After years of commoning in conferences, cooperation projects, networking, discussions on the diversity of experiences and designing strategies how broaden them – I think it’s time to discuss how to implement them on a political level: Commons as one dimension of initiatives to reclaim a social, ecological and democratic Europe connected with the reconstruction and democratization of public services.

Different from some of the commons networks in Europe which try to stay outside direct political debates, claiming commons as a fundamental new way of economic and social practice that is not assignable to one or the other political direction, I think commons are potentially an essentially left issue. Why? Very simple: The question of property is basic for all left politics from its (organised) beginning in the 19th century – until today. In his theory of value, Karl Marx revealed the contradiction between exchange value and use value. And this too is still relevant today. Within these two dimensions of left thinking we find the global movements of the commons. Francois Houtart says in his basic manifesto from 2011 that commons initiatives focus on use value, democratic participation and autonomy, being part of a new post-capitalist paradigm and in a short note from 2014 he is pointing out: “Concretely, it means to transform the four ”fundamentals” of any society: relations with nature; production of the material base of all life, physical, cultural, spiritual; collective social and political organization and culture. For the first one, the transformation means to pass from the exploitation of nature as a natural resource, merchandize to the respect of nature as the source of life. For the second one: to privilege use value rather than exchange value, with all the consequences with regard to the concept of property. The third one implies the generalization of democratic practices in all social relations and all institutions and finally inter-culturality means to put an end to the hegemony of Western culture in the reading of the reality and the construction of social ethics. Elements of this new paradigm, post-capitalist, are already present all over the world, in many social movements and popular initiatives. Theoretical developments are also produced. So, it is not a “utopian vision” in the pejorative sense of the word. But a clear aim and definition [1] is necessary to organize the convergences of action. It is a long-term process which will demand the adoption of transitions, facing the strength of an economic system ready to destroy the world before disappearing. It means also that the structural concept of class struggle is not antiquated (fiscal heavens and bank secrecy are some of its instruments). Social protests, resistances, building of new experiences are sources of real hope.”

We are just in time, as left parties in Europe are preparing their national campaigns and their European performance for the next European elections in 2019. Election-campaigns always give the opportunity to discuss programmes and projects more intensely in public debates, and so the Common Good could become one of the core-issue for the Left. Practical initiatives and debates are already well developed on different levels in some countries – as e.g. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and France and Belgium and there are hundreds of examples of successful initiatives on municipal, national and international levels. Just to give some few examples:

The municipal level: most of commons initiatives are local activities, in cities as well as in rural areas. Urban Commons are prominent and well documented. Cities as Seoul (KOR), Barcelona (ES), Naples (IT), Ghent (BE) and Frome (GB) show how to realise urban commons and how municipalities can work together with commoners. There are legal competences too supporting commons initiatives. The Berlin Senate for example has the right to confiscate abandoned property (but they don’t use it yet and there is no obligation for social use).

National level: The movement for Water as a commons in Italy initiated a referendum with the result that 51% of Italian citizens voted for it. The government must act and the Parliament has to discuss new laws – a still on-going struggle. The water-movement is putting the question of Commons in the context of re-thinking the role of the public in the management of goods and services related to the universal human rights.

The “old” left idea, that the State per se would guarantee public services, failed with processes of privatization – and even when the State is still holding the ownership, goods and services are often given to private companies. It is crucial to suspend market activities from public services to ensure that profits in this sector are re-invested for public use. At the same time, public services must be democratized and there has to be public control with the participation of workers and citizens (only?) to guarantee correct functioning of the common good.

On national levels, the laws on social and common use of property and the laws on cooperatives are decisive. An interesting example is the legal structure of SCOPs in France (“Societé cooperative et participative” or “société coopérative ouvrière de production“). In 2016 there were 2680 SCOPs with 45 000 active members – and they are still on the rise.

International level: Bolivia and Ecuador included Commons explicitly in their constitutions. In 2010 the UN general assembly adopted the resolution on access to clean water as basic human right. The initiative for a fundamental declaration on the Common Good of Humanity goes beyond this – well aware that a proclamation has no legally binding character but can be an instrument for social and political mobilization, creating a new consciousness and serving as a basis for the convergence of social and political movements at the international level. Clearly it is a long-term task, but it needs to be started. Not only can the coming together of social movements like the World Social Forum and political parties like the Forum of São Paulo contribute by promoting such a Declaration, but individual countries through their representatives in international organizations like Unesco and the United Nations can also push this agenda forward.

Coming to the European Level: Since some European Parliamentarians from different political groups founded an ‘Intergroup’ on Commons and Public Services in 2014, the ‘European Commons Assembly’ developed with participants from nearly all European countries. ECA initiated conferences and various activities and published a general call: “We call for the provision of resources and the necessary freedom to create, manage and sustain our commons. We call upon governments, local and national, as well as European Union institutions to facilitate the defence and growth of the commons, to eliminate barriers and enclosures, to open up doors for citizen participation and to prioritize the common good in all policies. This requires a shift from traditional structures of top-down governance towards a horizontal participatory process for community decision-making in the design and monitoring of all forms of commons. We call on commoners to support a European movement that will promote solidarity, collaboration, open knowledge and experience sharing as the forces to defend and strengthen the commons. Therefore, we call for and open the invitation to join an on-going participatory, inclusive process across Europe for the building and maintenance of a Commons Assembly. Together we can continue to build a vibrant web of caring, regenerative collective projects that reclaim the European Commons for people and our natural environment” (europeancommonsassembly.eu).

How could the common good be important for European politics? Just to remind one of the prominent battles of the Left (including Greens and Trade Unions) in the years 2000: the battle against the Bolkestein-Directive. In the end it was possible to introduce the protection of public services as “services of general social and economic interest (SSIG’s) on a European level. This could be a starting point for initiatives for commons to fight for the recognition of commons initiatives in different fields as basic citizens rights in Europe.

All these examples show at least the slightly fragmented situation. The political and legal conditions differ widely and there is a need to discuss demands on all levels – and there is the need to discuss them on the European level.

Opportunities for the European Left

The general interest of the European Left is to re-think the role of public for goods and services with relation to universal rights and to prohibit market-logic in public services. The aim is to suspend the market from public goods and services and to democratize public services for the recuperation of public services as Common Good. This is the first dimension. The second is to re-think social and workers rights as common goods. And the third is the recognition of citizens’ initiatives as basic rights and the promotion of commons initiatives.

So, it’s a three-fold battle and it could start from the general statement:

Commons are of general public interest, thus the general demand is the political and legal recognition of citizens’ initiatives whose aim is to create, re-construct and recuperate resources, goods and services in a social, ecological and democratic way. But there are specific demands to add. As there are (just to give some examples):

1. Cooperative use of abandoned land and houses. Social use of confiscated property
2. Right for workers to recuperate their companies and manage them collectively – before selling them to investors or going bankrupt
3. Open access for all citizens to information services that are democratically organised, and free public internet
4. Collectively and self-managed funds for citizens’ initiatives and access to public funding
5. democratization of digital radio and TV by reserving e.g. 30% of the slots for non-commercial, community etc. stations
6. participatory re-communalization/re-municipalization of energy and water

And I’m sure there are others to add.

This could be the right moment to start to discuss practical political proposals – not with the illusion to change European politics immediately, but with the intention to bring the debate into the light of a greater public.

To watch Birgit’s Video follow this link https://youtu.be/fSnKzURElZM

Social justice strongly remains at the heart of all civil society’s concerns and demands. For the Asia-Europe People’s Forum it is crucial for a just and fair relationship between Europe and Asia. All problems are interlinked and solidarity between peoples is not a matter of diplomacy, it is a matter of justice and of participation, with common concerns and aspirations for more equality, economic security and social protection. For climate justice – one cannot ask people to respect nature if their basic needs and livelihoods are not protected and if we allow extractive corporations to violate human rights. Social justice is also at the heart of fair trade, where the aim is to avoid rules and standards that violate people’s rights, that dismantle social services and put competitiveness and economic freedom above social and economic rights. Gender equality is integral to social justice. Finally, peace will never be possible without social justice, as was stated very clearly when the Peace Treaty of Versailles with the Constitution of the International Labour Organisation was adopted in 1919.

There are shared concerns and demands in the European Union and Asia. The level of development is very different from Europe to Asia, but also within Europe and within Asia. Nevertheless, at the level of social justice and more particularly social protection, labour law and social services, the recent developments are very similar and are dictated by the same neoliberal philosophy. While most Asian countries have limited systems of social protection and some European countries have very highly developed collective insurance systems and universal public services, they are both faced with attempts to reform and/or dismantle them. A new social paradigm is being introduced, all over the world, where social protection serves the interests of growth, markets and the economy, and where the principles of collective solidarity and social justice are steadily eroded. Social protection should be about the inalienable rights of all people, everywhere in the world, to have their needs met so that they can flourish. Even if better social protection is good for the economy, this can never be the ultimate goal. The agenda must be broadened and transformed.

Social protection, social rights and reducing inequality are again on the agenda of global development. The Sustainable Development Goals offer leverage to strengthen our advocacies for social protection and our fight against inequality, in favour of human rights and universality. ILO’s Social Protection Floors offer comprehensive though limited systems of social protection. We have to remain vigilant not to allow policymakers and corporate interests to hijack the discourse in order to perpetuate failing practices.

