Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, stated that the priorities showed the agency was in danger of being a dead duck before it even begins. For too long, workers have borne the brunt of disreputable employers who have had carte blanche.
It has become increasingly clear how great the challenges are in implementing the directive in a national context, both for us in Sweden and in other EU countries. Therefore, a relaunch at EU level is needed and we are now taking the initiative to do so.
Politicians must stop prioritising socially and ecologically destructive growth that only increases the profits and serves the consumption demands of the world's richest individuals and corporations. Instead, to tackle the interwoven crises of rising inequality, ecological collapse and a resurgent far-right politics, a new economic agenda is needed.
Yesterday, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published the results of a joint study detailing the close connection between illicit trade in counterfeits and labor exploitation. The joint study shows clear, repeated associations between the intensity of counterfeit trade and abusive labor conditions, strongly suggesting that such conditions structurally enable the production and distribution of counterfeits.
When past generations imagined the best version of the future, it was one of leisure. Advertisements, cartoonists, and pulp novelists dared us to dream of a world where the spoils of industrial development were shared with all: robot butlers, transit by pneumatic tube, and more familiar tropes. These developments, it seemed, would make our lives more convenient, more secure, and - dare we say - more abundant.
