Europe

Activists in Europe are beginning to coordinate action strategies in favor of food sovereignty at the local, national, and continental levels. As these networks bring in new players, they gather strength. The task is not easy, but food sovereignty movements and anti-globalization movements are steadily building a common front behind a call popularized by La Vía Campesina: “Globalize struggle, globalize hope.” - read article...

This article is based on the report given at the IIRE Economists’ seminar in October 2009. It examines European Union policy response to the crisis. - read article...

The principal lessons of the European elections of June 7, 2009 are the following: massive abstention; a progression of the Right flanked by the far Right; a collapse of social democracy; an increase in the votes for the ecologists; the radical Left, left reformist or anti-capitalist, maintains its positions, without making new advances, except in Portugal and in Ireland. - read article...

These European elections have first confirmed a broad popular abstention. Nearly 60% of voters did not go to the ballot boxes. This abstention can give only a deformed vision of the real relationship of forces in Europe. But it confirms the crisis of legitimacy of the European Union and of the governing parties who implement their policies within this framework. - read article...

Over twenty thousand anti-globalisation activists from across Europe descended on Alexandra Palace for the Third European Social Forum. - read article...

On the 19th of March 2005 thousands will mobilise in Brussels against the war, but also for a social, democratic and egalitarian Europe - read article...

Antonio Negri has said in the French newspaper Libération that French people should vote "yes" to the European Constitution in the referendum on 29 May. - read article...

The LCR Political Bureau calls for the Left forces of the ‘No’ campaign to continue the fight for a social and democratic Europe. - read article...

The text of the declaration of the July meeting of the European Anti-Capitalist Left, hosted by the Scottish Socialist Party and held in the Scottish parliament. - read article...

The European Anti-Capitalist Left conference met in London on the 26th and 27th November 2005. It decided to step up its own activity and visibility, most notably by proposing to host a broad seminar in Paris in May 2006 as a forum for discussion for the European radical left. - read article...

On February 14th the proposed Bolkestein directive comes up in the European Parliament for its first reading. The European Trade Union Confederation is calling for a major demonstration in Strasbourg. European Sections of the Fourth International have issued the following statement. - read article...

The next G8 summit will take place in June 2007 in the Baltic coastal resort of Heiligendamm, near Rostock, after summits in Edinburgh and St Petersburg. Poverty, debt, environmental destruction, war, social cuts and attacks on our democratic rights - this is the catastrophic balance-sheet of the neo-liberal policies of the leaders of the eight most powerful countries that meet up every year. - read article...

Olivier Besancenot, spokesperson of the New Anti-capitalist Party in France will participate in a series of public meetings elsewhere in Europe organised by signatories of the Strasborg anti-capitalist left conference. - read article...

The European Anti-Capitalist Left meeting in Strasbourg decided a common position to intervene in the European elections. - read article...

More than 20 years of neoliberalism have had important effects on the trade union movement in Europe. Thadeus Pato unravels the pluses and minuses in the current phase of trade union evolution. - read article...

After two years of procedure, and of trade union and social mobilizations, the European Parliament adopted in a first reading, on Thursday 16th February, the Bolkestein directive. But the battle is not over. - read article...

Three weeks before the opening of the debate in the European Parliament, the mobilisation against the Bolkestein circular is becoming stronger. Preparations are under way for the demonstration that will take place in Strasbourg on February 11th, three days before the debate in the European Parliament opens. - read article...

The first congress of the European Left Party took place in Athens on October 29-30. About 500 delegates and observers were present. The LCR was there with observer status, represented by Alain Krivine. This report of the congress appeared in the LCR weekly, Rouge of 3 November. - read article...

The contribution given by Pierre Rousset, long-time Fourth International leader and veteran of the 1960s French JCR, at the “Capability Building Seminar” for Filipino Progressive Groups: “Toward a Democratic, Pluralist and Humane Framework and Strategy for Social Change”, Silang, Cavite, Philippines, May 26-28, 2005. - read article...

Twenty nine years ago the north Italian town of Seveso was the site of the first chemical industrial catastrophe - dioxin poisoning. But after more than two decades of battles, the EU is retreating on the fight on chemical pollution, after feroicious opposition from the chemical industry and its neoliberal supporters. - read article...

Jan Malewski probes the authoritarian neoliberalism at the heart of the proposed European Constitution. - read article...

Well-known left intelllectuals reply to Jürgen Habermas, Günter Grass and Wolf Biermann, who in a Le Monde op-ed had called for leftist and progressives in Europe to vote ’Yes’ in Sunday’s French referendum on the European Constitution. - read article...

