Thousands in Europe Protest Spending Cuts, Rising Unemployment

Across Europe today, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest government spending cuts and rising unemployment.

The biggest protests took place in some of the nations hardest-hit by the financial crisis, like Italy, Greece and Spain.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the World’s Gerry Hadden in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. While Washington is in the grip of high-level negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff in Europe, you could argue some countries that have already fallen off a fiscal cliff, are now trying to climb back up. Across Europe today, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest government spending cuts and rising unemployment. It was a coordinated day of strikes and demonstrations throughout the European Union. The biggest protest took place in some of the nations hardest hit by the crisis, like Italy, Greece, and Spain. The World’s Gerry Hadden is in the Spanish city of Barcelona. Just how widespread are these strikes Jerry? Give us a sense.

Gerry Hadden: Just about everywhere in Europe, there have been at least protests of support. The strongest action has happened in Southern Europe, where we’ve seen four general strikes; Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. But again, there’s been solidarity movements and street marches all across Europe.

Werman: Right, and how vigorous are these protests. Are they peaceful or violent?

Hadden: There have been clashes in Milan. There were some clashes early this morning in Madrid, when the wholesale food market opened up and the picketers blocked the entrances there. There have been about five dozen people arrested so far in Madrid where the main protest is going on, but I wouldn’t characterize this as particularly violent.

Werman: So, what do these protesters, these strikers, want their leaders to hear, both their leaders in their home countries, and the leaders, the European Union leaders.

Hadden: Their message is very simple, Austerity doesn’t work. They all argue that the patient is being killed off by the medicine. Greece. Spain. Especially Portugal, They’ve all bought into the austerity plan that’s been, they would say, foisted on them by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the European Central Bank. And none of those three countries, for example, can point to any turnaround in their sinking economies. All their economies are still contracting. Unemployment is rising across the board. What they’re saying is, and what their union leaders are trying to say to Brussels is, ‘This isn’t working. What we need to get our books back in order is growth’. And cutting spending is killing jobs. It’s causing hardship for families. It means cutbacks in health-care and education. It means pensions being slashed. It means retirement ages being raised. Some of these reforms, unions would agree, are necessary, but given all together at the same time and with such harshness, they say it’s just destroying economies instead of helping them to turn around.

Werman: So, for these strikers, will these protests be anything more than kind of a ritual, or is there a chance that Brussels might actually listen to them and say, ‘They’ve got a point there, these austerity plans aren’t really working’.

Hadden: I think the message has been heard by Brussels. If you take the case of Greece, they’ve held twenty strikes, some of them general strikes, in the last three years. Twenty. And you’d be hard-pressed to argue that Greek workers are better off today than they were three years ago, I mean, their economy is destroyed and getting worse every single day. With that said, politicians pay close attention to these kind of protests, and you could also argue, well, the Greeks- it looks like Greece is just about to win a two year reprieve on getting it’s debt under control. Portugal just got a two year reprieve as well. So, you could point to some small victories. I would say that the strikes do a little bit for the workers caused, but not nearly as much as unions would like to see.

Werman: What about just, you know, for people who aren’t striking, trying to go about their daily lives, how much have all these strikes and all the people turning out in the streets disrupted life in, say, a city like Barcelona.

Hadden: Yea, well, the point of these strikes is to make life inconvenient, I mean that’s how you draw attention to what you’re doing. If everyone were just sort of standing calmly on the side-walk waving banners, noone would pay any attention. I was down at rush-hour at the main subway and metro hub in Barcelona. Literally, all the hallways were gated shut, and, it seemed that most residents of Barcelona knew that this was happening. It was almost like a ghost-town down there. But, every once in a while a tourist with suitcases would come rolling in, and sort of spin around in circles confused, and inevitably they would come up to me, the guy standing there with a microphone, and asking, ‘What’s going on?’. And I’d explain to them as I could, ‘Well there’s a strike today, and there are no trains until 5:00 in the afternoon’. And they’d roll their eyes, and head off trying to figure out what they were going to do next.

Werman: Right

Hadden: The buses on the street, there was minimum service, but, that was interrupted because the picketers would stop any bus they could and just sticker the windshield so that the drivers literally couldn’t drive any more. So. So life was complicated for commuters, but, people knew for a long time the strike was coming, so I think they were prepared.

Werman: Now, one thing that struck me, the coordination of all these strikes in all these different countries, is there anything to note there? I mean, it feels like every time I saw a strike in Greece, it was just a strike in Greece and the next day, there’d be one in Madrid. But today, all together, No?

Hadden: There’s a confederation of European Unions that’s existed for a long time, and I think what’s happened is they finally got together and said, ‘We shouldn’t just be striking individually. This is a European Union problem. We’re all members of this Union, and we’re all fighting the same battle, so let’s pick a date, and let’s get together and let’s send a much stronger message to Brussels that everybody is suffering. It’s not just one community or the other’. And I think today, strikers felt a lot more emboldened knowing that they were standing with fellow workers across the continent.

Werman: The World’s Gerry Hadden as always. Thanks for the update.

Hadden: My Pleasure Marco.

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Demonstrators take part in a march during a 24-hour nationwide general strike (Photo: Reuters)