are two strong emotions and we already had it in the morning I think that was some kind of control and if you control the Grits it’s a kind of power you bring back to the citizens and if you control and power then you have safety so this was a very strong emotion and this was then like an uh um like which point nobody wants to have but which was a strong point our companion because it was in the time of the Fukushima accident so you I think we all here remember so and all these uh talks in the former times about the safety of nuclear power and so on uh it was not anymore based on facts and so the the citizens want to regain the feeling of safety and we can truly bring the arguments in the discussion that if it’s controlled by the citizens by the municipality then you have uh again these these uh feelings of these safety power control and and uh these are also what we see now 10 years further that is exctly as we said and it comes to the to the people um and already you know the same thing which about the costs I can advise every municipality every campaign who wants to get in this sector don’t go on these uh on the sleppy ground with the costs so and the opponents say you can’t afford that it costs1 billion dollar or 1 billion Euro or something and then you see no no no no it’s only cost 200 millions and then you have a discussion with numbers and no one outside only the experts can say what is right what is wrong so so don’t get me wrong you know you have to to get to the point of the casts but I think like in Hamburg we have this special uh example that’s um few years ago uh the the the Hamburg government Hamburg major which was also um Olaf Schultz which is now the counselor um decided to to build a new concert hall so and they didn’t ask Hamburg citizens if they really want it so now we have it and in the end it costs one billion euros so and cost every year also much money to have the concerts so it’s not my point I don’t have an uh opinion I have an opinion but it’s not about it so it’s necessary can guess your opinion I no I’m I’m a I’m a music lover so it’s okay I’m I’m like to get concerts but the point is and that was also in the discussion if you decide to spend one one million EUR to build a concert hole then you can’t say on the other side it’s not worth to spend one billion euros to get the energy grids back in your hands besides the case that you can make profit with these companies to achieve the profit that you can pay your your debt with your own companies which was just three days ago there was a news and the Hamburg newspaper that one of these companies about the electricity grid which is now exactly that at the point now the last 10 years they are working for the profit now for for Hamburg and for the citizens in the amount of the money which just cost 10 years ago to uh bought it back from the from the private sector and uh came to the to the last Point um there’s a there’s one thing we also mentioned in the morning when there argument that the the public hand they can’t run business I already mention it because it was also silly that that because a Von file is a state-owned company and they run the business before so normally if you have an uh recolonization process and then you don’t have a new company you try to to uh to hold the employees you try to hold the knowledge u in your new company and so you there’s no there’s no the fear argument that now everything is is going to broke apart so um this was also a big thing in our company our campaign to say we want to work with these people which have the knowledge again and we were also right and 10 years uh later there is a much more positive feeling about working um now in the same sector but the employees are now working for a public owned company and they have the feeling now they are working for the people and this is also a strong point so I think now I will stop and in the discussion we can work on more points thank you definitely um thank you so much Meo it’s really good to hear the two examples um Side by side and and kind of look at different contrasting approaches um so we’re now going to kind of zoom out a little bit and hear from our third and final speaker from Milo uh so Milo could you please tell us how a public Municipal Water provider can manage the complicated business of water provision uh for example VI multinational corporations that have access to worldwide expertise and resources and could you also tell us how a public operator can serve the general interest and play a transformative role at local level thank you thank thank you thank you Tes and thank you uh to FBS for the invitation although bit Le last minute but uh as I said I had already planned to come and I already register so at the end of the day I said okay why not also giveing contribution seriously I’m really happy uh for for your invitation I mean to share some views on that uh and indeed starting from from the first question so I as T said I work for a net an organization which is a network at European level or publicly Own 100% publicly own water and sanitation utilities that was created uh around 2008 to 2009 uh by my uh former employer among others uh or the and the start was also indeed our first president so if I said something wrong we have the authentic interpretation of the origins of the association don’t don’t please don’t to correct me um to was created this network 2008 2009 precisely uh one of the reason was to try to respond to help uh newly created but also already existing Public Utilities to respond to this to deal with this uh complexity of managing uh uh uh water service one one was this uh one main origin rational the other one was indeed to spread the message uh that public management can work and that private management is not the final Destiny I mean so one one reason of the creation of the association was to say we can do it it can work and let’s uh believe in that but the other thing was indeed dealing helping water operators uh public water operators to deal with the comp complex job of providing water sanitation service complex uh and increasingly so increasingly complex also for reason that are not the object of today meeting but are relevant and the fact that maybe part of the complexity in terms of skills in terms of KN how or scientific knowledge or organizational knowledge that is needed for running a service is also related to the failure or other public policy in protecting the environment from pollution but this is another topic for another Mee meting uh in any case objectively so uh to run uh water services to to ensure the provision of of safe water drinking water to Citizens and to treat safely the waste water you need know how you need skills you need to know how to do the job and uh aquaba was then also created to help operators to share best practices to share uh experiences