Deregulation & privatisation are entrenched in the EU

The modern European Union has given ‘a failed neoliberal model of capitalism the force of treaty, entrenching deregulation and privatisation and enforcing corporate power over employment rights’ writes Seumas Milne in the Guardian. It may be the case that EU withdrawal on the terms of the Tory right would lead to a (worsening of the) ‘carnival of reaction’ yet the default position of the labour movement should not be support for the status quo. As Milne points out, the EU's ‘profoundly undemocratic and dysfunctional structures have been brutally exposed by the eurozone crisis and the devastation wreaked by Troika-imposed austerity.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/tory-led-exit-europe-carnival-of-reaction

Yesterday the RMT transport union entered the referendum debate with an uncompromising anti EU position from the left: “RMT will not sit back and allow this debate to be dominated by UKIP and the right wing of the Tory Party. Ministers like Michael Gove are now only raising the issue of withdrawal out of pure political opportunism. He could not care less about the rates of youth unemployment across Europe, the only concern of these Tory “Johnny Come Lately’s” is saving their own political skins. RMT will continue to set out the left wing, pro-worker case for British withdrawal from the EU that puts jobs, standards of living, democracy and public services centre stage. The truth is that you cannot be pro-EU and anti-austerity when the whole structure of the European project is dominated by the interests of bankers and big business, the driving forces behind the imposition of austerity measures across the Continent.”
http://www.rmt.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=173826