In all countries of the EU and especially in the euro zone, violent anti-social policies are pursued relentlessly by the European Union and its member governments: massive decline in social spending, wage deflation by blocking wages, lower payroll taxes, unjustified subsidies to large corporations supposedly to create jobs, privatization, dismantling of public services and social security, financialization of the economy and public budgets … The result is an exponential increase in mass unemployment and lack of job security.
The origin of this is to be found in the policies of the European Union, fully frozen by the Lisbon Treaty. The latter is based on all the neoliberal dogmas that have already demonstrated their detrimental impact on the interests of the popular and middle classes. In the euro zone the imbalances between countries have worsened. The euro is a weapon of mass destruction directed against employment. The single currency is only used to protect the return on shareholders’ investment by maintaining a permanent and voluntary high level of unemployment.
The very essence of this European construction is based on the values and interests of the Western ruling classes: europeanism, atlanticism, capitalism, authoritarianism. Such a system cannot change its nature, it cannot be improved from within. It must be dismantled in order to build something radically new. The European Union is indeed the most sophisticated system in the world founded on an attempt to build a civilization based on market forces. The European Union is a horrendous system of domination and alienation from which the peoples need to emancipate themselves.
The European Union is a cornerstone of the neoliberal world order, with its giant multinational firms, and supranational institutions (WTO, IMF, World Bank, NATO, EU, OECD). The system has a main characteristic: to act relentlessly to dissolve the sovereignty of peoples on a national scale. It is indeed the best way to enable the domination of big business to increase with no bounds as evidenced by TAFTA. Destroying the nations is the guarantee for the dominant classes that there is no turning back from neoliberal “reforms”. As the sovereignty of the people cannot exist without national sovereignty, eliminating the nation is to eliminate democracy. It is therefore the means to suppress the capacity for the people to act and decide on their future. The fact that the European Union is one of the mainstays of the Kiev semi-fascistic regime demonstrates its full alignment with NATO and American imperialism.
After years of exercise of power by Socialist, Labour or Social democratic parties in several countries of the European Union, it is now possible to take stock of their record. The assessment is overwhelmingly excruciating as can be seen in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and France … These parties are now openly neoliberal, they do not even pretend any longer to try to defend the popular classes. They are all making way for large German-style coalition governments (governments uniting left and right parties), similar to those already implemented by the European Union in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. If the divide between the ruling class and the popular classes is clearer from year to year, the one between the left and right is becoming increasingly blurred. Nothing essential separates the left from the right in many countries. The above-mentioned political forces are shaping the political environment that renders possible and even boosts the growth of the far right, by allowing the gradual assimilation of the notion of nation with an essentially ethno-cultural definition of the extreme right, whereas for us the nation is strictly constitutional and political. To leave this central political concept of nation to the partisans of the identitary definition from the far right is seriously irresponsible, and shows that all these parties have given up the essential conditions of the very existence of both politics and democracy.
The reasons for the rise of far-right parties in the member countries of the EU are mainly due to the policies of austerity for popular and middle classes which strike people with poverty and force them to compete. The far right is now alone to appropriate the idea and the symbols of the nation. And conversely the idea of nation ends up being equated with the extreme right. But the far right advocates a narrow view of the nation reduced to its sole identity dimension. Far from being anti-system, as it claims, the far right is actually an indirect agent serving the system and the ruling classes. These parties are the most nauseating in their xenophobic, chauvinistic and anti-union attitudes and prejudiced against all organizations that collectively represent the interests of the popular classes.
It is urgent to rebuild a thought, a method of practice and a program in favour of the interests of the popular and middle classes. Key elements for us are:
– Total elimination of unemployment and job insecurity.
– Plans for the re-industrialization and nationalization of key strategic sectors of industry and services.
– The dismantling of financial markets.
– The repudiation and cancellation of the public debt.
– National protectionist measures in the framework of the universal Havana Charter of 1948.
– An environmental transformation in the mode of production.
– The withdrawal from supranational institutions that maintain the neoliberal world order, NATO, IMF, World Bank, WTO, EU and the euro.
We call this de-globalization. The core of this strategy and this program is to claim and assume the necessity of regaining national sovereignty for each country. That is to say, the decisive struggle for each country to preserve the authentic political characteristics of its society, where the people have the legal and institutional capacity to decide and implement what they consider corresponds to the general interest.
The signatories will organize a new international meeting at an even larger level. Aiming at bringing together all forces working to defend the interests of popular and middle classes for the withdrawal from NATO, the European Union and the euro, for full employment.
• Personenkomitee “Euro-Austritt” (Committee Euro Exit): Albert F. Reiterer and Wilhelm Langthaler, Austria.
• Coordinamento nazionale sinistra contro l’euro (National Coordination of Left against the Euro): Moreno Pasquinelli, Italy.
• Frente Cívico (FC – Civic Front): Manolo Pérez Montero, Spain.
• Ενιαίο Παλλαϊκό Μέτωπο (EPAM, People’s United Front): Antonis Raskousis, Greece.
• Αριστερή Συμπόρευση (Aristerí Sibórefsi, Left Co-March): Kostas Kostopoulos, Greece.
• Mouvement politique d’émancipation populaire (M’PEP, Political Movement for the Emancipation of the People): Jacques Nikonoff and Joel Perichaud, France.
• Σχέδιο Β (Plan B): Nasia Pliakogiammi, Greece.
• Initiative .e.V. Duisburg: Thomas Zmrzly, Germany
Further endorsers:
• Borotba (Struggle): Sergei Kirichuk, Ukraine.
