THOUSANDS of protesters gathered in Brussels today calling for better public services, salaries and living conditions as European Union negotiations continue over the bloc’s new Stability & Growth Pact, which aims to limit debt and deficits for member countries.

Nations seeking to spend their way out of a crisis would instead be tied to a set of austerity policies such as budget cuts and tax increases, which critics say won’t work.

The pact was suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic but is due to be reactivated next year.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which represents 45 million members, says the planned reinstatement of the pact will force 14 member states to cut a combined €45 billion (£38bn) from their budgets in the next year alone.

ETUC general secretary Esther Lynch said a return to austerity “would kill jobs, lower wages, mean even less funding for already overstretched public services and all but guarantee another devastating recession.”

Inflation in Europe dropped more than expected to 2.4 per cent in November, the lowest in over two years, bringing some relief to households severely hit by the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

But the economy has stalled this year, even shrinking 0.1 per cent in the July-to-September quarter, according to Eurostat, the 27-nation bloc’s statistics agency.

Current rules stipulate that member states’ total public debt must not exceed 60 per cent of their gross domestic product, and their annual deficit must be kept below 3 per cent.

“Austerity has been tried and it failed. It is time to learn the lessons of the past and ensure the EU’s economic rules put the wellbeing of people and the planet before totally arbitrary limits,” Ms Lynch said.

With 2024 European elections looming and a rise of the far-right across the continent, the ETUC warned that “the far-right is the main beneficiary of the type of fiscal policies being proposed.”

It called for measures to exclude investments for social and climate targets from spending limits.

The union federation also asked governments to keep in place solidarity mechanisms introduced during the coronavirus crisis such as the Recovery & Resilience Facility, a multibillion-euro plan devised to help EU countries breathe new life into their virus-ravaged economies.