At a time when the Cold War political division of Europe has ended, European governments are presenting the European Union Constitution as the way forward. But what direction is the EU going in with this Constitution? - read article...

François Sabado recently represented the LCR and the International at the congresses of Espacio Alternativo (which groups together militants identifying with the Fourth International) in the Spanish State and of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR) in Portugal. We publish here the main lines of his interventions at these two congresses. - read article...

EU governments are trying to impose a constitution designed behind closed doors on 450 millions people. This so-called constitutional treaty has taken the place of a constituent process based on a mandate coming out of open democratic debates and sovereignty of the peoples of Europe. This constitution is dangerous. - read article...

Alex Callinicos argues for the continued primacy of the fight against imperialism in the ESF process. - read article...

"If I stress the importance of the social question in Europe, it is not to underplay the importance of the war, but because it is impossible to build a counter-force to neoliberalism in Europe, on the level of the EU, if you do not address the living and working conditions of the mass of the working people in Europe itself." - read article...

The 3rd Social Forum took place this year from 15th to 17th October in London. It underlined once again the vitality of the global justice movement and its strengthened links with the trade-union movement. - read article...

Among the various plenaries, seminars and working groups at the European Social Forum was a discussion - ‘Strategies for Social Transformation’. - read article...

Transcript of a speech in the debate on ‘Strategies for Social Transformation’, at the European Social Forum, October 16, 2004. - read article...

Following its enlargement to incorporate central Europe on May 1, 2004, the European Union (EU) appears plunged into ever more serious crisis. The very high abstention rates at the European elections on June 13, 2004, especially in the new member states, accentuate a crisis of legitimacy. - read article...

Across the European Union, the minimum wage varies from 121 EUR in Latvia to 1,403 EUR in Luxemburg. - read article...

Fifteen parties from the Communist tradition from eleven different countries held a congress in Rome, on May 8-9, 2004, to found the European Left Party or ELP. - read article...

Adopted as a strategic programme by the European Union (EU) in March 2000, the Lisbon Strategy has as its declared objective the transformation of the single European market into the most competitive market in the world by 2010. - read article...

The parties and movements of the European anti-capitalist left met again in April. This one day meeting had a special character, because it was held in the context of a European Union (EU) summit and there are elections to the European parliament in June 2004 that will exert significantly more influence on the political framework than was the case at the last elections in 1999. - read article...

The manifesto that we have just adopted was drawn up by the Left Bloc (BE, Portugal), Red Green Alliance (RGA, Denmark), Scottish Socialist Party (SSP, Scotland, UK), RESPECT-Unity List (England, Wales) Socialist Workers Party (SWP, UK), Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, France), The Left (LG/DL, Luxemburg), United and Alternative Left (EUiA, Catalonia, Spain) Alternative Space (EA, Spain) and the Coalition Radical Left (Greece). In addition, Synaspismos (Greece) and the United Left (Spain) attended the meeting as guests - read article...

The seventh conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL), held in Paris during the European Social Forum on November 10-11, 2003, took place against the background of a world situation that unceasingly confirms the will to resist of peoples, workers, women and youth. Clashes and crises succeed each other at overwhelming speed - stock market crashes, bankruptcies of financial and industrial giants, collapses of entire sectors of the economy in some countries (Argentina), US invasions, complete political disarray following occupation, the crisis of the European Union’s stability pact and so on. - read article...

The breakdown in December 2003 of the intergovernmental conference (IGC) that was supposed to approve the European Union (EU) draft constitutional treaty has brought out into the open the crisis of the project of neoliberal construction of the EU. This crisis has been in gestation since the Maastricht agreement of 1992. - read article...

After the immense success of the first European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence last year, the 2003 ESF in Paris-St-Denis-Ivry-Bobigny represented an unprecedented advance in the construction of a European social movement at two levels. - read article...

More than 3,000 women and about 150 men took part in the European Assembly for Women’s Rights that took place on November 12, 2003 in Bobigny on the outskirts of Paris. This was an undeniable success for an event that constitutes very much a “first” as a feminist initiative in Europe. Let’s look at where it came from... - read article...

For the first time in 20 years, a counter-offensive has been launched to stop the disasters that are threatening us: war, neoliberal policies, and ecological catastrophe. - read article...

Faced with an employers’ offensive seeking to impose counter-reforms throughout the European Union, largely spontaneous social mobilizations have borne witness to the legitimacy crisis of the neoliberal model, already apparent in the success of the movement for global justice. - read article...

Education faces multiple threats as attempts continue to reduce it to a commodity. From the French republican school to the mass university of the post World War II period, educational systems have reproduced and continue to reproduce class inequalities. On the other hand, new resistances appear that defend public services and search for alternatives to the neoliberal educational model. - read article...

