The architects of the European Union thought it would end war and hunger. In reality, it’s just exported them to the third world – and put up fortress walls to keep out the world’s poor and oppressed. Welcome to the bosses’ Europe.
The dream that Euroland would become a wonderland of social democracy, a pacifist counterweight to America and a haven of freedom in a heartless world is dead.
Europe is divided. Politically, the USA’s determination to have a war with Iraq has split the European Union (EU). The UK, Spain and Italy are egging Bush on. Germany and France have adopted the role, temporarily at least, of refuseniks.
The process of enlargement was thrown into doubt by Ireland’s rejection of the Nice Treaty last year. The fear that it would refuse a second time has now gone, but the original referendum vote cast a long shadow over the enlargement negotiations.
Moreover, in the context of an EU economy that is stagnating, France and Germany want to scrap agreed tight budget rules for economic management. Even the European Commissioner called the rules “stupid”. Not unnaturally, those that stuck by them are displeased.
It seems a long time since midnight fireworks on January 1 this year sent the population of Europe running to the ATM machines to get their hands on a brand new currency.
The glitch-free roll out of the Euro was a time for celebration among the eurocrats who run the European Union and who want to see more and more sovereignty of each member state ceded to the institutions of a European super-state.
Control over the money supply of those in the eurozone – together with power to set interest rates – was handed over to the European Central Bank.
They looked forward to the harmonisation of taxes, a common foreign policy and even an elected President of the European Union.
A European Convention was launched in February in which 105 politicians from the 15 member states and 13 applicant countries are debating the content of a new constitution for the European Union to be ratified sometime in 2004. They hope this process and the end result will “bring Europe closer to its citizens”.
In fact, at its launch Convention president Giscard D’Estaing made clear the real aspirations of many of the leaders of Europe.
“What has been created over the last 50 years will reach its limit.”
He argued that the Convention needed to come up with a plan that “matches our continental dimension and the requirements of the 21st century”
And in a warning to the USA he argued that a new Europe “would be respected and listened to, not only as an economic power it already is but as a political power which will talk on equal terms to the greatest powers on or planet.”
But the aggressive military build up of the US since Bush came to office plus the unremitting imperial global ambition of the administration has shown just how far the European Union is from being ready to challenge the US. It lacks unity and power.
Working people in Europe have no interest in backing plans to make Europe an equal to the US on the world stage – an equal partner in the carve up of the assets of poor nations and the enforcer of oppression around the world.
The EU is a Europe of the bosses and for the bosses. It is led by our class enemies across the content. It is organised to suit their interests.
The bosses’ Europe is a union of bureaucrats
The EU is run by unelected bodies like the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and Committee of Permanent Representatives while its parliament has no real powers. Yet according to UNICE, the pan-European employers’ federation: “In European countries, 60 per cent of new laws are introduced at a European Union level and 70 per cent of these measures (regulations, directives, decisions and recommendations) are concerned with the economic domain”.
Tens of millions do not vote in European elections because they sense rightly that their representatives can make little or no difference, beyond setting up inquiries, asking questions and deliberating over the budget.
The Convention will be as closed and undemocratic as all other past examples of drawing up treaties: it will not involve the working people of Europe. If it were truly democratic, it would go through a democratically elected constituent assembly, based on one vote for all those living and working inside the European Union.
The bosses’ Europe is a union of corruption
The lack of accountability leads to immense abuse and misuse of funds. Regular scandals over expenses for MEPs erupt or over contracts awarded to Commission members’ families and friends, only to be eclipsed by bigger scandals over the misuse of EU funds for projects abroad. EU slush funds are used to line the pockets of corrupt officials in the Balkans, Middle East, Turkey so that these governments will favour EU companies when it comes to awarding contracts.
The bosses’ Europe is a union against the poor of the Third World
At last year’s World Trade Organisation ministerial in Qatar the EU trade officials were among the worst imperialist representatives present.
Pascal Lamy, the EU’s trade commissioner fought tooth and nail to protect the EU’s right to dump subsidised farm products in poorer countries which has a devastating effect on the poor farmers of the south who cannot compete against cheaper imports.
