Public Services

Tallinn: Free Public Transport

reevolution_banner-600x145From the beginning of January, Tallinn is the first capital in the EU to provide free public transport to its citizens. To be entitled to freely use public transport in Tallinn, citizens of Tallinn have to purchase the so-called ‘green card’ (EUR 2) and personalise it. People from outside Tallinn can also buy the ‘green card’ which enables them to load the needed amount of money to use public transport. Since the implementation of free public transport, a significant increase of the number of registered Tallinners can be observed. Read more

 

New Book from FORBA

New Book from PIQUE inside FORBA:

“Public services throughout Europe have undergone dramatic restructuring processes in recent years in connection with liberalization and privatization. While evaluations of the successes of public services have focused on prices and efficiency, much less attention has been paid to the impacts of liberalization and privatization on employment, labor relations, and working conditions. This book addresses this gap by illustrating the ways in which liberalization has contributed to increasing private and foreign ownership of public services, the decentralization of labor relations has amplified pressure on wages, and decreasing employment numbers and increasing workloads have improved productivity partly at the cost of service quality.”

Read more at Routledge

Pushing against PPP

The European Services Strategy Unit is committed to social justice through the provision of good quality public services by democratically accountable public bodies implementing best practice management, employment, equal opportunity and sustainable development policies. It is an independent, non-profit organisation, which continues the work of the Centre for Public Services, founded in 1973. It provides publications, a PPP-Database, a book about alternatives (“Dexter Whitfield: Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships”), and more.