It is nowadays obvious that the European Union has, in reality, nothing to do with the heavy promises and colorful declarations that from time to time have been. If for the former generations it has been related with feelings of well-being, prosperity and security, as expressed by the moto “A powerful Greece of Euro, part of the European Elite” etc, for the young generations it is not the case anymore. The youth has known a European Union, which:
– Imposes unending Memoranda, faces our country as a colony and auctions its wealth and its productive forces, like in the case of the public corporations (ex. The case of the Greek Airports), which, through Public Debt imposes the Privatizations’ Fund, which passes companies from the Greek public sector to… the German one!
– Cultivates racism against the Greek people, by continuous insults about the “lazy” and “problematic”.
– Declares through any means that popular vote in elections and referenda mean nothing and what really matters is the decision of the European bureaucracy and the Bankers. Especially us in Greece know this very well! European Union and Democracy are two incompatible notions!
– Legislates, either through Memoranda for the countries of the European South, or through the new legislation regarding working relations in France and austerity policies for the rest of Europe, the destruction of the working rights of our generation as future workforce. In Greece we are called “the 500 Euros generation”, in France “the 800 euros” one, in Greece we are the unemployed generation, in the whole of Europe we are the generation of insecurity and precarity. Our parents had a stable income, some savings and a relative ability to organize their lives. Our generation is condemned to a permanent insecurity and poverty. Those are the policies promoted and imposed by the EU!
– Participated, always in the name of “the promotion of democracy”, actively to the war in Syria, which bred the islamofascists of ISIS and “gave birth to” thousands of uprooted refugees. Now exercises a deeply racist policy against those people, for the uproot of whom, is responsible. It traps them in Greece through the policy of closed borders, turning at the same time the country into a “warehouse of souls”. Builds – with the agreement of the Greek Government – new “Amygdalezas” throughout Greece and abolishes international treaties, bringing images of hatred and racism to the surface, breeding the far right and fascism!
– Promotes the privatization and commercialization of Education. It turns education into a lifelong process of point and degree collection, in which the more you can pay, the more you will collect.
This is the dream of the supporters of the “We stay in Europe” movement and the neoliberal university youth DAP!
– Luck of democracy
– A country-colony of humiliation and insult
– Insecurity and poverty for the youth.
This is the European “common home”, for the sake of which the government of SYRIZA-ANEL together with the other “European” forces and the fascists vote for memoranda, in the middle of the night in order to “achieve an agreement”.
In the Europe of the EU the youth suffocates! Our only choice in order to have a different life is the rupture with and the exit from the EU. Because the EU was never meant to be and will never be a form of convergence and unification of the different European states, within which countries like Greece would converge to Germany or Denmark, but on the contrary, it is a form of institutionalized political and economic inequality and exploitation, built on fundamental contradictions, is the reason why within the international crisis it has proved to be the “big patient”. The huge amounts of private and public debt in a series of different states, the recession and the monstrous percentages of poverty and unemployment, especially in the youth, compose the European landscape. The management policy of the crisis includes, on one hand hundreds of millions of Euros for the “survival” of the banks, that still remain under private control, and on the other hand, memoranda and austerity. 26 millions of young people around Europe face poverty and social exclusion. For the countries of the European South (Greece, Spain, Italy), this is the prospect for almost 30%, sometimes even more, of the youth.
Nevertheless, the EU still remains the strategic choice of the Greek bourgeoisie and its representatives (political parties, the media), and as such they have been defending it for all these years, regardless of the political and economic costs. From the forces of the Memorandum, New Democracy and PASOK, to the until recently anti-memorandum SYRIZA and from the neo-liberal POTAMI to the fascist Golden Dawn, all the “voices” can be heard and all the choices can be tolerated, as long as they do not cross the boundaries of the EURO and the EU. On the contrary, whoever talks in favor of a rupture is faced as dangerous and crazy. At the same time a process of terrorization regarding the exit of the EU has been taking place, having no more in reference the “happy days” about to come within the EU, like it was the case in the past, but only the fear of the “unknown” and the destruction awaiting, in case we leave the EU and the Eurozone.
In reality, we can live without them. Not only because there was life in this place even before 1981 or 2002, the years when Greece entered the EU and the Eurozone, which means that what is supposed to be “unknown”, is indeed very well known. But also because outside of the neoliberal EU the country could follow a different policy, regaining its fiscal and monetary policy under its own control, in order to protect the people instead of draining its blood. If that were the case, the country wouldn’t be obliged to sell its public property to the Chinese, Germans, Canadians etc. neither to give billions to bankers. Through a policy of immediate nationalization of the banks and the main pillars of industry, the necessary productive reconstruction of the state would become possible. It would also make another approach to the refugee issue possible: without fences at the Greek-Turkish borders in Evros and without the NATO at the Aegean Sea, without “subsidies” that fill the country with concentration camps, without participation to the shameful agreement between Turkey and the EU, which divides the refugees into different casts and violates fundamental principles of International Law and the Geneva Convent, implementing an independent, peaceful and antiimperialist external policy.
Today, it is necessary to build up a youth political current for the rupture with the EU, and a student movement with this orientation. Because, after 6 years and 3 memoranda, it is clear that the European “one-way” is a dead-end, it doesn’t save the country nor its people, but leads to destruction. Because even the slightest questioning of the memoranda and the governmental policy, during the last years, was doomed to fail, as long as it was not converted into rejection of the European boundaries. Because in order to question the memoranda policies, of the under-funding of education, of the precarity and unemployment, the political boundary of the EU must be questioned and broken, in the name of which the various memoranda have been imposed.