Lamy threatened to walk out unless he got his way on postponing to the future “negotiations with a view to phasing out” subsidies to rich farmers. The EU representatives refused to agree to the Third World request for a study into the effects of lower tariffs on the economies of the South before proceeding to lower them.
Lamy was shoulder to shoulder with US trade representatives in bullying the delegates from the poorer countries: unless they agreed to a new round now they would have their debt relief programmes withdrawn.
Yet while the EU plays tough with the south it bends over backwards to help out the oppressive state of Israel. Last month the EU again refused to take sanctions against Israel for illegally exporting goods to the EU which are produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, yet at the same time they provide satellite monitors to track Palestinian activists.
The bosses’ Europe is a union of war mongering and aggressive militarism
The EU governments, one after another, rushed to back Bush’s “war against terrorism” in the wake of the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre. EU heads were desperate to be seen in the front rank of those signed up to attack the Taliban.
Now the UK, Spain and Italy have pledged complete support for Bush’s campaign in Iraq. Schröder could only get elected again by pledging not to support the USA’s war. But even Germany has agreed to take on more military duties in Kabul as the trade-off for challenging Bush’s war on Iraq.
Embarrassed by their utter dependence on the US for their strategic military facilities, the member states have been striving to construct their own “rapid reaction force”. They hope to use this to secure “stability” in all regions in the EU’s backyard (such as North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East) where uprisings against reactionary pro-western governments can be put down.
The EU is effectively responsible for the running of much of the Balkans. Its commissioners run Bosnia with an iron fist, in the interests of global capitalism.
The bosses’ Europe erodes civil liberties
After the attack on the World Trade Centre the UK passed a draconian bill which opts out of the European Convention on Human Rights to allow the Home Secretary to detain foreign nationals indefinitely and without trial who are “suspected” by him of involvement in “terrorism”. This follows on from legislation last year which massively broadens the definition of terrorism to embrace most forms of extra-parliamentary protest movements.
It would have been impossible to back the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s with these laws and ANC representatives would have been locked up. In France the Chirac government has carried on where the Socialists left off, tightening laws, fuelling racism and harassing inner city youth.
The bosses’ Europe is determined to crush the anti-globalisation movement
Faced with the growth and success of the anti-capitalist movement over the last few years the EU states have gone from treating the activists with contempt to using the EU bodies to co-ordinate their repression.
In the run up to the G8 summit in Genoa many EU leaders like Blair and Schroeder urged Berlusconi to restrict the free movement of protesters across Europe. Many were stopped from getting into Italy by suspending the Schengen agreement that allows for free movement across EU borders. They urged the Italian authorities to repress the demonstrators and welcomed the use of a part of the army (the carabinieri) to counter the demonstrations on the streets.
Since Genoa they have gone further. Under the initiative of Germany they have taken the first steps to create a Europol force whose job will be to share intelligence about the anti-capitalist movement and co-ordinate their repression of it.
The bosses Europe is a racist union
The EU allows free access for capital across its borders and demands the right for its bosses and bankers to operate freely anywhere in the world. Yet millions of legal immigrants working and paying taxes in Europe are denied the right to vote; many are denied employment in the public sector.
Migrant labour, for Europe’s leaders, is nothing but a commodity to be imported according to the needs of capital. On the one hand it welcomes with open arms workers who are very well qualified.
Refugees fleeing from political persecution or from economic devastation caused by IMF-devised and EU-backed policies in the Third World are denied entry or herded into camps, like Sangatte near Calais, surrounded by barbed wire, often for months or years on end.
In the UK New Labour has come up with ever more repressive ways of scapegoating and harassing refugees restricting benefits, segregating their children into separate schools, and prolonged detention or fast track deportation.
There is an alternative
The European Union is a an anti-democratic and pro-business union that is seeking a more global role for itself to enforce anti-Third World polices and build up a military machine that can back up its economic and diplomatic might.
The workers of the European Union must reject attempts to withdraw “their” nation states from this entity. That would be an utter diversion. Rather we need to urgently combine our forces. We need international class solidarity, class organisation and class struggle.
Our goal, as a European working class, is to overthrow the ruling class in each state and in Europe as a whole. We want to build a Socialist United States of Europe with real democratic rights for all and free from exploitation by the big corporations and militarism.