Our objective is to put into place social protection as commons, in the first place because it is ours, in the second place because we want to democratize it and reflect on the linkages between social and economic rights – health care, education, pensions, housing, child care … – on the one hand, with democracy, ecology, trade, culture and gender relations on the other hand.

We want to shift the global debate about social justice and social protection on to a new level, by embracing theory and practice that suit the needs and conditions of today, rather than harking back to the last century. By social protection we mean access to social resources that enable every individual to survive, to manage risks they cannot cope with alone, and to flourish. We also want to look at labour law and public services. By commons, we mean resources that are life’s necessities, to which everyone should therefore have an equal right of access and for which we all share responsibility, for both current and future generations.

The idea of natural resources as commons (especially land, but also air, water and energy) has deep roots in history. The idea of cultural resources as commons (such as information and digital platforms) features increasingly in current debates. The aim of this conference is to explore the conceptual and practical implications of claiming social resources as commons and clarify the connection with natural and cultural commons.

How does this approach differ from conventional social protection systems? This question is central to our agenda. It concerns democracy and participation, self-determination, models of ownership and control; inclusion and solidarity; governance and relationships between public authorities and locally generated initiatives. Ideally, people do not wait for public authorities or private corporations to take initiatives, but seize opportunities within their own localities to decide for themselves what they need, and take action together to ensure that their needs are met. This approach overrides the market/state dichotomy and carries with it the potential to transform both. Also, in establishing social protection as commons, in promoting cooperation between citizens and public authorities, we not only want to protect people but society as such, against the current overriding individualism.

In Europe as well as in Asia, social protection should be a collective insurance mechanism that contributes to an equitable distribution of incomes and wealth and to equal opportunities for all. Social protection should be universal and transformative, that is, contribute to the political, social, environmental and economic transformation we need. Universalism does not mean identical systems everywhere. In order to answer the real needs of people, systems can be different at the local, the municipal and the national level. Basic human needs are, however, the same everywhere, across place and time. Rights should therefore be the same. Social protection should be a way to achieve social justice and emancipation. Social commons are a mechanism for broadening social protection, anchoring it within the control of those who need it and ensuring that it contributes to social justice in a transversal way.

The economic and social crisis we are currently living in, is in the first place a crisis of social re-production, in a world where employment increasingly fails to support subsistence. The privatisation of public services is a new enclosure, where the livelihoods of people are taken out of their hands and are turned into profit-making mechanisms. We want to defend our rights, make them concrete and contribute to new rights and policies in which people take back control.

This conference is the second in a series of three, covering the whole range of social protection aiming for social justice. In February 2018, we discussed public services in Manila, The Philippines. In 2019, we will discuss labour rights in Asia. In between, the Asia Europe People’s Forum will take place in Ghent, Belgium, from 19 to 21 October 2018.

PROGRAMME

To watch Birgit’s Video follow this link https://youtu.be/fSnKzURElZM

Friday 8 June

Session 1: 10 am – 14 pm

• Opening of the conference:
• Brief presentation of AEPF and Transform, Tina Ebro and Roberto Morea
• Federica Fantini, European Commission (DEVCO) (tbc)
• Laura Perez Castaño, City Councillor Barcelona
• Charles Santiago, MP, Malaysia

The case for commons and social commons:

• Dario Azzellini, Italy
• Francine Mestrum, Belgium
• Anna Coote, United Kingdom
• Dinesh Devkota, Nepal
• Shalmali Guttal, Thailand
• Bru Laín Escandell, Barcelona

​Facilitation : Tina Ebro and Koen Detavernier

Session 2: 16 – 20 pm

The new commons debate: The importance of commons in the process of social transformation

• Chantal Delmas, France
• Peter North, United Kingdom
• Sandeep Chachra, India
• Marco Berlinguer, Barcelona

Discussion

The new commons debate: The importance of commons in the process of political transformation

• Roberto Morea, Italy
• Dong Huy Cuong, Vietnam
• Birgit Daiber, Germany
• Koen Detavernier, Belgium

​Facilitation: Ghulam Mustafa Talpur and Elisabetta Cangelosi

Saturday 9 June

Sesion 3: 10 am to 14 pm

Conditions for social commons

• What we already achieved: report on the conference in Manila on public services
• Tina Ebro, Philippines

Macroeconomic policies, development, the changing world of work, gender

• Núria Lozano Montoya, Barcelona
• Alessandra Mecozzi, Italy
• Khalid Mahmood, Pakistan
• Federica Giardini, Italy
• Alex Scrivener, UK

Discussion

The environment, inequality, taxes

• Lidy Nacpil, Philippines
• Ghulam Mustafa Talpur, Pakistan
• Ah Maftuchan, Indonesia
• Vedran Horvat, Croatia

Facilitation: Lucia Bárcena and Sandeep Chachra

Public event: 18 pm to 20.30 pm

Social commons as a Strategic Tool for Transformation

• Camil Ros, UGT
• Laura Roth, Barcelona en Comú
• Marisa Matias, MEP, Portugal
• Ernest Urtasun, MEP, Barcelona
• Charles Santiago, MP, Malaysia
• Toni Mora, CCOO
• Federica Fantini, European Commission (tbc)
• Chantal Delmas, France
• Ana Maria R. Nemenzo, Philippines

Facilitation : Pablo Sanchez Centellas and Francine Mestrum

Sunday 10 June

Session 4: 10 am to 14 pm

Implementing social commons:

• The centrality of economic and social rights
• German Jaraiz Arroyo, Spain
• The centrality of culture for social commons
• Julie Ward, MEP United Kingdom

Practical implications of adopting a commoning approach to social protection – options for activism and policy development

Practical implications of adopting a commoning approach to social protection – options for activism and policy development Labour (Dario Azzelini), gender (Elisabetta Cangelosi), Land and food (Sandeep Chachra), health (Enric Feliu), housing (Santi Mas de Xaxás), care (Anna Coote)

​Concluding remarks and adoption of the Declaration of Barcelona

​Francine Mestrum and Roberto Morea

Facilitation: Kris Vanslambrouck and Lidy Nacpil

Co-organisers of the Conference

AEPF Social Justice Cluster – Global Social Justice – Transform! Europe – Institute for Political Ecology – Fundació l’alternativa – Barcelona en Comù – Fighting Inequality Alliance – Tax Justice Alliance Asia – Asean Parliamentary network for Human Rights – UGT (Union General de Trabajadores) – CCOO (Comisiones Obreras) – Network for Transformative Social Protection

Venue of the Conference:

Comisiones Obreras, Via Laietana 16, 08003 Barcelona

Venue for the public event on Saturday evening:

UGT (Union General de Trabajadores), Rambla de Santa Monica 10, 08002 Barcelona

www.aepf.info / www.transform-network.net

Download the program here

You can read it here using your e-reader

1. Economics of public services

Public spending and public services are vital for social development. However, politicians and media and mainstream economists consistently say that they are an unaffordable luxury, which damages the market economy, because taxation is a drain on private enterprise, because universal public services distort the market, and because the public sector is less efficient than the private sector.

But public spending is not an economic liability. Far from being a burden on the economy, public spending has had a consistent positive effect for over a century. This positive link works in developing countries as well as high income countries. Public spending supports economic growth through investment in infrastructure, through supporting an educated and healthy workforce, through redistributing income to increase the spending power of poorer consumers, providing insurance against risks, providing direct support for industry, including through technological innovation, and increasing efficiency by taking on these functions.

Chart 1. Government spending as % of GDP 1870–2012, high income countries

Sources: see note [1]

Public spending supports employment, in both high income and developing countries, through: direct employment of public service workers; indirect employment of workers, by contractors supplying outsourced goods and services; employment of workers on infrastructure projects; extra demand and jobs from the spending of the wages of these workers and also of recipients of social security benefits (the ‘multiplier effect’); subsidies to support employment by private companies, or by providing employment guarantees; providing formal jobs with decent pay and conditions; government procurement is used to require ‘fair wages’ from private contractors, to reduce gender and ethnic discrimination, and strengthen formal employment of local workers. The combined effect of these mechanisms is to support half the formal jobs in the world.

The supporters of austerity programmes argue that government debt damages economic growth, but there is no evidence to support this – a Harvard University paper which claimed to find a connection has been discredited. Government borrowing is a key economic instrument for driving economic activity, and is much cheaper than borrowing by private companies, which have to pay much higher interest rates. Privatisation and PPPs are unnecessary, costly and damaging ways of raising money.
The purpose of public spending and public services is to achieve public objectives. These objectives include, for example, ensuring universal education and universal access to healthcare; environmental objectives such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and management of waste; and economic objectives such as full employment. In a wide range of areas, these objectives are most effectively and efficiently achieved through public spending and public services. This section examines three policy areas where public spending and public services are key – healthcare; housing; and climate change.

Government revenues consist of taxes of various kinds and income from other sources. Countries with higher GDP have higher levels of taxation, so an increasing level of taxation is a key part of economic development. The total amount needs to be sufficient to pay for spending on public services and social security, and the burden of taxation should be fairly distributed. But neoliberal policies have attempted to reduce taxation, and have shifted the tax burden away from the rich, and corporate profits, on to ordinary people. All countries could increase their revenues substantially, just by increasing taxes on high incomes, property and corporate profits. This requires action to strengthen tax collection systems, and to deal with tax avoidance and the use of tax havens.

