Today, Europe cannot stand to see coffins with flags on them, not even the European flag. The US is addicted to this spectacle. We must, therefore, have an honest and serious discussion within the European framework about how far we are prepared to go. Throwing money at the problem – a much-loved European approach, to be honest – cannot be the only parameter. – Nikos Dendias, Defence Minister of Greece
What we are lacking is the spirit. The spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are.If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk. – Fabien Mandon, French Army General
Political officials of the EU are preparing to make the workers and the youth «cannon fodder» to save European capitalism from its crisis. The imperialist antagonisms are an implication of the capitalist crisis, which has not been resolved and has intensified the capital competitions at all levels. The dramatic developments in Ukraine and the Middle East have already a decisive impact on the lives of workers. The EU and all its member states increase their military budget. EU’s military strategy in Ukraine but also in Africa and the Middle East leads to dangerous militarization and rise of nationalism, strengthening of the bourgeois state especially in its repressive forms.
The working class in Europe, the youth, the great majority of the farmers have already experienced for decades the adverse impacts of the EU:
- The EU was never the “peoples’ home”. By contrast, it is the leading power of the exploitation, the destruction of working rights, the submission of every public good to the “market”. It promotes privatization as well as flexible labor. The common agricultural policy and the subsidies led to the destruction of small and medium farmers.
- The EU does not guarantee the peace. It is an imperialist mechanism. It participates and backs all the invasions that have destroyed whole countries and have led to millions of refugees, in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Agfhanistan, former Yugoslavia and Africa.
- The EU does not include “equal partners”. It deepens the inequalities among countries and converts the peripheral economies to zones of cheap labour and hyper-exploitation, while shrinking and deregulating several sectors of production.
- The EU is not “humanitarian”. It implements deeply racist policies creating Fortress-Europe in the Aegean, the Mediterranean Sea, Melilla. It assigns agreements to make massive deportations and pushbacks of displaced people, leading to thousand deaths.
- The EU does not attempt to “solve the issue of the public debt”. By contrast, the “public” debt has greatly risen since the eurozone was established and it is paid off by the working class people.
- The EU is not a “space of democracy”. It restricts democracy, working rights and popular sovereignty. Its policies facilitates racism and fascism.
The EU constitutes the political and economic union of the capital, it provides the mechanism for the unification of European ruling classes against the peoples. The experience in Greece from the recent years indicates in a cruel way that the EU is impossible to be reformed. Since the debt crisis, the EU has managed to incorporate not only the great wave of social unrest but also the challenge to the EU and the euro itself in the period 2010-2015. The reactionary turn at all levels are the response of the governments and the EU to the crisis.
But, on the same time, movements and resistances are growing. The pan-European farmers uprising brought the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the political debate. According to Eurostat, in the 15 years 2005-2020, the implementation of the CAP has wiped out five million poor farmers, with further concentration of agricultural land and production on agri-food industrialists and modern medieval-style landowners! Students in Greece revolted against the foundation of private universities as the EU turned the country’s Constitution into a rag paper. The exclusively public and free nature of higher education is written in the Greek Constitution but the government invoked the European Directive of “the freedom of movement of capital and businesses”which ensures that international agreements and European law take precedence over the Constitution.
The only way out in defense of the people’s rights in Europe is the struggle against the EU, the break and disengagement from it from an anticapitalist, class and internationalist perspective. It is impossible to have an anti-capitalist perspective without challenging the EU and European capitalist integration. The dominant forces in the Union seek to keep the peoples of Europe trapped in the dilemma between the pro-EU parties and and the far right. But, indeed, they both are interested in ensuring the interests of the bourgeoisie. The logic of the “lesser evil” always leads to the greater evil, as the historic examples have shown. It is in this framework of the reactionary policies of the EU, the war, and the capitalist crisis that “eurosceptic” parties, racist ideas and the far-right are developed all over Europe during the last years. The reactionary bourgeois political forces of the so-called “Euroscepticism” (Meloni, Le Pen, Orban etc) do nothing more than negotiate a better position for their own bourgeois class within the framework of the European capitalist integration. They are the governments and the political forces of the “liberal” and “democratic” EU, that adopt step by step the agenda of the far-right, supposedly in an effort to moderate. But the only thing they manage to do is to legalize it and reinforce it, deepening their own crisis.
The break and disengagement from the EU are an indivisible part of the total struggle to impose the interests and the needs of the workers and the people. The struggle for the exit from the EU is tightly related with:
- The struggle for peace, against the imperialist imposition of the EU, the European Army, the shift to militarization. The critical starting point pertains to the anti-war strategy and independence from the bourgeois politics and interests of each country and from the international capitalist-imperialist blocs. The crucial issue is the connection between the anti-EU, the anti-war and the social-class arenas of struggle, adopting a clear position against the unjust, reactionary and aggressive antagonism of the bourgeois classes.
- The struggle of the workers for better salaries and pensions, against the continuing austerity, for stable work and labor rights, against the flexible work, for the defense of public goods, against the privatization and the liberalization of the markets. The struggle to reduce the working hours and eliminate unemployment.
- The struggle to erase the usurious public debt, which despite the rhetoric that is used will never become manageable. For nationalization of the banks and the big enterprises, putting them under workers’ control.
- The struggle for the contemporary democratic rights of the workers and the youth and the popular sovereignty. Against the transfer of the decisions in the hands of the technocrats of the EU and the multinational corporations, far from every social control.
- The fight for open borders, cities and neighborhoods for the refugees and the immigrants who are a part of our class and our struggle against fascists and the extreme-right.
- The struggle for the ecological survival of the planet, against the capitalist’s profit.
- The fight against the oppression of the women and LGBTQ people
THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE, OUT OF THE EUROZONE AND THE EU
The popular movement must intervene, demanding the exit from both NATO and the EU, to unite the anti-war movement with the struggle for bread, peace, health and freedom, against the governments and the barbaric capitalism. An initiative for the release from the EU will contribute to the strengthening of the perspective that “there is an alternative, out of the
Eurozone and the EU” in the labour movement. An initiative for the release from the EU will connect the struggle against the EU with the struggling against the war, the imperialism and fascism, defending the democratic rights of the people. This initiative aims:
- To reveal the role of the EU, to highlight the target of the release from the EU
- To support the belief that we it is possible to live out of context the EU
- To organize joint actions on specific issues, such as the fight against the war
- To contribute to the struggles of labour and social movement, emphasizing their connection with the fight against the EU and its mechanisms.
