Following months of increasing turmoil and speculation on the stability of national debts in Europe, and with some Member States on the brink of bankruptcy, financial market speculators have made colossal profits at the expense of taxpayers and ordinary working people and we have seen financial instability spreading throughout the EU and its closest neighbours. This must stop!

Manufacturing workers in Europe have already paid a high price for financial market speculation. We have already lost over 10% of our workforce since the beginning of 2008. Europe cannot afford to lose its manufacturing industries.

It is time that working people and the real economy are put before the demands of the market: Putting people before profit!

The EMF urgently calls for:

• A massive European re-launch plan and budget focused on investment, training, innovation, infrastructure, the greening of the economy, new urban policies and industrial conversion
• Immediate and effective re-regulation of the financial markets and stronger European economic coordination and governance
• A sufficiently high financial transaction tax
• The issuing of euro-bonds from European authorities
• Taxation on very high incomes and action on tax evasion
• Measures against the increasing precariousness of jobs in our industries
• Growth-oriented employment measures and respect for collective agreements and negotiated solutions on pay and pensions.

The EMF demands a strengthening of social Europe based on solidarity and not the socially destructive measures being pursued by our governments and the EU. If European integration does not promote a social Europe, it will fail!

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is mobilising workers across Europe with a central demonstration in Brussels on 29 September 2010.

The EMF calls on metalworkers around Europe to mobilise on that day to demand action from our policy-makers!