Changing current policies depends on political activity. Market mechanisms do not deliver the level of public services which countries need. The decisions which drive the development of public spending, or the imposition of austerity, are the outcome of political processes at national and international level.

2. Public services and equality

Equality is usually discussed in terms of people’s income, or the inequality suffered through systematic ethnic or gender discrimination. It is well recognised that public spending redistributes money income through social security benefits, but public services like healthcare, public education, child care, care for the elderly, and public housing also have a powerful redistributive effect, because they are equally available to everyone. Infrastructure like water, sanitation, electricity, roads and telecoms also improve equality because they make it possible for everyone to improve their livelihoods by using these services. As a result, cuts in spending on services have a disproportionate impact on households on lower incomes.

Recent studies in all high-income countries, and in 6 major Latin American countries, have shown that public services are relatively progressive in every country – the poor get a much higher proportion of the benefit of public services than they do of market income. And the value of these services, and the impact on equality, is at least as great as the impact of social security.

In OECD countries public services are equivalent to an extra 76% of the disposable cash income of the poorest 20%. In Latin America, public services have the same effect, making a greater impact on equality than social security benefits. Infrastructure for electricity, water and other services not only increases access for all, but improves employment opportunities, especially for women.

In addition, services such as child care, care for older people and education have a big impact on gender and ethnic equality, because they allow more women to get paid employment, and can be used to provide decent employment and career prospects for members of ethnic groups which have suffered discrimination. Other spending on public services takes the form of buying goods and services from private companies, and this too can be used to improve equality by making contracts conditional on positive discrimination in favour of women.

And through employing more people on better pay and conditions, with less differential between top and bottom, public services also improve income equality.

Chart 2. Value of public services as % of disposable income, 27 OECD countries

Source: calculated from Verbist et al p.35

Chart 3. Impact on inequality of taxes and benefits, and public services (Gini coefficient, 6 Latin American countries)

Source: Lustig et al 2012

3. The illusion of PPPs

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are used as a way of raising money for expensive infrastructure projects through the private sector, to avoid any apparent increase in public borrowing. The private partner in the PPP raises the money, so the government does not have to – and the bridge, or tunnel, or motorway, or railway, or school or hospital – still gets built. PPPs are actively promoted by a range of international institutions and governments, including the World Bank, G20, EU and donors countries.

The first fundamental problem is the illusion that PPPs bring in private money to pay for the infrastructure, so the state can spend its money on something else. But the opposite is true. The great majority of PPPs rely on a stream of income from payments by government (for the hospital, school, railway, etc.) – i.e. public spending (with the exception of true concessions, where the private company makes all the investment “at its own risk”, expecting to get the necessary income from payments made by consumers (e.g. water charges or road tolls). PPPs do not supplement public spending – they absorb it.

The second problem is that governments can always borrow more cheaply than companies, so raising money through PPPs is always the worse option. This has been stated very clearly by the IMF: “… private sector borrowing generally costs more than government borrowing … This being the case, when PPPs result in private borrowing being substituted for government borrowing, financing costs will in most cases rise …”. (IMF 2004A, IMF 2004B) In 2011 a representative of the UK private companies involved in PPPs estimated that the average extra cost of private sector capital over conventional borrowing had been 2.2 per cent a year. The Financial Times calculated that this means that the UK taxpayer: “is paying well over £20bn in extra borrowing costs – the equivalent of more than 40 sizeable new hospitals – for the 700 projects that successive governments have acquired under the private finance initiative….”

Finally, when PPPs are used to finance public investment, the private investors naturally seek to protect themselves against risks and uncertainty. Governments therefore usually provide some form of guarantee, or agreement to carry risks, to provide greater security for the private investor. But, as the IMF again notes: “… resort[ing] to guarantees to secure private financing can expose the government to hidden and often higher costs than traditional public financing”. The further irony is that, since the financial crisis, state banks and institutions are actually lending money to PPPs, in order to borrow it back from them.

Despite the massive promotion effort, PPPs struggle to provide more than a tiny portion of the infrastructure investment in the world. Public finance remains the overwhelmingly predominant model worldwide, providing for well over 90% of infrastructure investment.

And many PPPs have been expensive failures. In the UK, the world leader in using PPPs, all the transport PPPs in London have been terminated – representing over 25% of the value of all the PPPs in the UK. The result has been a considerable saving in the cost of borrowing and in efficiency. (PSIRU 2014B)

4. Potential for more tax revenues

Taxation is not a burden but an essential part of economic , social and political development. As economies grow, tax revenues rise as a proportion of GDP:. “rich countries collect a much larger share of their income in taxes than do poor countries”, as the first chart shows. Higher tax revenues are a crucial part of development: “the power to tax lies at the heart of state development” – the second chart shows how the level of taxation has grown steadily for the last 100 years. (Besley and Persson 2013)

Chart 4. Higher GDP means higher taxation

Source: Besley and Persson 2013

Far more tax revenues can and should be collected from taxes on high incomes, wealth, company profits, financial transactions, and from land and property. The table below shows estimates by the IMF and others of the potential extra revenues from some of these sources.

• these add up to potential extra revenue equivalent to 11% of GDP.
• they would represent a huge increase in tax revenues: an increase of 33% in high income countries, an extra 50% in middle income countries, and an extra 70% in low income countries.
• the IMF estimates that the government debt of all countries could be restored to the levels of 2007 by a general tax of 10% on private wealth (IMF 2013A)

Chart 5. Potential extra revenues from taxing the rich and companies

Financial transactions tax

The proposal for a general tax on financial transactions is often called a ‘Tobin tax’ after the Nobel-prize-winning economist who advocated it as a way of deterring such transactions, to protect currencies from the volatility of speculative inflows and outflows. Many countries operate similar taxes successfully: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and the U.K. all tax the purchase and/or sale of company shares. If applied globally, a financial transactions tax could raise over USD $1trillion per year, or 2% of global GDP, even at a rate of 0.01%. A more limited currency transaction tax could raise between USD $25–33billion per year. (Taskforce 2010) Political support for the idea, in principle, has been growing for some years. In 2013 the EU proposed a directive to provide a framework for financial transaction taxes in Europe. (EU 2013, Thornton Matheson 2011)

Property and land taxes

The advantages of a property tax are that it is fair, hard to avoid, and impacts on people with assets whose value is increased by public services and infrastructure. There is wide variation between countries in taxes on property, and so considerable potential for collecting more from these sources.

A land tax is even broader, because it taxes all land, not just the buildings on it. It also taxes the value that landowners gain from economic growth and rises in property prices. Hong Kong uses a land tax to raise 38% of its revenues. A land tax has been supported by a wide range of people in the last 250 years, including Adam Smith, Tom Paine and Winston Churchill, who argued that infrastructure increases land values, but the landowner: “renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.” (McLean 2004)

5. The remarkable turnaround in the UK

The underlying reasons for the opposition to privatisation in the UK are economic, as in other countries. People have experienced higher water and energy and rail prices, worse service, loss of jobs and pay, and loss of accountability, while the companies make large profits. Opinion polls suggested that the UK public never supported many of the privatisations, but since the 1990s, when the Labour party decided to drop opposition to privatisation, there has been no political force expressing that opposition.

The key factors in the change have been political. A new campaign group was launched in 2013, called We Own It, focussed simply on the demand to reverse all forms of privatisation – the sales of the water and electricity and rail companies, the various PPPs/PFIs that have been set up in the UK, and the whole area of outsourcing. This was the first anti-privatisation campaign in UK since the early 1990s, and it gained a lot of support from the public and significant publicity.

Then in 2015 Jeremy Corbyn, a longstanding left-wing MP, was elected leader of the Labour party, by a large majority. He was re-elected in 2016, again with a large majority, and the party’s membership grew to 500,000, making it the largest political party in Europe. In May 2017 a general election was called, and Labour produced a manifesto which included a commitment to bring back public ownership of water, energy and rail companies. These commitments played a large part in winning the support of over 40% of voters, and the Conservative government was left with no overall majority. The election made clear that ending privatisation was extremely popular.

Since the election, this political process has accelerated. In October 2017 a survey conducted by a right-wing research group found that over three-quarters of the electorate wanted public ownership of water, electricity, gas and rail, and at least half wanted public ownership of the aerospace industry and the banks.

Chart 6. UK public support for public ownership, by sector, October 2017

Source: Legatum Institute Oct 2017 Public opinion in the post-Brexit era. www.li.com

At its annual conference in September 2017, the Labour party not only reiterated and maintained its commitment to public ownership of utilities, but also adopted radical policies in relation to outsourcing and PPPs. On outsourcing, the new policy is to hold a comprehensive review of all work outsourced by local and central government and health authorities, and introduce a new statutory rule that all work must be done inhouse by default unless a special case is made under strict criteria.

On PPPs, the party policy is now that there will be no new PPPs created, and that all existing PPPs will be nationalised. The party is extending this approach to its policy on international development, so that a Labour government will withdraw the UK’s support from policies encouraging the use of PPPs in developing countries.

