Statement of the Anti-imperialist Camp on the EU summit in Saloniki
As Anti-imperialist Camp we have always opposed the European Union. We want here reassess our main reasons.
1. The countries which established the European Union are capitalist countries which take part at the pillage and robbery of the poorest countries. The unifying tendency, as far as it tends to overcome the borders of the nation states, is considered a progressive tendency, but it is actually a reactionary one as it has as its primary goal to make European capitalism more powerful in the world competition for markets.
2. The European Union is the political arm of NATO, a military alliance which the dominant imperialism, the United States, not only uses as a complementary force for its aggressions but also to keep Europe in a subordinate position. The aggression of 1999 against Yugoslavia showed that European capitalism is as much imperialist and war-monger as the American one, and that if threatened by states and governments which do not accept to submit, has no hesitation in making a common front with the United States.
3. With the European Treaty signed at Maastricht and the implementation of a European common currency, the European Union embraced a strict monetary and neo-liberal politics, pursuing it in a more decisive way than Bush and Blair. This neo-liberal politics implied an attack on the welfare state and on the workers´ rights as well as a huge shift of resources in favor of big capitalistic enterprises.
4. To the abatement of inter-European borders corresponded, with the Schengen Agreement, the implementation of politics of racial and class discrimination against immigrants. The unifying tendency goes along with the closure of the southern borders of the world which are being sealed up in order to enable the Europe of Maastricht to strengthen itself as an imperialistic fortress.
5. This integration is presented even by the left as a progressive fact but the European Union has actually a strongly globalizing and anti-democratic character. The exercise of power is removed from any kind of public control and entrusted to organisms as the ECB (European Central Bank), the European Commission and the European Council which violate the state of right as their members are not elected and are therefore hostages to the big multinational economic and financial powers.
6. The enlargement of the European Union to the East strengthen its anti-democratic profile: it grasps the countries of the former Warsaw Pact as internal colonies, accentuates the neo-liberal competition at the expense of workers, accentuates its dependence to American imperial politics, strengthens the NATO digging a ditch against Russia.
In this context every politics which supports the European Union represents an objective support to European imperialism and to its imperialistic ambitions. The disagreement with Great Britain and the United States is not on the content but on the method. The so-called Carolingian or Rhine Axe has risen its voice not to oppose American imperialism but to rise the price of its loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance, loyalty confirmed by the UN resolution de facto legitimizing the occupation of Iraq as well as the G8 summit in Evian.
Yes, we too, we wish the unity of Europe but of a complete opposite nature than the actual one. A democratic and socialist union granting independence from the United States and friendly and cooperative relationships – not based on pillage and robbery – with the peoples of the South of the world. This goal is far off from being achieved and implies not only the change of actual governments, but the overthrowing of the bipolar system of which both coalitions, the left one and the right one, are but complementary crutches. The Saloniki Summit, against which the whole anti-imperialist and anti-globalization Greek left has called for mass demonstration, inviting all the European movements to fill the streets, will take place in this context. The deafening silence of these movements is preoccupying. The indifference to the calls of the Greek comrades, who have been one of the diamond peaks of the fight against globalization from Seattle onwards, represents a bad omen. It is the sign that the movements, in the reflux after the anti-war mobilizations, are running the risk of being absorbed by the social-democracies, dreaming they can contrast US arrogance and start new European welfare politics (citizenship income and so on). It is vain, finally, to hide the fact that this indifference of the European Social Forum towards the Greek Social Forum has a political reason and reveals on the part of the European Social Forum the will to dissociate from the Greek one for the radicalism of its positions.
The Anti-imperialist Camp, even if only with its modest forces, will take part to the Saloniki mobilizations, accepting the invitation of our Greek comrades not to leave them alone. We also wish the internal divisions of the Greek movement (divided into four blocks) could soon be overcome granting the unitary character and the full success of the protests.
