Only if they are lucky, because Europe’s economy is barely moving and its heartland in Germany stalled in the final quarter of 2005. The protesters cannot count on industry to keep them in style — last week Volkswagen delivered the warning loud and clear. The carmaker will extinguish 20,000 jobs and shut down factories to restore its competitiveness. Likewise, Renault has set itself on a cost-cutting drive, aiming to triple its profit margin over the next three years from a slender 3 per cent and, yesterday, France Télécom said that it would shed 10 per cent of its workforce.

Heavy industry and bloated utilities won’t keep Europeans employed over the next decade. That should come as no surprise, but few are asking what will replace the manufacturing jobs. None of the marching trade unionists in Strasbourg had a clue, nor, it seems, had many of the EU parliamentarians who are this week debating the Services Directive, a law that would allow EU firms to provide services in another member state without establishing themselves there.

The so-called Bolkestein directive, named after Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch former Internal Markets Commissioner who championed the original legislation, has been mangled and mutilated. Its core idea, the “country of origin” principle, has been emasculated by the high priests of the European social order who believe that a job is a privilege created by the state and bestowed only on bona fide nationals in possession of an armful of permits.

Bolkestein’s directive was to be work-friendly. Small building firms, professionals and small-scale contractors find it hard to move across borders. Establishment abroad is a risk and a big expense. Much better to second staff on a temporary basis to test the market with one-off projects, only investing in a local company if the venture succeeds. The country of origin principle would have made this easy, allowing temporary service providers to operate under home-country regulation.

The principle would not override compliance with host-country health and safety rules, nor would it permit avoidance of minimum wage regulation, enshrined in the Posted Workers Directive. Still, the free market wreckers agitated. In France, they demonised Piotr, the mythical cut-rate Polish plumber, as harbinger of an avalanche of “social dumping”.

No one asked whether Piotr’s plumbing skills were useful, and far less whether he needed a job. Instead, a protectionist cabal of socialists and conservatives has replaced country of origin with a vague obligation by a state to allow free access to a foreign service provider. Even worse, the freedom can be restricted if justified by “public policy, public security or for the protection of health and the environment”. In other words, freedom subject to bureaucratic whim or local opposition.

This directive should be allowed to die a quiet death. Worse than useless, it subtracts from the basic freedom to provide services in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Community.

It is strange that half a century after the signing of the EU’s fundamental law, member states are going backwards, chipping away at freedoms essential if small service businesses are to expand and create Europe’s new jobs. It cannot be long before the few enlightened member states tire of this obsessive economic gravedigging and find a better model.

Warship a pointer for a trade pact

THE slow progress of the French warship Clemenceau to an Indian ship-breaker’s yard makes a fitting backdrop to the sniping and backbiting between Indian and EU trade officials. Its hull laden with poisonous asbestos, the 50-year-old warship is an environmental liability and the Indian courts have ordered an inquiry. However, the Clemenceau means jobs in Gujarat and there are no yards in Europe capable of taking on such a huge job.

With proper safeguards, this is good business for India — and those who say that France should wash its dirty linen at home are ignoring the opportunity for India in recycling the Clemenceau’s useless steel hulk into metal useful for Indian manufacturers. The two sides should stop posturing and get down to the sensible business of lowering tariffs.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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