At the same time, the media, and private capital, has been forced to re-examine the problems of privatisation. Surprisingly, the Financial Times has published some of the strongest and most detailed critiques of privatisation and PPPs. Credit rating agency Moodys produced a briefing which agreed that Labour could legally nationalise the water and energy sectors, even without paying full market value in compensation. Investors now take nationalisation as a serious possibility, and the price of the shares of water companies on the London stock exchange has fallen by 25% or more Since May 2017, when Labour’s manifesto was first published. A report on the energy sector, commissioned by the Conservative government from a neoliberal economist, Dieter Helm, surprisingly recommended public ownership of the electricity transmission and distribution grids. A major new report on outsourcing has also undermined.

The process has been reinforced by further problems with privatisation, including the bankruptcy of Carillion, one of the major multinationals involved in PPPs in the UK (and elsewhere), and financial problems with another major PPP operator, Capita.

Chart 7. Financial Times articles, September 2017

1. Our public services, education, health care, public transport … all belong to our systems of social protection, systems that we need and have to promote because they are essential for our individual and collective survival. Individuals are not self-sufficient, they are interdependent.

This is an easy statement, but the question is how we try to achieve the existence of universal quality public services for all. We know that the current neoliberal philosophy wants governments to cut public spending, and, in general, social expenditures are severely limited.

However, markets, and the production system they require, cannot function properly without a decent reproduction, or simply put, if people have no clean water, no education system, no health care, no public transport, etc., the economic system will fail. Moreover, and this is for us an even more important argument: social protection is a human right, confirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated and explicitly stated in the International Covenant for Economic, social and cultural rights as well as other regional treaties.

The experience of the past decades, all over the world, has shown that privatised public services cannot do the job: they are too expensive, so that poor people cannot afford them, they are rarely universal because they are then not profitable, they cut back on employment and do not allow for any democratic and participatory approach.

That is why there is now a broad movement to reclaim these services, at the national, the regional or the municipal level. This is the movement we want to support and promote. Social protection and public services are ours: people pay for them with taxes and social contributions, and that is why we call them social commons. They should be universal and be at the service of all, and not only of those who are rich enough to pay for them. Public services belong to the public, they can and should be organised in a democratic and participatory way.

2. This is all very reasonable and logical. Yet, it is sometimes difficult to explain. And the reason is words may mean different things to different people.

We speak here of ‘public services’, but we might also speak of ‘utilities’ or of ‘social services’ or of ‘services in the general interest’.

One of the main problems lies with the word ‘public’: for most people, especially on the left, this refers to public authorities or to the State. We do not want privatised services, we want public authorities to organize them.

An that is why neoliberals, who do not want this, started to talk, in Europe, of ‘services of general interest’, or why the World Bank speaks of ‘social services’, and why in countries like the UK or in Holland, they speak of ‘utilities’. All these other words mean one thing: we should not ask public authorities to take care of these services.

The French, particularly, have very serious problems with this terminological change.

However, many critics forget one thing: ‘public’ not only refers to the organizer, the public authorities, but also to those these services are meant for: the public!

What this means is that even if you do not want public authorities to organize these different services, there is no need to change the word: we are talking about public services, at the service of the public, at the service of people.

3. This is a long introduction for a very simple idea. But it is very important. Because today, while most of us will reject the privatisation of services, many of us will also have serious doubts about the capacity of States to really be at the service of people. In the past, we have seen how many services really functioned badly or not at all. States and public authorities are not necessarily democratic. Very often, public services are used as power instruments or for clientelist objectives. Today, we see how local authorities like municipalities are trying to take over.

The idea that I want to present here is the idea of social commons, that is a system that makes the opposition between private and public and between state and market irrelevant. Social commons give a role to citizens and their organisations.

I am not going to dwell on the concept of commons itself. Let me just briefly repeat that commons, basically, are the material and immaterial things that belong to us all: our planet, our oceans, our forests, our land, our seeds… These are natural commons. We also have cultural commons: our knowledge, which cannot be a private property, our cultural heritage, our internet … And we have social commons: our human rights, our public services, our social security. Commons are the result of a co-activity which supposes reciprocity between people. This co-activity is a basic condition and it constitutes a ‘we’. Commons then are the things that a political community decides to be their commons, which means there can be no commons without commoners. They are the political and social actors that decide on what in their society – at whatever level, local, national, regional or global – has to be considered a common, on the way to regulate it, on the rules for access to it and on monitoring its use.

Commons never are an intrinsic characteristic of things, but are the result of a common and democratic political decision concerning the access, the use and the monitoring of things. It means citizens are taking control in their communities, societies or at the global level. Commoning public services basically means to democratize them and to emphasize collective ownership.

This is very concretely what we mean when we say that decisions have to be taken bottom-up instead of top-down.

4. However, this does not mean that States play no role anymore, on the contrary. We will always need States for redistribution, for guaranteeing our human rights, for making security rules, etc. It means States are co-responsible for governing our interdependence. But the States we are talking of in relation to public services, will be of another kind, the State will be itself a kind of public service, it will be at the service of its citizens.

In the same way, markets will be different. Public services as commons does not mean there is nothing to be paid anymore, people who work in the health sector obviously have to be paid, but prices will not respond to a liberal market logic, they will respond to human needs. Never forget that workers in the public sector do produce value. In a system of commons, we focus on the use value instead of the exchange value.

So if we say social commons go beyond state and markets, we do not say they go without states and markets. It is a different logic that applies.

All this, because we should never forget that social protection is ours! We pay for it, with taxes and/or social contributions. We have to decide on it. And we have to trust the public. People know best what their needs are, and these needs will be different from one place to another. People’s organisations, such as trade unions, will have a crucial role to play.

5. The economic and social crisis we are currently living in, is in the first place a crisis of social re-production, in a world where employment increasingly fails to support subsistence. The privatisation of public services is a new enclosure, where the livelihoods of people are taken out of their hands and are turned into profit-making mechanisms. We want to defend our rights, make them concrete and contribute to new rights and policies in which people take back control. Without re-production there cannot even be production.

Social commons confirm the need for a non-profit approach on re-production, for abandoning exclusive state provisioning of services and for re-connecting with the full meaning of ‘public’. The co-activity and co-responsibility it implies also combine collective and individual rights, the obvious statement that there can be no individual freedom without collective freedom and collective responsibility.

This democratic, participatory and emancipatory way of organizing the public services we all need allows to protect individuals as well as society itself. Neoliberalism is destroying societies by solely focusing on individuals and interpersonal competition. Shifting the focus to the collective dimension of our societies, beyond communities and families, is a highly political task. Individual and collective rights have to go hand in hand if we want to protect our common goods.

Therefore, commons can be a strategic tool to resist neoliberalism, privatisation and commodification. With public services as commons, we can fight inequality. Applying the principles coherently and consequently, this will change the power relations, it will lead to changing the economic system, which is far more difficult to do from without. Social commons are indeed transformative, because you cannot have a preventive health care system if people have no right to water, if corporations are allowed to use toxic substances, if car companies are allowed to pollute the air we breathe. Pursuing on these points, it is easy to see there is a direct link between social justice and environmental justice. Both make it possible to preserve the sustainability of life, of humans, of society and of nature.

The language of commons offers an opportunity to the left to re-define its strategies, to renew its thinking on production, markets, nature and the State to create a new narrative to better organize our resistance to neoliberal and conservative forces.

Destroying public services is destroying society, social relationships, solidarity and collective values. Preserving and promoting public services is promoting citizenship and the sovereignty of people.

Francine Mestrum – Global Social Justice – www.socialcommons.eu – mestrum@skynet.be

*** Francine Mestrum has a PhD in social sciences and worked at the European institutions and several Belgian universities. Her research concerns the social dimension of globalisation, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services and gender. She is an active member of the International Council of the World Social Forum and helps in the organisation of the Asia Europe People’s Forum events. She is the author of several books (in Dutch, French and English) on development, poverty, inequality and social commons. She is the founder of the global network of Global Social Justice and currently works on a project for social commons. www.socialcommons.eu

In 2008, for the first time, the world’s population was evenly split between urban and rural areas. There were more than 400 cities over 1 million and 19 over 10 million. More developed nations were about 74 percent urban, while 44 percent of residents of less developed countries lived in urban areas…..It is expected that 70 percent of the world population will be urban by 2050 and that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries.[i]

In most cities in the developing countries, social-political people’s movements are focused on the concerns around acute agrarian distress, which is very immediate, and urbanization is often seen only as an evil that needs to be rolled back for a better world. But this is looking more and more unlikely at least in the near future. Many consider the terms sustainability and urbanization as mutually exclusive. Is it possible to reverse urbanization? What is the role of technology? Should we think more about how cities will have to be made more sustainable, rather than the hope that cities can be done away with altogether at lease in the imminent future? Most important, what are the basic social needs of a population that is largely urban and how will they be met? There is a need for a more comprehensive urban program of action, for more policy activism on sustainable cities, urban planning, sustainable urbanization. Urban activism will perhaps have to go beyond defensive struggles and evolve a better understanding of the urban space, solutions to urban poverty, and engagements with urban aspirations. This is critical, not only for the urban poor but also to save the environment and the planet.

