In its alternative proposals, the GUE/NGL focused mainly on the fight against poverty and Mastalka pointed to statistics that show that in the EU more than 80 million people have a disposable income of less than 60 per cent of the national average income. He stressed the need for more effective means of guaranteeing citizens' existing rights in employment, education, healthcare and social protection and called for a new integrated strategy for sustainability and solidarity to replace the current Lisbon strategy.

Also speaking during the same debate, German GUE/NGL MEP Sahra Wagenknecht said that globalisation was not the 'natural' process it is often represented to be. "Globalisation is itself a result of political decisions for the further deregulation and liberalisation of the international movement of capital, forcing developing countries to open their capital markets."

She said that what the term 'globalisation' actually describes is not the internationalisation of the economy, but a move by banks and big business to play poor countries off against one other in order to maximise profit.

"This process has resulted in low corporate taxes, social networks in ruins and brutal wage dumping, in other words: ever more unfettered capitalism. It has not benefited the majority. On the contrary - wild capitalism is the domain of the financially strong and brings exploitation and oppression for the financially weak. This resolution will not get our agreement. We will continue to fight instead for another economic order in Europe, one in which people are no longer treated as a labour cost and countries as mere locations" she finished.