Cross-border anti-EU talks
WORKERS, FEB 2006 ISSUE
French leaders of the successful anti-EU Constitution campaign in France met recently with the leadership of Trade Unionists Against the European Constitution (TUAEUC) and the Campaign Against Euro Federalism and Centre for a Social Europe in January in order to increase cross-border cooperation in the anti-EU struggle.
The participants combined a philosophical exchange of views with practical strategies. It was generally recognised that the EU's attack had intensified and in a vain attempt to bolster the ailing euro, the EU Commission was progressing with directives aimed at privatising as many public services as possible. Bob Crow of RMT particularly highlighted the implications of the current plans to privatise railways throughout the continent by 2010.
French and British anti-EU Constitution campaigners meet to plan struggle. Photo: Workers
The meeting did not shy away from the question of mass migration either, and the close links between the freedom of movement of capital and the migration of peoples throughout the EU. This issue will be considered by the pan-European forum of anti-EU groups, TEAM, at its meeting in April.
TUAEUC Secretary Doug Nicholls described the EU as a dying beast lashing out in weakness. It represents failed national capitalisms, which huddle together for warmth, but in reality are on a life support machine. He likened the real motor behind the EU, the "Round Table" of industrialists, to pirates robbing the people ever more greedily, but as their treasure chests rise so their ships begin to sink.
Speaking powerfully of the importance of public services County Councillor Marie Claire Culie described also how the May 29th Committees which energised and organised the No Vote on the Constitution were still in existence and were now taking on the many-pronged attacks on workers. French Communist Party MP Daniel Paul gave examples of how various EU plans had been defeated in well coordinated industrial and political campaigns.
Several delegates highlighted how the EU was a political project aimed at the break up of nation states and therefore democracy. Any belief that the EU can be reformed must be set in that context. Doug Nicholls explained that the EU is doing what it was set up to do. It is time to re-assert the workers' vision of independent nations peacefully co-operating. Perhaps it is also time to reread Lenin on the fallacy of the United States of Europe and James Connolly's essay, What is a Free Nation?.