By IWU-FI
24 May 2024. The European elections coincide with the economic crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Palestinian genocide. The policy of the European Union and the European governments is to offload its consequences on the working people. All the governments of Europe, whether they are right-wing liberal governments like Macron in France or Montenegro in Portugal, express this policy.
These governments are complicit in the massacre and extermination of Palestinians, arming Israel, and maintaining privileged relations with Israeli institutions and companies. Ursula von der Leyen’s statements of unconditional support for Israel have had to be qualified after the huge demonstrations all over Europe. The masks of European imperialism are falling off. Germany, like France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy, represses the solidarity movement for Palestinians while being a significant arms exporter to Israel (30 per cent of the total).
European youth join American universities in condemning complicity with Israel on university campuses. The spectre of Vietnam, where huge mass mobilisations were essential for the imperialist defeat, is resurfacing. People see the Palestinian struggle as the symbol of the struggle against imperialism. The increasing repression applied today against solidarity with Palestine will be present tomorrow against social protests. We stand with the Palestinian resistance. To the end of the Zionist state and its apartheid regime. To break all levels of the relationship with Israel. For a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
If Israel is a strategic part of imperialist interest, there lies their impunity. Ukraine is a bargaining chip in the negotiations with Russian imperialism. It was the resistance of the Ukrainian people that prevented the complete occupation of Ukraine in three days, which forced US imperialism and the EU to take a stand. This military support with the delivery of arms does not reduce the right of the Ukrainian people to defend themselves against the aggression of Russian imperialism. In a confrontation between imperialism (be it major or minor) and a semi-colonial state like Ukraine, we are on the side of the oppressed country regardless of its government. For the defeat of the Russian invasion. With the resistance of the Ukrainian people. We have sent four convoys of goods and we will support the Ukrainian anti-authoritarian left and the militant trade unions.
The Russian aggression has achieved the opposite effect to the one it claimed to pursue, allowing NATO to be reborn from its coma after the defeat in Afghanistan. A renaissance with new countries joining the Alliance and an increase in military spending. It is not the delivery of arms to Ukraine that justifies this rise in militarism. The US and the EU have limited weapon delivery, focusing on negotiation with Putin instead of crushing him. The tendency of European imperialism to lose specific weight is deepening in the hands of other imperialisms, such as the US, China, or Russia. It is clear, in economic and also political terms, France’s recent retreat in Sub-Saharan Africa. We are against the increase in military spending for the dissolution of NATO and the end of US imperialist bases in Europe.
The international capitalist economic crisis, far from being resolved, is deepening. The European Union is an agreement between states at the service of the multinationals. But now Germany, the engine of Europe, is in a recession. While the big bosses are making high profits, the workers fight. Huge mobilisations took place last year demanding wage increases for high inflation or to stop pension reform in France. The workers responded to the deterioration of working conditions and pensions. A few years ago, it was the yellow waistcoats that took to the streets. A few months ago, mobilisations all over Europe reflected a growing impoverishment also of the petty bourgeoisie in the city and in the countryside.
The European Union allows the multinationals a new division of labour. The Mediterranean states like Portugal, Spain and Greece have dismantled their industrial capacity with the excuse of their lack of competitiveness to reinforce the weight of the big German industrialists. Their destiny in the new distribution of labour was to become an agricultural, service and tourism zone, a sector which means precarious employment, low wages, and deregulation of working conditions. Far from equalising the economic differences, they are intensifying, particularly with the crisis. Through capitalist governments, institutions, and economic conditions dictated by the centre and with the instrument of the euro. The euro’s impact on weaker European economies has resulted in widening disparities and foreign debt, leading to dependence on German and French multinational corporations.
The European Union is against migrants. Multinationals exploit these countries, while the EU neglects its responsibility in the Mediterranean. It finances third states, regardless of whether they do not respect the minimum rights of migrants, to make access more difficult. But the EU knows that repression will not stop thousands fleeing from hunger, wars, or dictatorships. Employers use death on the road and police repression in sectors such as agriculture, care for older adults and household chores to impose conditions that a worker with a collective agreement would not accept.
In the heat of the resistance at the start of the 2008-2009 crisis, great demos had their expression in the search for new political expressions: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Corbyn in British Labour, France Insoumise, or the Left Bloc in Portugal. But they were all expressions of a neo-reformism incapable of responding to the needs of the working class and popular sectors, and, as they rose, they sank. Today, with the crisis worsening and the growing social tensions that will arise, a sector of big capital is financing the far right that seeks to deepen the attack against the working class and democratic freedoms. On 19 May, Abascal of Vox, Meloni, Le Pen, Morawiecki, Orab, and Andre Ventura, together with Milei of Argentina and Kast of Chile, showed up in Madrid to launch the campaign for the European elections.
To stop the far right means raising an alternative, from the workers’ and popular mobilisation, an alternative of rupture with the capitalist system.
Neither the workers nor the popular sectors can expect anything good from the European Union. The European Union is a club of capitalist states and governments, therefore they cannot expect them to support the oppressed. They cannot reform the EU. Our alternative is not to return to the sovereignty of the old states but to confront the EU project with a Europe of the workers and popular sectors, a Federation of socialist republics.
The revolutionary socialists of the IWU-FI call on the workers and the youth to fight against the social cuts and their demands in every country and Europe. And in the European elections of 6-9 June, we call not to vote for Macron, Pedro Sanchez, Giorgia Meloni, Olaf Scholz’s candidates, nor for any candidate of the capitalist parties, whether liberal, social-democrat or far-right.
We call to vote No to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. No social cuts. We call to vote for the defence of wages and pensions, against job insecurity and the gender gap. In defence of 100 per cent public services. No more privatisation. For the nationalisation under workers’ control of banks and strategic companies. For the repeal of the laws on foreigners: full rights for migrants. Against capitalist environmental destruction. For the defence of democratic, women’s and LGBTI rights. For oppressed nations’ right to self-determination. No debt repayment. The money from the debts and tax increases for big businesses to raise workers’ and people’s emergency plans. Solidarity with the people fighting against imperialism. For workers’ governments.
Internationalist Fight (LI), Spanish State
Socialist Alternative Movement (MAS), Portugal.
Revolutionary Marxist League (M-LMR), Italy
Workers’ Democracy Party (IDP), Turkey
European sections of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
24 May 2024
