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.
European Union: the threat to education
18 November 2003, byEducation 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.
European Union: the Spirit of Saint Denis
18 November 2003, byAlthough 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.
European Union: at the crossroads
18 November 2003, byThe draft European Constitution - which raises neoliberal dogma to the rank of fundamental law - is a challenge to Europe’s workers and peoples.
European Union: what kind of new Europe?
18 November 2003, byThe ’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.
A new step forward
18 November 2003, byOne 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.
ESF: feminism and the movement
18 November 2003, byWhy 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.
Nine months of Lula’s government
18 November 2003, byAfter nine months in office, the government of Luis Inacio da Silva ’Lula’ has confirmed its contradictory and, in many aspects, even surprising character.
PT radical stays and fights
18 November 2003, byAt the very end of September, Heloisa Helena, the senator at the forefront of opposition to the Brazilian government’s right-wing economic policies, announced she had no intention of walking out of the governing Workers’ Party (PT). If the leadership really wanted to silence her, they would have to pay the price of expelling her.