on how to do uh this job in in the best way for the citizens um let’s say that I mean uh I in all sectors in all professional domains you have professional organizations that are there to help peers to you know to learn from each other to exchange uh on how to do the job to improve together uh this is true for all sector is true for the water sector and but is also particularly true I think for the public sector why so at least for water but I think the similar argument you can also uh develop for other sector service this is um there you need to understand that there is an asymmetry a substantial asymmetry in terms of particular knowledge creation Knowledge Management between uh private operators and public operators private operators in particular multinationals because of their very very structure the very multinational organization they can search knowledge and know how from wherever the work uh if their branch in Sofia uh has developed an innovation that is useful they can quickly absorb that and transfer all across the multinational in the rest of the world or they can buy easily the knowledge that they need from other private or public um system to address the problems for a public operator this is more complicated public operators by their nature again structure are necessarily more bound to the local context where they are coming from uh this comes with a lot of strengths and positive points but has also challenges and limitation and one of the thing is indeed so in knowledge because uh you risk you know uh this knowledge this know how how to run the service is not in the air is embedded embodied in in in the skills of the people of the workers in it is within network of knowledge that come across the world and for a locally uh managed operator is less evident how to to to search this knowledge most of this knowledge that is also most of the cases expensive because it’s private knowledge so the idea of Aqua public was to create a network where this kind of uh knowledge could circulate for the benefit of water uh or public water operators to help them to to learn from each other and to make also knowledge as the water a common good that is publicly and freely shared so this capacity development is a crucial point a crucial Dimension to make to show that actually uh Public Water Service are efficient as efficient or more fici the private and then they remain so also in the future because the knowledge needed to to deal with the all the challenges that we are facing in the water sector uh and in particular new challeng challenges related to climate change require an always increasing understanding of how the water system works uh and if this is true for the public operators uh in general this is particularly true for newly remunicipalization uh water services because as I think an already mentioned that I can explain even further when the private uh leave the ownership and the management of the service of water it doesn’t do so normally uh happily and so try to undermine and to boycott those that are coming afterwards uh to make their job even more complicated and one of the thing that they do to undermine the future public operator is to uh you know to retain all the knowledge and know how that is key for the management of the service data and know how that is needed to to run smoothly the service so particularly for public for the municipality water operators is important to have a context when they can Lear uh learn from their peers that they can have support from others that have no an interest to sell them things but they do out of a public service Spirit uh so we think that a network as public can do a job in this and we are trying to do our best to to ensure this to help so all the public sector to to move together to to grow together this is not to deny of course that there are a lot of decisions uh that are I mean there is knowledge and know how that is coming from everywhere the world there is a lot of knowledge on how that is uh locally embedded and there are a lot of decision that needs to remain locally taken uh and this again the fact that an operator uh the management of operator is open to the society uh to the uh Civil Society to the movements on on the ground maybe can help uh to take decisions that are more informed of the impact of water management on the society and becomes a bit less uh I don’t know technocratic I don’t know how to say that but let’s let’s say help the management the involvement of population and Civil Society help the management to have a a broader understanding and awareness of the importance of the decision but for the important involvement of I let my former president to develop more I think thank you thank you uh very much for that I think that really kind of um yeah brings together everything um that we’ve heard up until now so we have 15 minutes left um for questions from the audience I think we’ll take a round of maybe three to four questions um and then I’ll probably have to be a bit stricter uh with the timing of responses uh so we’ll try and do just three minute responses um from the panelists so if you have a question uh either for for one or all of the panelists please put up your hand maybe introduce yourself first uh so we have one here and one here um see if there’s anyone else okay then we we start with those so yeah uh hi Thomas Mara public banking project thank you very much f in all the examples really interesting energy water and then Milo when you’re talking at the end there about collaboration between water operators it got me thinking to what extent in your different experiences have there been collaboration outside of a particular sector so have you seen opportunities or benefits from energy or water remunicipalization then flowing into collaborations across the public sector so energy with water or water with energy and is this flourishing or are those collaborations sort of staying within sectors like water or is there more of a branching out into more Public public collaboration uh thank you very much maybe uh should we take the other question as well and then we can answer both together yeah so sorry mtit spr from Organization for participatory Society uh I wonder you know this process of rationalization uh does is it relevant you know the speed at which you do it you know I imagine as you mentioned that the companies then try to create problems from the uh for the public uh once the Public Public ownership commences you know what are the strategies to minimize these costs you know I imagine like the maintenance you know stops the minute they figure out you know they’re going to be uh renationalized and probably other things as well uh could you just repeat the the exact yeah H how do you minimize the damage you know that the that the private company does when they find out you know that