Although the European Council at Thessalonica had given a ’positive welcome’ to the draft Constitutional Treaty drawn up by the European Convention, it is obvious that the intergovernmental conference (IGC) has opened a Pandora’s box. - read article...

The draft European Constitution - which raises neoliberal dogma to the rank of fundamental law - is a challenge to Europe’s workers and peoples. - read article...

The ’new Europe’ which is joining the European Union has been likened recently to a US ’Trojan Horse’ inside the European project. And it is true that the new and old elites in power in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, notably in Poland, have adopted an Atlanticist and ultra-neoliberal orientation. - read article...

One year after its first gathering in Florence, the second European Social Forum will be held November 13-15 in Paris and in three towns of what was once the ’red belt’: Saint-Denis, Bobigny and Ivry. - read article...

Why a women’s day at the European Social Forum (ESF)? The idea of organizing a whole day of women’s debates inside the ESF emerged in the context of the limited space for discussion in workshops or in seminars provided by the first ESF at Florence. - read article...

The European Anti-capitalist Left, at its Athens conference, took the decision to constitute ourselves as a specific current (by history, tradition, political sympathies), according to the terminology used by the EU to designate organizations, "a European Party of the Anti-capitalist Left". - read article...

Resistance to the war in Iraq has inspired unprecedented mass mobilisations on a world scale. The ongoing instability of world capitalism, the international economic recession, the process of European Union state formation, and a new wave of social attacks on the working classes, youth, women, immigrants and others will lead to new mass struggles. - read article...

Eastward enlargement of the European Union was not an historical necessity after the fall of the Berlin wall. The only exception was former East Germany, where German unification in 1990 represented the first actual enlargement of the EU - then the European Community - towards the East. German unification was decided in a popular and unilateral way, and the rest of Europe had to swallow its consequences. - read article...

On the eve of the European Social Forum, Italy’s Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) organized a two-day meeting (on November 5-6, 2002). On the agenda: the EU and the question of war, social and citizens’ rights, an economic perspective and a political alternative; and a proposal for a European political party. - read article...

The document ’Contribution of the PRC to the Discussion on a European Alternative Left’ starts from the new world situation, where ’the first war of the epoch of globalization, a policy of global and permanent war’ is posed. - read article...

The European Social Forum held in Florence in November 2002 will go down in the history of the workers’ movement. - read article...

At the end of the Europan Social Forum a meeting of the social movements made two calls - opposition to a Europe based on neo-liberalism, and for an end to war! - read article...

Flavia d’Angeli is a member of the national leadership of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista of Italy and Olivier Besancenot was candidate for the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR - French section of the Fourth International) at the French presidential elections in 2002. Shortly before the European Social Forum, they spoke about their hopes for the event. - read article...

At the beginning of September in Germany, when the federal electoral campaign entered its final phase and all eyes were on the floods in the east of the country, a veritable social bomb exploded: France Télécom announced its intention to cease financial support for its subsidiary, MobilCom. - read article...

International Viewpoint spoke to Michel Rousseau, a member of the secretariat of the European Marches Against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusions about the European Social Forum in Florence. - read article...

During the ESF, there will be a forum ’Migrants against Fortress Europe’. We will discuss the following subjects: freedom of movement and residence; the right to asylum; citizenship; independence of immigrant women; equal rights. On each of these points, we will seek to formulate joint demands which would encourage Europe-wide mobilizations. - read article...

’Useless efforts produce melancholy and I am not prepared for Seville to be a summit of melancholy’. José Maria Aznar, June 3, 2002. - read article...

Following earlier conferences in Lisbon, Paris and Brussels, the Conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left took place for the fourth time this year in Madrid on June 18-19, 2002. - read article...

Following the success of the second Word Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January of this year, the first European Social Forum (ESF), will take place in Florence, Italy from November 7-10, 2002. The movements involved in its preparation met in Vienna on May 11-12, 2002, with a full agenda. - read article...

The enlargement of the European Union to include the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) has now reached the decisive moment. The European Council meeting in Gothenburg confirmed that it was an "irreversible" process and adopted a final schedule for the negotiations, which are to conclude by the end of 2002, thus enabling the applicant states to participate in the elections to the European Parliament in 2004. - read article...

The third Conference of the European anti-capitalist left was held in Brussels on December 12-13, 2001. It brought together parties, alliances and anti-capitalist movements from 10 countries, all committed in their respective countries to policies of regroupment and convergence. - read article...

The attack on the United States by a terrorist organization of Islamic fundamentalist origin has shaken the planet: nowhere is safe any more, not even the USA. After all the other wildcat privatisations, states have now lost their monopoly control over the most destructive and pernicious weapons. - read article...