You would be forgiven, especially if you live in Europe, to think that public services are by nature expensive, inefficient, maybe even somewhat outdated, and that reforming them to adapt to new challenges is difficult. It would seem natural to assume – because this is what most politicians, media and so-called experts tell us continuously – that we, as citizens and users, should resign ourselves to paying ever higher tariffs for services of an ever lower standard, and that service workers have no choice but to accept ever more degraded conditions. It would seem that private companies will inevitably play an ever larger role in the provision of public services, because everything has a price, because politicians have lost sight of the common good and citizens are only interested in their own individual pursuits.

The book Reclaiming Public Services [i], however, tells a completely different story. Sometimes it may feel as though we are living in a time when profit and austerity – when it is not authoritarianism and xenophobia – are our only horizons. In reality, below the radar, thousands of politicians, public officials, workers and unions, and social movements are working to reclaim or create effective public services that address the basic needs of people and respond to our social, environmental and climate challenges. They do this most often at the local level. Our research shows there have been at least 835 examples of (re)municipalisation of public services worldwide in recent years, involving more than 1,600 cities in 45 countries. And these (re)municipalisations generally succeeded in bringing down costs and tariffs, improving conditions for workers and boosting service quality, while ensuring greater transparency and accountability.

This (re)municipalisation[ii] wave is especially strong in Europe, but it is also gaining strength elsewhere in the world. What is more, many of the 835 examples we identified are not merely technical changes in ownership but very often entail broader economic, social and environmental changes. (Re)municipalisation initiatives emerge from a range of motivations, from addressing private sector abuse or labour violations, recovering control over the local economy and resources, or providing affordable services to people, to implementing ambitious energy transition and environmental strategies. (Re)municipalisations occur at all levels, with different models of public ownership, and with various levels of involvement from citizens and workers. But out of this diversity a coherent picture nevertheless can be drawn: the movement for (re)municipalisation is growing and spreading, despite the continued top-down push for privatisation and austerity policies.

Remunicipalisation refers to the return of public services from private to public delivery. More precisely, remunicipalisation is the passage of public services from privatisation in any of its various forms – including private ownership of assets, outsourcing of services and public-private partnerships (PPPs) – to public ownership, public management and democratic control. While our main focus in this research is on cases of return to full public ownership, the survey also includes cases of predominantly publicly owned services when the model is implemented with clear public values, to serve public objectives and when it contains a form of democratic accountability.

Remunicipalisation beyond water

We felt it was crucial to study and document the remunicipalisation trend, precisely because well-resourced knowledge institutions, think tanks and financial institutions have done nothing to research it. Corporations, economic ‘experts’ and national governments have neglected remunicipalisation – perhaps because they do not want it to be known. They would rather lock in the notion that privatisation is inevitable. In 2015, civil society organisations and trade unions came together to study remunicipalisation in the water sector. We found that since 2000 there had been at least 235 cases of water remunicipalisation in 37 countries, affecting more than 100 million people.[iii] Water remunicipalisation, a rare phenomenon 15 years ago, has accelerated dramatically and the trend keeps gaining strength. This raised the question of the extent to which remunicipalisation was also happening in other essential services such as energy, waste collection, transport, education, health and social services. We were also curious to find out whether remunicipalisation in these sectors happened for similar reasons and with the same results than in the water sector.

A dynamic, accelerating trend

Through the participatory survey and our own research, we identified 835 (re)municipalisation cases in seven public service sectors worldwide. They have occurred from small towns to capital cities, from urban to rural contexts. Energy (311 cases) and water (267 cases) are the sectors with the most cases. Various local government services such as swimming pools, school catering, public space maintenance, housing, cleaning, security services were brought back in-house in Canada, Spain, the UK and elsewhere (140 cases in total).

Roughly 90 per cent of (re)municipalisations in the energy sector happened in Germany (284 cases), the country famous for its ambitious ‘Energiewende’ policy. Many water remunicipalisation cases occurred in France (106 cases), the country with the longest history of water privatisation and home to the leading global water multinationals, Suez and Veolia. For the health and social work sectors, more than half of the cases came from Norway and other Nordic countries (37 cases in total).

Different forms of de-privatisation

We are using (re)municipalisation with parentheses because this survey also includes actions in which local governments established new municipal companies in liberalised markets. This typically happened in the energy sector. Local governments can also create completely new public services to meet citizens’ basic needs. The state of Tamil Nadu in India, for instance, created people’s canteens to provide meals at very low cost to reduce hunger and malnutrition. In total, our survey found 143 new municipal or regional companies established to provide public services for citizens. Many of them are municipal energy utilities (122). In Germany alone, our survey found that 109 new municipal energy companies were created in recent years. Other examples include newly created municipal funeral services companies in Spain and Austria that provide an affordable alternative for families in a critical moment for human dignity.

De-privatisation can also occur in the form of (re)nationalisation. Remunicipalisation and renationalisation often share common features in that they recover public capacity from corporations, but the motivations can be very different. Many of the private banks in Western Europe were rescued and recapitalised by states with public funds after the financial crisis in 2008. After the massive nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) – responsible for the nuclear reactor – was similarly nationalised. The Japanese government intends to privatise it again when the market is ready. More than 200 services, mainly in the finance and energy sectors, were renationalised in Hungary by the current authoritarian regime, with the aim of consolidating central power.[iv] These examples have to do more with either temporarily fixing private failures without introducing public scrutiny or with a nationalistic approach. In Latin America, on the other hand, after privatisations spread across a wide range of public services in the 1990s, several governments renationalised economically and socially strategic sectors such as energy, gas, water, pension funds, postal services and air transport. So we present a separate and selective list of renationalisation cases, the motives and objectives of which were to expand equitable and affordable services to the whole population. These cases are mainly from Latin America.

Our research focuses mainly on steps taken with the aim to boost local capacity and with potential to provide better and democratic public services. While 70 per cent or 589 cases were implemented by local and regional authorities, some were also coordinated at the inter-municipal level. Half of the water sector cases in France occurred at the inter-municipal level. It often means that the many surrounding municipalities in a metropolitan area have joined to benefit from the services of remunicipalised public water management, as happened in Nice, France. Inter-municipal actions are common in the energy (148 cases) and transport (19 cases) sectors as well.

Broader mandate but less resources

Public services are facing a multi-faceted challenge. Most countries continue to struggle to recover from economic crisis. Neoliberal governments stubbornly stick to deepening austerity and intensifying competition and downward pressure on social and environmental standards through neoliberal trade and investment agreements. Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires a deep transformation of the economy. Universal access to essential services like water and sanitation remains a major challenge around the world. Scandalous tax avoidance and evasion by corporations and super-wealthy individuals has been exposed to a large public, but governments continue to allow this to happen.

Local and regional governments are increasingly asked to do more with less resources. They are on the frontline to take on the multiple challenges of climate change, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), building resilience against natural disasters and accommodating refugees. At the same time, they are faced with a major challenge in terms of how to finance public services and infrastructure.

For several decades we have been told that outsourcing, privatisation, PPPs and financing schemes, such as private finance initiatives (PFIs) in the UK, are the only options for local authorities in a context marked by more responsibilities and less resources. But evidence is growing that such policies are bad for public budgets in the long term, and lead to poor services and a loss of democratic accountability. It is becoming clear that abandoning outsourcing, PPPs and similar neoliberal policies and choosing to deliver public services in-house instead leads to major savings as argued below. The increasing number of remunicipalisation initiatives, is a reflection of the failures of privatisation and PPPs.

Immediate benefits of de-privatisation

In our 2015 water remunicipalisation research, we identified the main motives for ending privatisation to be linked to cost savings, improved quality of service, financial transparency, and regaining operational capacity and control. In this broader survey, which includes other essential services besides water, we find the same motives. Environmental objectives, such as speeding up renewable energy development, integrated environmental policies toward reducing waste, or enhancing public transport systems, are other key drivers. Providing affordable services for low-income households in the context of energy and water poverty (where many families cannot afford the high utility bills) is an important motivation, especially in Spain and the UK where those services are dominated by large profit-making corporations.

Regarding the results of remunicipalisation, we found in 2015 that a large number of cases resulted in cost savings and increased investment in the water sector. It may be too early to assess the results of (re)municipalisation in other sectors in a systematic manner since many cases happened in very recent years. Nevertheless, there is significant empirical evidence from other sectors that remunicipalisation has brought immediate cost savings for local governments. To give just a few, Bergen (Norway), where two elderly care centres were taken back in-house, made a surplus of €500,000 when a €1 million loss was expectedThe termination of transport PPPs in London resulted? ?in a £1 billion reduction in costs, mainly through the elimination of shareholder dividends and legal fees, and through procurement and maintenance efficiencies). Chiclana in Spain transferred 200 workers to the public sector for three in-sourced services, and the municipality nevertheless expects to save between 16 and 21 per cent on its budget.

Citizens stand up for de-privatisation

It is not surprising that many remunicipalisation initiatives originate in vibrant citizens’ movements. The German energy transition is promoted by municipalities and citizens’ groups; the majority of the population in the UK demands public ownership of water, energy supply and transport; the massive grassroots resistance against social cuts sparked the emergence of new progressive local politics in Spain; and more than 2,300 cities across Europe rejected the US-EU free trade agreement (TTIP). All of these stories tell us that there is strong support for an alternative path to ever expanding privatisation, ever deepening austerity and ever lower quality services.