they’re going to be taken over oh so maybe maybe we go in the same order and if you could try and answer both questions in three to four minutes that would be great uh but maybe the last question to minimize or um above all that they try to retain as Milo said the rain uh the data for example the data uh billing data many data uh absolutely essential for uh for operational activ so uh we bargain we we it was a hard hard negotiation and uh and we we were obliged uh to uh for the transition and especially to get the data to Outsource one year more with uh one of the companies uh and to to get the to for for getting data to get data so it’s one of our and we at the end uh we are now OD the owner of all the data and has his own data so no more relying uh to the former data coming from uh companies but we we should uh go through this transition year and we have a yes one year contract and also a main issue was staff and the staff and the last day of the contract especially veia and even for the data the the worst is veia and it’s not it’s that’s why it’s the left one now because V succeeded to to buy uh s um and theia also try to retain as much as possible the staff so we hire new staff and even for private uh sector so private sector so it mean that it’s possible also to to have new skills uh from private sector eager to uh eager to to work in a in a public uh company so so we so yes by by that where for for the two two main aspects we we we succeed to minimize the cost uh for um for the question about collaboration I think it’s very important you’re right to try to find new collaboration among sectors uh in water but I have no time to uh to explain but we uh we we we implemented a new policy for uh conservation and preservation of the quality of water with new Partnerships with Farmers so for example and I think it’s very important now to work in uh not only not only in the um for the operational activities uh on on on the on the drinkable and Supply uh sector but also on the upstream and to have more connection with uh land policy uh Agriculture and elimation policy on water and I think it’s just the beginning of new collaboration uh to to implement and car out yes to the for two questions uh one question of about the the maintenance and the costs um it’s about question of controlling so in in the case of the hurg especially of the of the heating grid afterwards uh it’s it was clear that won file didn’t spend much money in the last years on it and there was a huge uh uh you have to invest a huge of money to bring it to a actual level uh but you can you know D controlling you can to try to minimize it and also then for the discussions about the the price to get the whole business again you can see okay you didn’t spend much money on the maintenance then the the price in general will be lower and the other thing with the corporation yes we see it in hambrook like we we and hamr has is glad they never have a privatization in the water sector and there also special um other companies with stayed owned like in the data companies uh and the telec comination sectors and now they are working together and also for Hamburg it’s very important now the the Energy company and and it’s mainly the the heating company because they also um owning uh the Heat and power plants belongs to them they are now in um a tool for the government to bring the transition forward like in the hydrogen sector and then you have an direct uh player who can bring your policy forward there’s also some kind of of dangerous or danger in in this thing if a state owned company comes too directly involved to to know bring R just uh be an instrument of the uh of of the politics but I think this is another topic um but here we see for the corporation there are huge benefits thanks I I would like to react in particular to Thomas uh question because but yes I mean uh I could mention several examples from our members of cooperation with other sectors but let me say I mean share there is a personal opinion that I have on that that indeed the fact that uh I mean the capacity of establishing larger cooperation between sectors uh and particularly service sector is one of the condition for public management of of the future or on the contrary one of the main um threat to public management can come indeed from U not being able to manage this from a public perspective and having sectors that have been will be absorbed by other sectors that are private I’m thinking particularly I mean there are for for reasons that are very empirical and related to Industrial and technological Evolution uh there are increasing uh uh links between water and energy in particular but also water and waste water and also water and heal to a certain extent uh so we we see a growing uh interconnection between these sectors uh again driven by technological developments in particular growing also economic interest uh and uh that can let this uh merging that can be hostile in the very sense of the word uh if managed by what by by some private operators and in particularly for the energy sector given their uh Stronger Financial capacity uh we see a a risk that some of the water resources and water operation and public management Water Resources operation can be absorbed by by private operator so I think that one of the condition really in the future for the Sur I mean continuation and strengthening of public Management in different sectors will be the capacity to seize these synergies that can be there between different sector for for the benefit of all the user and not of the shareholders thank you thank you very much um so I don’t see any other questions which is is good because we’re actually um pretty much at the end of the panel so um I’ll just say from my side thank you all for three um different interventions but I would say actually there was a lot of similarities between the three so um for example things that I picked up I think a lot of you noted the challenges of the current situation we’re in in terms of the kind of growth of the right wing and um policies of fear that they’re that they’re kind of throwing out there um I also noticed the similarities in terms of scarcity that we’re facing and the difficulties of security of Supply both um in energy and in water but this could also be in in other sectors um and also well as a trade unionist I have to mention I’m very happy that you all really stressed the workforce angle and they need to have the workers involved in the transition um and kind of a sense of ownership for the workers and really prioritizing um kind of maintaining the skills and the experience of the workers and how important that is for for this kind of transition um so I will leave it there I think and then um get ready to hand over to our next panel which is on policies to support economic democracy so thank you all very much