[oberlist] EUROPE# cfA: Call for an Alternative Summit

[US Vladimir]

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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:16:42 +0100
Subject: Call for an Alternative Summit
From: jeremic.vladan at gmail.com
To: 

http://www.altersummit.eu/Call-for-an-alternative-summit.html



Call for an Alternative Summit



Today we are witnessing a major historical turning point in the

European Union. European leaders, particularly those of the

Commission, the ECOFIN Council and the European Central Bank, take

advantage of the current crisis to impose a neoliberal order against

the ideal of a democratic, social and ecological Europe.



The face of Europe is changing with dire consequences for citizens and

for the future of the European project itself. This "silent

revolution" - as Barroso himself calls it – is taking place through

unprecedented activism at the legal-institutional level :

proliferation of rules on fiscal matters and wages, higher thresholds

of requirement of these rules, tougher penalties and an increasing

automatization of their implementation, a mandatory entry of these

rules at basic levels of European and national legislation (treaties,

constitutions, ...). It also goes through strengthening the power of

the Commission, the European Council and the ECOFIN Council. The

European Parliament - as acknowledged by its own new president - being

in the best case scenario reduced to merely rubber stamping heads of

States’ decisions.



The Treaty on "stability, coordination and governance" stemming from

the European Council of January, 30, 2012, toughens the austerity

measures, although the context of a crisis of a severity comparable to

that of the 1930s, augmented by an unprecedented environmental crisis,

vindicates instead the preservation of jobs and public investment. The

European Commission will be entitled to compel the States in the

exercise of such a central prerogative to democratic life as the

budget, if it considers that policies do not conform to its or the

ECOFIN Council’s vision.



By adopting this Treaty, EU leaders are in denial of reality. The ever

increasing EU summits have utterly failed to achieve their official

goals, namely "restore market confidence" and resolve the crisis in

the Eurozone. A second banking crisis begins in Europe; austerity

policies jointly conducted in all the European countries are leading

to a widespread recession and the social situation is heavily

deteriorating in most European countries, starting of course by the

countries at the periphery of the Eurozone. In Greece, public debt,

unemployment, even the number of suicides, are rising at an alarming

rate.



Citizens are entitled to ask whether these official objectives do not

conceal a different strategy : to use the opportunity of the crisis,

even making it worse, to switch to a totally different model, which

would complete the neoliberal model at the cost of their social and

democratic rights ("never waste a good crisis ").



These developments are the most serious denial of democracy that

Europe has experienced since the end of World War II. European

citizens are subjected to punitive policies when everyone knows that

this crisis comes mainly from the greed of the banks, from market

finance, from the complicity or the laxity of political leaders who

were supposed to control them, and from two decades of competitiveness

weighing heavily on wages and taxation. This punitive neoliberalism

jeopardizes twice democracy : by direct authoritarian leeway (when

Jean-Claude Trichet, former ECB’s President, sent a letter to the

Italian Authorities to speed up the cuts and suggested to shift the

collective bargaining from the branches to companies’ level, or when,

with the approval of the Troika, technocrat governments took power in

Greece and Italy ...); and also, indirectly, by encouraging the rise

of xenophobic nationalism, and anti-European and anti-democratic

political movements (France, Hungary, Finland, etc.).



We say "Enough " ! We no longer accept these policies. They flout

democracy ; they have already plunged Europe in a particularly severe

economic crisis. They awaken xenophobic demons that the creation of

Europe was in principle intended to eradicate. We want to improve the

European social model and defend the people, not banks, corporations,

and their main shareholders.



This requires other policies, which means also to review the

institutions and treaties; not in the sense of a hardening of punitive

neoliberalism, but rather for reclaiming democracy. Alternatives

exist. What is lacking today is a balance of power to implement these

alternatives and devise political processes in order to bring back the

European project on the track of democracy, social and ecological

progress. The alternative summit we call for will be a first step

towards achieving these goals.


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