In a vast majority cases in our survey citizens and workers get involved in de-privatisation processes to a different extent. In Nordic countries, organised workers experienced problems in their workplace after privatisation and pushed for de-privatisation in health and social work. The same happened with various local government services in the UK and Canada. In these countries workers and citizen coalitions have been fighting for many years against water privatisation and work together with city councils to de-privatise when political opportunities arise. Massive grassroots campaigns for referendums resulted in de-privatisation, for instance that of the energy grids in Hamburg, Germany and in Boulder, US,[v] and that of water in Berlin.[vi] Citizens are not merely service users. Newly created municipal energy companies are backed by engaged citizens and community energy movements. Londoners are now campaigning to set up a not-for-profit energy supply company with an extended citizen participation mechanism.[vii] Citizens engagement and mobilisation are essential and central to the (re)municipalisation movement.

Hybrid model and de-privatisation from below

We deliberately take a broad definition of ‘public’, which allows us to capture a larger range of initiatives. For instance, citizen co-operatives that have taken over profit-driven commercial energy service providers (e.g. Minnesota and Hawaiian island Kauai in the US) fall into our research scope.

Unlike local authorities, the citizen co-operatives or housing associations that have played a role in providing affordable energy to residents are in principle private entities and as such they are only accountable to their members. They are, however, often not-for-profit and can clearly serve public interest goals. The most important angle in this survey is therefore not just the distinction between state and non-state actors, but rather the objectives behind the initiatives and factors such as proximity (locally rooted). In other words, we contrast corporate and financialised forms of ownership and locally organised not-for-profit forms of ownership that explicitly aim to serve the broader public interest, based on principles such as equality, universal access, environmental sustainability and democracy. Our Power, for instance, which was established by 35 social housing associations in Glasgow, Scotland in 2015, is a hybrid model of partnership between the local authority and citizen co-operatives. The Scottish Government has invested £2.5 million in Our Power, which aims to make a difference for low income households who are currently disadvantaged in the energy market and struggling to pay their bills.

We see (re)municipalisation as a strategic window to bring about positive change in our communities and to help connecting diverse movements and actors: those promoting climate justice and energy transition, those fighting against neoliberal trade and investment regimes and privatisation, those denouncing tax avoidance, the trade union movements and their allies standing up for workers’ rights, the emerging municipalist movement, and other alliances among cities. The growing collective power of these different groups to reclaim democratic public services puts resilient and thriving communities back on the horizon.

*** Satoko Kishimoto is a coordinator of the Public Alternative Project at the Transnational Institute (TNI).Olivier Petitjean is a French writer and researcher, who is currently the chief editor at the Multinationals Observatory, an investigative website on French transnational corporations.

[i] Kishimoto, S., Petitjean, O(2017) Reclaiming Public Services: How cities and citizens are turning back privatisation. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/reclaiming-public-services

[ii] We use ‘remunicipalisation’ to refer to the process of bringing previously private or privatised services under public control and management at the local level. We are aware that as a term it is not always entirely adequate, because in some cases the services that are reclaimed have always been in private hands, or did not exist. In these instances, ‘municipalisation’ would be a more adequate term. (Re)municipalisation covers both instances. There are also examples of public services that have been de-privatised at the national level. We treat ‘renationalisations’ separately in order to focus on local actions and because some forms of renationalisation (when they are about centralising power or temporarily rescuing failed private companies) do not fall under our research scope. Finally, there are numerous examples of citizens and users taking the lead in reclaiming essential services from commercial entities to run them on a non-profit basis for their communities. For us, these cases also fall under (re)municipalisation insofar as they are oriented toward public service values and non-commercial objectives. De-privatisation then serves as an overarching term for (re)municipalisation, renationalisation and citizen-led reclaiming of public services, which are all oriented toward fighting against the ills of privatisation.

[iii] Kishimoto, S., Petitjean, O., Lobina, E. (eds.) (2015) Our Public Water Future: Global Experiences with Remunicipalisation. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/our-public-water-future

[iv]Mihályi, P. (2016) Diszkriminatív, piac- és versenyellenes állami gazdaságpolitika Magyarországon, 2010-2015 (Discriminative Anti-Market and Anti-Competiton Policies in Hungary, 2010-2015). IEHAS Discussion Papers, MT-DP – 2016/7, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

[v] See the detailed case of Boulder on the Energy Democracy website: Buxton, N. (2016) Boulder’s long fight for local power. http://www.energy-democracy.net/?p=364

[vi] See the detailed case of Berlin on the Remunicipalisation Tracker: http://www.remunicipalisation.org/#case_Berlin

[vii] See the detailed case of London on the Energy Democracy website (2016):

http://www.energy-democracy.net/?p=355

Catalonia experienced its first remunicipalisation of water in 2010, in the town of Figaro. Seven years later the door of remunicipalisation (or municipalisation considering that water was never publicly managed in some places) is now wide open and an estimated 3.5 million of the 7 million inhabitants in Catalonia, including Barcelonans, could see a change to their water management model during the coming years. This is an opportunity to advance management of water as a common good, in a more democratic way that guarantees the right to water for all, ensuring the most basic needs of the people and the preservation of water ecosystems. The water remunicipalisation trend in Catalonia is part of a wider trend throughout Spain, which continues in spite of the conservative central government’s every efforts to hinder it. The Agbar quasi monopoly in Catalonia Private companies supply water to 83.6 per cent of the Catalan population. The Agbar Group (Aguas de Barcelona), now a subsidiary of the French multinational Suez, services 70 per cent of the population, that is, 5.6 million inhabitants. Additionally, nearly 0.5 million people get their water from Aqualia, a subsidiary of the Spanish construction company FCC (Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas). At the national level, roughly 57 per cent of the Spanish population gets its water from a private provider. Agbar, which is headquartered in Barcelona, is by far the dominant player in the Spanish market. Historically Barcelona and Catalonia have thus formed the bastion of private water management in the country.

The Agbar quasi monopoly in Catalonia

Private companies supply water to 83.6 per cent of the Catalan popu- lation. The Agbar Group (Aguas de Barcelona), now a subsidiary of the French multinational Suez, services 70 per cent of the population, that is, 5.6 million inhabitants. Additionally, nearly 0.5 million people get their water from Aqualia, a subsidiary of the Spanish construction company FCC (Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas). At the national level, roughly 57 per cent of the Spanish population gets its water from a private pro- vider. Agbar, which is headquartered in Barcelona, is by far the dominant player in the Spanish market. Historically Barcelona and Catalonia have thus formed the bastion of private water management in the country.

In Catalonia, the private sector is concentrated in medium and large cities because larger populations offer better return on investment. Elsewhere there is a long tradition of public management, with 450 small munici- palities being serviced by public water utilities – that is, half of the mu- nicipalities of Catalonia but only 16.4 per cent of the population.

According to a report of the Spanish Court of Accounts in 2011,1 private water management is 22 per cent more expensive for small and medium towns than public provision, while offering a lower performance on av- erage. Catalan average water prices in privately managed municipalities are 25 per cent higher than in municipalities with public management. In Barcelona’s metropolitan area (includes 22 surrounding municipalities), the Aigua és Vida platform estimates that Agbar’s water rates are 91.7 per cent more expensive than in neighbouring towns such as El Prat de Llo- bregat and Barbera, which have public management.

The situation of water provision in Catalonia may be about to change radically, however, considering that 14 Catalan towns have already mu- nicipalised or remunicipalised their water. Concession contracts in some 90 more municipalities – home to about 3.5 million people – are set to expire in the coming years (2017-2025, see Appendix). Many of the pri- vate contracts in force today have not gone through a proper tendering process. Dozens of town councils have already approved the study of (re) municipalisation scenarios for water provision. Along with the vibrant citizen mobilisations and platforms for reclaiming public and democratic water in Catalonia and the whole of Spain, this has resulted in the current wave of (re)municipalisation.

Change of scenario: The (re)municipalisation wave

In 2015, citizen-led, progressive coalitions gained power in many Span- ish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona. This was the result of years of citizen movement campaigning for access to basic rights and against the corruption of traditional political parties and their close connections to big business. In turn, it created a favourable political environment for remunicipalisation. Valladolid (300,000 inhabitants) is the largest city to have remunicipalised water services in Spain.2 The municipal council has decided to return water management to public hands when the con- tract with Agbar expires, in July 2017. Although it does not fall within the scope of this chapter, it must be noted that many of these municipalities (which are not necessarily driven by progressive coalitions) embarked on remunicipalising not only water, but other services as well. An im- portant obstacle, however, is the central government, which is trying to make it impossible for cities to remunicipalise public services. In April 2017, the central government presented a draft budget proposal that in- cluded an additional disposition (no. 27) that was cause for concern for many but that was not adopted as proposed.3 It would have prevented the transfer of those workers previously in the private sector into any new public body, with the underlying objective of turning unions and workers against remunicipalisation. This would have led to a loss of expertise and created a lack of skilled workers to provide the services. The central gov- ernment also has directly fought against remunicipalisation in Valladolid. In March 2017, the Ministry of Finance through the State Attorney’s Of- fice filed a lawsuit4 to block the staff’s transfer from the private company to a new public company, invoking budgetary adjustment regulation.

