The general secretary of Britain’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) has called for Europe to be run for citizens and workers, not bankers and bond markets. Speaking at the Dublin-based Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) last week, Frances O’Grady said the European social model must be reshaped for a new age and a new Europe.

She said the European project was fraying around the edges because of the way EU-sponsored austerity, privatisation and liberalisation programmes had been foisted onto member states. Five years after the collapse of Lehmann Brothers bank, Europe was characterised by “soup kitchens, young couples moving back in with their parents, the poor going without medicine, and horrific murders committed by fascist thugs,” she said.

Ms O’Grady said Europe could not afford to turn its back on social democracy. “From the trade union movement’s perspective, Europe needs to rediscover the values that served it so well not just during the long post-war boom, but also through challenges posed by the oil crisis and the economic counter-revolution of the 1980s. Now is not the time to reject European social democracy, but to reinvent it for a new age,” she said.

She said Europe had been tested before in the aftermath of the Second World War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and EU enlargement to the east. “Each time our continent succeeded in rising to these challenges because we had the courage to take the high road. Because collectively we refused to walk away from the social solidarity that has brought the diverse peoples of Europe together,” she said.

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Europe must be rebuilt for citizens and workers says TUC’s Frances O’Grady (includes full text of speech).