THE European Union’s intergovernmental summit, held in the Brussels suburb of Laeken on December 14-15, 2001 did not mince its words. The "democratic deficit" has been replaced by the "democratic challenge". - read article...

WITH more than 120,000 demonstrators over three days the Laeken counter-summit showed the continuing strength of opposition to neo-liberalism and capitalist globalisation. - read article...

The European Union, which is itself a motor of globalisation, is in full complicity with the US government. After some initial hesitations, it is participating in the war with its own objectives as a secondary imperialist power. - read article...

Those who leaf through the newspapers of the years 2000 and 2001 in 10 or 20 years time will not fail to be impressed by the intense debate on the construction of the European Union (EU) which has taken place over this period. - read article...

A year after the end of the negotiations of the Cotounu treaty with the ancient colonies of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific the European Union has adopted the initiative" all except weapons" in it’s foreign economic policy Asuntos Generales of 26 of Feb 2001. - read article...

A European conference involving a series of parties and movements of the radical left was held in Paris on December 4-5, to coincide with the European Union (EU) Summit under French presidency. - read article...

At the beginning of December, preparing for the Nice counter-summit the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the Fourth International) acted as host to the second European conference of the anti-capitalist left in Paris. Around forty representatives of left parties and united left formations from eight countries attended. Groups from three other states sent apologies. The following text was released as a press statement at the end of the conference. - read article...

Nervousness reigns in the highest European spheres as the Nice summit approaches. The Danish setback has been followed a series of failures. - read article...

Ask a cook to make you an apple tart with some leeks, some potatoes and a vegetable mill. They’ll tell you it’s impossible and leave you high and dry with your non-conformist ingredients. But in the European kitchen things don’t happen that way and this is very much the case with the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. - read article...

An internationalist, European but anti-EU left has exploded onto the political scene of the continent. - read article...

The Marches against Unemployment, jobs security and marginalisation set off on 14 April, and converged in Amsterdam two months later. - read article...

For a long time ’Europe’ was just an idea. Perhaps a good idea, certainly an inoffensive idea, but in any event something far off in the distance. The neo-liberal offensive of the 1980s and the fall of the Berlin Wall changed this. - read article...

Europe has a long history of wars, invasions, bloody conflicts and social ruptures. No wonder the "utopia of union" is so strong. - read article...

Across the European Union, expensive propaganda campaigns are being organised to convince the population that the common European currency is a good thing. The introduction of the Euro is presented as a technical operation, and to everyone’s advantage. - read article...

A statement by 70 Dutch economists against the EMU, published February 13 in De Volkskrant, a major Dutch dailies, has spectacularly opened a real debate about the Euro in a country where, until recently, almost everybody seemed to support the Euro project. - read article...

There are more than 18 million unemployed in the European Union, according to official statistics. The average unemployment rate is 11% (13% for women and 9% for men. An estimated 50 million people live in poverty. - read article...

The current profound restructuring of European capitalism includes a widespread attack on a woman’s right to work. One of the primary elements of this attack is the spread of part-time work. - read article...

All industrialised countries are facing a two-fold process of deregulation and privatisation, affecting both public services and social security. The ultimate goal of this offensive is to put sectors of economic and social activity back into the market. - read article...

The European Union prefers the train. Officially, at least. But we all know the real situation. Trains might be more socially and ecologically reasonable, but EU "reform" has destroyed the rail system. - read article...

Maastricht Europe neither can, nor wants, to attack the roots of the ecological crisis. But political ecology is not just about inter-generation solidarity, or solidarity with the people of the south. The current living conditions of the populations of Europe are also every directly in question. - read article...

The Euromilitarisation of the EU is an undeniable reality, even if it is being done discretely and taking forms that are still uneven and incomplete. - read article...

When the Berlin Wall fell, the peoples of Eastern Europe were told that privatisation and the market would bring them economic efficiency and freedom. They were also told that as soon as they set up democratic regimes they could join the "civilised, normal world". In other words, "back to Europe". - read article...

There is no need to exaggerate the failures of capitalism. Reality speaks for itself. The system’s destructive capacity is as great as its economic, political and military power. The market economy is now sole master of the world. The planet itself is threatened. Misery is spreading. Democracy is on the defensive. The system ensures freedom to do business for a few, and a straight-jacket for the rest of us. - read article...

Ours is the Fourth International. The fourth, "Trotskyist", because the other three disappeared - by political abdication, or organisational collapse. - read article...

On 14 June, demonstrators from all fifteen European Union states will arrive in Amsterdam. On Foot. Francois Vercammen introduces the European marches against unemployment, marginalisation and job insecurity. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...