As General Secretary of both ETUC and the Pan-European Regional Council (PERC), John Monks declared: ’The neo-liberal policies pursued by the governments of Latvia and Lithuania don’t address the interests of working people and will exacerbate social tensions. It will also fuel the turmoil caused by insufficient social dialogue and lack of public control over financial and economic policies, and would undermine the trust in public institutions, precisely when critical situations facing the national economies in both countries demand to be dealt-with through national consensus and negotiation. We share the indignation of Lithuanian and Latvian workers and strongly support the public statements made by our Baltic members. What we need right now, is a New Social Deal throughout Europe to act on jobs, to help people in the labour market who have precarious jobs, and to stop regular jobs becoming more precarious’.