A citizen wave to reclaim public and democratic water in Catalan municipalities

The year 2016 was a turning point in the management of water in Cata- lonia and throughout Spain. In March, a judgment of the Court of Justice of Catalonia cancelled the public-private partnership contract for wa- ter supply to 23 municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. In April, Collbató, a village of 4,000 inhabitants, became the 12th munic- ipality to recover water service management in Catalonia. Water losses in its network were more than 60 per cent. Then in November, the first meeting of Spanish cities for public water was organised in Madrid, with the participation of seven mayors from some of the largest cities in Spain, along with public water operators and civil society organisations. The ob- jective of this unprecedented event was to strengthen and coordinate the water movement across Spain, in a context where the central government is strongly opposed to remunicipalisation. Finally, in December, after 75 years of concession, the contract of private company Mina Pública de Ter- rassa (35.5 per cent owned by Agbar) with the city of Terrassa (215,000 inhabitants) was put to an end.

The trend has continued in 2017, with nine municipalities in the Metro- politan Area of Barcelona – representing three in four inhabitants – ap- proving motions in favour of considering public management of water. On 19 March 2017, Terrassa saw the first popular demonstration in favour of the public management of water in Catalonia with the participation of 4,000 people. Three days later, a Catalan Association of Municipalities for Public Management of Water was created. The municipalities involved in this new Association include Barcelona, Badalona, Cerdanyola del Valles, El Prat de Llobregat, Sabadell, Terrassa and Santa Coloma de Gramenet, representing a total of 2.5 million inhabitants. Its objective is to develop a new public model including new forms of social control to ensure trans- parency, information, accountability and effective citizen participation. The Association is committed to providing assistance, knowledge and support to those municipalities wishing to remunicipalise and implement this new management model.

This radical shift toward a new model for public water is largely the re- sult of the efforts of the many civil society platforms that organised years ago and have been denouncing irregularities and private profiteering ever since: Taula de l’Aigua (Water Table) in Terrassa; Aigua és Vida Girona (Wa- ter is Life Girona) in Girona, a city whose contract is set to expire in 2020; Aigua és Vida Anoia (Water is Life Anoia) in Igualada; Volem l’aigua Clara i Neta (We want clean and clear water) in Torello, where the contract ex- pires in 2018; Taula de l’Aigua de Mollet (Mollet Water Table) in Mollet del Vallès, where the council has already approved a study of remunicipali- sation when its contract expires in 2020; and Aigua és democràcia (Water is Democracy) in La Llagosta.

Terrassa: Ending a concession after 75 years

Private company Mina d’Aigües de Terrassa S.A. has managed the water service in Terrassa for 75 years, through a concession that ended on 9 December 2016. Since March 2014, a group of people from neighbour- hood movements, social movements and ordinary citizens created Taula de l’Aigua, a citizen platform that aims to recover direct public manage- ment of water in Terrassa, with citizen participation and social control. Mina is a subsidiary company of the Agbar Group, which controls its management and has a 35.5 per cent stake in the company. In 2013, as first evidence of a simmering conflict, it presented to the City Council a proposal to increase the price of water by 6 per cent. The Council asked for a justification and ended up rejecting the proposed tariff hike, as did the Price Commission of Catalonia, in favour of a 1.25 per cent increase. With the end of the concession approaching, the city began investigating into its options and requesting information from Mina, which it had nev- er done before. Citizens also requested information from the City Council, but Mina refused to provide most of the information. Important aspects such as the price of Mina’s water wells or the breakdown of the costs of the service are not yet public. The Mayor of Terrassa clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the company, which is supposed to be a service provider for the Council, was retaining information in order to hinder a possible remunicipalisation. Two years of intensive informative and educational work done by Taula de l’Aigua succeeded in making the water issue central to the political agen- da. In July 2016, the City Council approved a motion in favour of direct management of water. Among the 27 city councillors, 20 were in favour, three abstained and four were against. The private company claimed that recovering the service would cost the city €60 million. The Council, how- ever, maintains that the cost will not be more than €2 million. When the council confirmed the end of the concession and the return of the system to the city in December 2016, Mina turned to the courts to have the reso- lutions cancelled, so far without success. The second step was to design the new public service. Taula de l’Aigua de Terrassa together with the Terrassa Council of Organisations convened the first Terrassa Citizen Parliament, which approved two motions to be presented to the City Council, on the objectives of the new management model and on social control of the service. To reclaim public and dem- ocratic water, a wide public demonstration was organised in Terrassa in March 2017 in support of the Council’s decision to end the contract.

In April 2017, the City Council of Terrassa initiated the process of devel- oping a new model for managing public water supply in the city, which must be approved before the end of 2017. In the meantime, Mina has been granted temporary contract extensions.

Terrassa demonstration
Photo by EPSU, Twitter
Over 4,000 people took to the streets to celebrate the turning tide of public water services at the World Water Day 2017 in Terrassa

Throughout this process, Taula de l’Aigua will continue promoting the management model approved by the Terrassa Citizen Parliament in February 2017, to make sure the recovery of public water in Terrassa is also a step forward in managing water as a common good.

The remunicipalisation of water in Terrassa is currently the spearhead of the recovery of public water in Catalonia, just as remunicipalisationof water is the spearhead of that of other basic services. Therefore, the success of the Terrassa remunicipalisation and the implementation of a new management model with effective citizen participation would open the door for many other progressive and democratic remunicipalisations in Catalan cities. Barcelona: A historical opportunity Next on the list could be the city of Barcelona, along with the 22 mu- nicipalities in its metropolitan area. Barcelona’s water has always been under the control of private company Agbar, with no proper contract. In 2010, a judge finally ruled this situation to be illegal, forcing Agbar and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area to sign a public-private partnership (PPP) contract in haste to regularise the situation. Initially, Agbar had 85 per cent of the PPP and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, 15 per cent. Subsequently, Agbar transferred 15 per cent of its shares to Spanish bank La Caixa. But this new PPP contract was approved for 35 years without a tendering process and without sufficient technical justification. For these reasons, in 2016 the Supreme Court of Catalonia cancelled the contract. Agbar has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Spain to override the ruling. Meanwhile, the Barcelona City Council has already approved a study for the municipalisation of the service and the preparation of technical and/ or legal reports necessary for the transition to public management of wa- ter. Eau de Paris, the remunicipalised water operator of the French capital, has agreed to provide legal and technical support for this work, while Agbar, again, refuses to co-operate and to provide information. Eight city councils from the metropolitan area have followed in the footsteps of Barcelona and have approved motions in favour of public management of water. In parallel, the city of Barcelona has already remunicipalised several public services (kindergartens and gender violence prevention) and created a new public electricity company.

Participation as an anchor

Remunicipalisation is not only a matter of municipalities recovering pub- lic management and restoring public governance. If we really want re- municipalisation to endure and lead to democratic, effective and sustain- able water services, we need to manage water as a common good. This is why citizen participation is crucial within the remunicipalised public services, just as it has been crucial in pushing for remunicipalisation in Catalonia in the first place.

Water is life not only for people, who cannot live without water, but also for the environment, which involves protecting the quality of water and ecological flows in rivers. This is especially important in Mediterrane- an regions such as Catalonia, which aresubject to the impacts of climate change. Strong citizen mobilisation for water in Catalonia has always been related to this sense of the vital importance of water as a common good. (Re)municipalisations of water are a tool to move a step forward and require municipalities to develop water policy that takes into account the limits and the quality of local water sources. Water management is a key tool for ensuring regional balance and respect for the environment, based on a concept of water not as a resource, but as a natural good, and an essential part of the ecosystem in which we live.

What form should citizen participation take? Each municipality, each platform must define what form of governance and management ensures better involvement of their citizens. What is there that already exists in the municipality’s social fabric? What spaces for participation are there? Which new ones should be opened up? Who should participate? On which decisions should citizens be engaged?

Participation must be the anchor of a new water management model. This model needs to ensure that the reclaiming of public water manage- ment in municipalities results into truly democratic deepening, through mechanisms of transparency, accountability, education and training for citizens. All this in order to keep at bay the old practices of the private management model, characterised by opacity, corruption and enrich- ment through water.

Download here for the complete Appendix: End of concession dates

*** Míriam Planas is a member of Engineering without Borders Catalonia, working for development cooperation to guarantee universal access to basic services. She is also actively involved in Aigua és Vida, the citizen platform in Catalonia, which consists of more than 50 organisations working toward public, democratic and non-commercial water management.

