BRUSSELS, Belgium — European unions orchestrated a crescendo of protests across the continent Wednesday, sending workers ranging from Greek doctors to Spanish bus drivers to Lithuanian engineers out to vent over job cuts, higher taxes and smaller pensions.
Waves of demonstrators in red, green and blue union jackets marched through Brussels toward European Union buildings - which police cordoned off with barbed wire - aiming to reinforce the impact of Spain’s first nationwide strike in eight years.
Workers, including members of Germany’s labor union and Poland’s Solidarity, waved flags and blew whistles and plastic horns as they protested the budget cuts being made to get fiscal shortfalls back in line with European Union rules.
Unions estimated the turnout in Brussels at 100,000 people from about 30 countries. Some protesters there confronted riot squads by sitting own in the middle of the street. About 150 people were detained, some after scuffles with police.
Strikes or protests also took place Wednesday in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia and Lithuania, all aimed at the budget-slashing, tax-increasing, pension-cutting plans that European governments have implemented to try to control their debt.
The march in Brussels came as the European Commission on Wednesday proposed slapping new penalties on countries that let their budgets spiral out of control, hoping to prevent another crisis like the one that pushed Greece to near-bankruptcy and raised fears about the euro currency.
A key proposal would force countries to set aside 0.2 percent of their gross domestic product if they run up too much debt - an amount that does not sound like much but could run into billions, depending on the size of the country.
“We will pull the hand brake before the car rolls down the hill,” said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who hailed the proposals as a “sea change” in the way financial matters are handled in the EU.
The proposals have cleaved a wide divide in the 27-nation bloc. Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, favors the tough new stance, but France and other nations are adamant that budgets will be decided by elected politicians and not on the basis of accounting rules that some view as punitive.
“It is a bizarre time for the European Commission to be proposing a regime of punishment,” John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, told Associated Press Television News. “How is that going to make the situation better? It is going to make it worse.”
He said Europe already has 23 million jobless people.
The proposals are not law and have to be passed by the European Parliament and national governments, but Barroso insisted that the measures were democratic and compatible with the existing Treaty of Lisbon.
Unions fear that workers will become the biggest victims of an economic crisis set off by bankers and traders, many of whom were rescued by government intervention.
“It is not right that people on low salaries have to pay to prop up the country. It should be the banks,” said Belgian demonstrator Evelain Foncis.
“We are protesting mainly for our children, because they’re not here - they are out looking for jobs,” said Emilio Martella, a 62-year-old retiree demonstrating with 2,000 others in Rome.
Italian public-school teachers with temporary contracts didn’t get them extended, and parents have complained that class sizes are getting bigger under the cuts.
Like Italy, many nations are raising, or considering raising, the pension age, fearing that there won’t be any money left to pay retirees in the future.
Several governments, already living with high debt, were pushed to the brink of financial collapse and have been forced to impose cuts in wages, pensions and employment - measures that have brought workers out by the tens of thousands over the past months.
“There is a great danger that the workers are going to be paying the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets,” Monks said. “You’ve really got to reschedule these debts so that they are not a huge burden on the next few years and cause Europe to plunge down into recession.”
The strike in Spain on Wednesday was the country’s first general one since 2002and marked a break in the once-close relationship between unions and the Socialist government.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government is under severe pressure because of unpopular measures put in place to save Europe’s fourth-largest economy from a bailout similar to the one that saved Greece from bankruptcy in May.
The cuts have helped Spain trim its central government deficit by half through July, but the unemployment rate still stands at 20 percent, and many businesses are struggling to survive.
Protesters set a police car on fire and torched trash bins in Barcelona, where eight people were arrested, a police spokesman said. In Madrid, 38 people were detained for damaging property and gluing up doorways, while police identified 1,500 people who formed pickets, a spokesman for the government’s representative in the Madrid region said in a telephone interview. Airlines canceled hundreds offlights at Spanish airports.
The two measures that angered most people in Spain were cutting civil servants’ wages - which are already low - by an average 5 percent and introducing labor overhauls that make it easier and cheaper for companies to lay people off.
Spain’s two biggest unions said 72 percent of workers joined the strike, including 65 percent in the energy sector and 82 percent in the airline industry, according to Jose Javier Cubillo of the UGT union. Labor Minister Celestino Corbacho said 7.5 percent of state workers joined the strike Wednesday morning.
“The strike has been an unquestionable success,” Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, head of the CCOO union, said at a news conference in Madrid.
Greece, which had to be rescued this spring by the 15 other nations that share the euro currency just to stave off bankruptcy, also has been forced to cut deep into workers’ allowances, with weeks of bitter strikes as a result.
Greek bus and trolley drivers walked off the job for several hours, and Athens’ metro and tram systems also shut down. National railway workers walked out, disrupting rail connections across the country, while doctors at state hospitals went on a 24-hour strike.
Greece already has seen two weeks of protests by truck drivers who have made it difficult for businesses to get supplies. Many supermarkets are seeing shortages.
The Socialist government of Greece has imposed stringent measures, including cutting civil servants’ salaries, trimming pensions, and raising consumer and income taxes.
In Dublin, police arrested a 41-year-old man who blocked the Irish parliament with a cement truck but gave few other details.
His slogan on the truck - “Toxic Bank” Anglo - referred to the Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalized last year to save it from collapse. The bank owes some $97 billion to depositors worldwide at a time when Irish taxpayers are suffering.
Also Wednesday, some 400 protesters rallied in an illegal demonstration in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to demand that authorities cease harsh measures such as salary cuts.
“All of working Europe is on the streets today to express dismay over nearsighted income-cutting politics,” said Vytautas Jusys, a 40-year old engineer who lost his job this year.
In Slovenia, thousands of public-service workers continued their open-ended strike to protest the government’s plan to freeze their salaries for two years - or until the economy grows again at a rate of 3 percent.
In Portugal, a country with one of the eurozone’s most fragile economies, about 20,000 people took part in an evening demonstration in Lisbon, unions said.
Information for this article was contributed by Raf Castert, Pan Pylas and Geir Moulson of The Associated Press; and by Emma Ross-Thomas, Todd White, Manuel Baigorri, Charles Penty, Joao Lima, Andrew Clapham and Aoife White of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/30/2010