European Community Commission President Jacques Delors was in London yesterday, speaking at the Trades Union Congress headquarters, and he told the Brothers that British unions must accept a certain degree of labour market flexibility if Europe is to boost its competitiveness and create jobs, which seems a little odd, because UK unions, once the despair of successive governments, are for the most part the most flexible and accomodating in Europe these days; meantime, back home in Brussels, his Commission was demonstrating that it doesn’t spend all its time dreaming up silly directives that cost jobs and only the UK enforces, it does sometimes come up with good ideas: it is considering legislation that would force governments to allow cable television networks to offer some telecommunications services under Article 90 of the Treaty of Rome – that’s the controversial one under which it can enact rules without approval of the European Union governments; the directive would require cable operators to be allowed to offer all telecommunications services bar basic phone service to the public – so it still doesn’t go far enough.