Informe de Fiscalización del Sector Público Local, ejercicio 2011: http://www.tcu.es/reposito- rio/fd3654bc-3504-4181-ade5-63e8a0dea5c2/I1010.pdf

See the detailed case of Valladolid on the Remunicipalisation Tracker: http://remunicipalisati- on.org/#case_Valladolid

Eldiario.es (2017) El Gobierno carga contra los procesos de remunicipalización de los Ayun- tamientos a través de los Presupuestos, 16 April. http://www.eldiario.es/politica/remunicipali- zacion-presupuestos-ayuntamientos_0_631686916.html

Eldiario.es (2017) Montoro se enfrenta a Valladolid y se persona por primera vez en una causa de remunicipalización del agua, 31 March. http://www.eldiario.es/politica/Hacienda-persona-primera-remunicipalizacion-servi- cio_0_627488367.html

The global context

The Alma-Ata Declaration in 1978, adopted in the International Conference on Primary Healthcare was conceptually a historical breakthrough to establish health as fundamental human right. The state was expected to play the primary role to ensure the right through universal health coverage adopting a health care system based on equity and social justice. Despite their commitments, most of the states failed to safeguard the health of people and surrendered before the tide of the market and increasing privatization of health, while the commitments of Alma-Ata gradually faded. Social justice, equity and rights of citizen to health were almost wiped out resulting in widening gaps between people living in different socioeconomic circumstances. Deprivation and marginalization of that section of people continued, which are reflected in unequal global and health indicators. In view of this, it is apparent that Universal Health Coverage based on equity is more relevant today than before, as we live in the most unequal world in the era of austerity. This relevance is well reflected in the notion of the comeback of the Alma-Ata commitments as Revitalization of Primary Health Care with people’s initiatives at the global level.

The Nepal Context

Nepal, a small in territory with less than thirty million people, a low income country, lies between two emerging powers – India and China with nearly two and half billion people. Experiencing a decade long armed conflict, Nepal faced series of political and economical hardships. Despite its size and development status, Nepal could not remain untouched from the global wave of privatization of health care. Soon after replacement of absolute monarchy by restoration of a multi-party political system in 1990, the country adopted neoliberal economic practices with massive privatization of health care services. Due to the weak state system and operating machinery to regulate the private sector, the market grew rapidly in a short span of time. More than half of the doctors and nurses, more than two third of the pharmacist are engaged in the private sector, more than half of the hospital beds in the country are owned by the private market [1]. Growth of the market not only dominated health services, it also influenced state policy and planning in its favor. This policy was based on the theory that people are willing and capable of paying for health services, Nepal introduced user’s fee in the public sector hospitals and healthcare in the name of cost recovery and sustainability. While the private market served the urban elites, even the public services were accessible for those with purchasing capacity. A vast majority of poor people, urban or rural, were deprived of health services. The deprivation of health services due to inability to purchase health services has been one of the determinants of disparity in health, which exists between the ethnic groups, people living in different ecological zones of the country and between the people living rural and urban settings [2].

Nepal enjoys an appreciation at the regional level for remarkable progress in implementing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 related to health indicators in terms of declining mortalities[3]. A brief snapshot of statistics in Table 1 reflects this change over the last two decades.

Table 1. Decline of mortality in Nepal

Reduction of mortality has resulted in visible increase of life expectancy which increased from 53 years in 1991 to 68 years in 2011. However, it is still short and there needs to be a serious review of the underlying causes. Contribution of critical awareness among the people and initiatives beyond the health sector are ignored and pushed aside while appraising these improvements. Even more important, progress in gross national average has masked the disparity in health across the country and people. Just taking these few mortality indicators into account, as mentioned above, discrepancy is considerable and sustained for many years.

Table 2 Disparity in mortality among the people

Struggle of Nepal to de-privatize health

It is well understood that strengthening the public sector is a pre-requisite to reduce the influence of the private market in health. Difficult topography, poor infrastructure development, inadequate human resources are major hurdles for Nepal to provide health care services to the people. Technical competencies, managerial efficiencies and governance are other dimensions of the problems that can never be ignored. Amidst these challenges, financing health is considered as the primary agenda of the struggle to meet the goal of Universal Health Coverage. Financing health is the primary agenda in view that it is interrelated to the fundamental aspects voiced since the Alma-Ata Declaration – equity and justice in health, health as a right of citizens and the role of the state.

A theoretical question ‘who pays for the health care services’ is irrelevant for Nepal, since the country has constitutionally accepted the capitalistic mode of production and distribution, where the cost of health services, like any other services, is borne by the citizen. Apparently, even so called free services are myths, as the cost of services is paid for by the citizens in different forms of tax. Therefore, ‘how to pay for the health services’ is the question and Nepal is struggling to seek the answer. Finding an appropriate answer is vital to replace the direct payment for services to the private market or to the public service facilities at the time of service consumption. Needless to mention that the market does not recognize equity and justice. Therefore, deprivation of services is the ultimate fate of people who cannot purchase these services.

Nepal’s alternative health financing approach

Nepal is in the initial phase of reforms for health financing approach. The reform is seen as a struggle for making a financing approach that will ensure Universal Health Coverage based on principles of equity and social justice. It aims to establish a system where citizen should pay for the health care services based on their ability to pay and will receive the services according to their needs; it is guided by the principles that consumption of health care services does not depend on the scale of their financial contribution to the system and the consumers do not pay for the services at the point of service consumption. Universal Health Coverage comprises of health care services of two categories – Basic Health Services (BHS) and beyond Basic Health Services.

Basic Health Services

It was an achievement of peoples’ struggle that Nepal abolished user’s fee in essential health services and declared these services free. Further, with a collaborative mobilization of civil society, professionals and academics, it was included in the Constitution. Thus the state defined Basic Health Service is guaranteed by the Constitution of Nepal as a fundamental right of citizen[4] and provided by the public health facilities at all levels free of cost . The fund for Basic Health Service is allocated by the state as a part of the national budget collected from general taxation based on the scale of income of the citizen. People do not pay tax particularly for health. Basic Health Service is equity based. As the scale of Basic Health Service depends on the size of the health budget, Nepal struggles to increase the state health budget and expand the package of Basic Health Services.

Beyond Basic Health Service

Financing beyond Basic Health Service is a challenge for Nepal, as the state cannot bear the cost of burden of health problems, which include a large portion of secondary care and nearly entire tertiary specialized care. People have to pay for services even in the public hospitals, where services are inadequate. Hence, people are largely dependent on the private market. These services are expensive. Poor Nepali people cannot afford the cost of services, which is catastrophic for many of them. Ensuring access to these services to the people is the epicenter of the struggle of Nepal to meet the goal of Universal Health Coverage. It includes sustainable financial provision and a structure with human and commodity resources. However, as mentioned above, financial provision remains the primary agenda.

Creation of public fund for beyond Basic Health Service

The Government of Nepal introduced the Health Insurance scheme in 2013 for creating a fund to cover costs for beyond Basic Health Service. The scheme raised the fund as premium in equal amount from families regardless of their economic status for enrollment in renewable health insurance schemes. The insured family could receive health services at a limited cost. It was a market model insurance – same price for all – and, therefore, did not comply with the principle of equity and justice. Paying the same amount of premium by poor and rich family for similar health services did not reflect the spirit of Universal Health Coverage.

The scheme was harshly criticized for its regressive nature since it marginalized the poor sector of the population further depriving them of access to health services. The need for a public fund to cover the cost of beyond Basic Health Care was undeniable. A strong public voice was raised for creating the fund guided by the principle of equity and justice. It was proposed that the contribution to the fund be based on the economic status and purchasing capacity of the family. There were reluctant views on such basis of contribution. There was also an argument on the capacity of the state to assess and monitor the ability of the family to pay.

As a response to the voice for people, despite objections, the parliament recently passed the Health Insurance Act 2017 with the provision of financial contribution to the fund by the family to be based on their income status. It is a legal indication that the fund for beyond Basic Health Services would be raised through the progressive taxation model in the coverage of health insurance. The Act also provides the legal provision that the government will pay the premium for families, who are below the poverty line as defined by the state[5]. This will ensure the inclusion of all citizens in the scheme regardless of their earning and economic status. It will provide the financial protection to the poorer section of the population and help to achieve the goal of Universal Health Coverage. It is note-worthy that people pay for health services based on their ability; for basic health services non-specifically as general tax, while people pay for beyond Basic Health Service specifically for health as premium.

Conclusion

Nepal has achieved a financing mechanism based on the principle of equity and social justice to ensure Universal Health Coverage to every Nepali citizen because of peoples movement and struggles. However, implementation remains the challenge and unfinished agenda. Despite the engagement of the private market in social health insurance schemes, it is expected to minimize the adverse impact of privatization of health services through the control of the state over the market. There is a reluctance regarding the progressive tax based health insurance, and there is widespread lack of trust about the ability of the state to implement the system. However, this is not the time to raise the question whether the state can provide basic health care not; it is rather a prime moment to ask whether the state must do it or not.

*** Sharad Onta, MD, MPH, PhD is a Professor of Community Medicine and Public Health at the Institute of Medicine, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu Nepal, member of the Faculty Board (highest academic authority of the Institute). Sharad is also the author of several scientific papers and chapters of books on public health and health policies.

[1] High Level Commission on Health Profession Education 2015 Government of Nepal, Kathmandu

[2] Nepal Demography and Health Survey 2011 Ministry of Health, Government of Nepal, Kathmandu 2011

[3] National Health Policy 2014 Ministry of Health, Government of Nepal, Kathmandu 2014 *Analyzed from NDHS Report 2011(2)

[4] Constitution of Federal Republic of Nepal 20

[5] Health Insurance Act 2017, Government of Nepal