IVP617 - June 2026

The month of June 2026 could, in retrospect, appear to be a decisive moment in Belgium’s contemporary social and political history. What is at stake there goes far beyond a simple sectoral reform. It is a profound confrontation between two irreconcilable visions of the school.

The general strike of June 3rd paralysed a significant number of businesses and services. There is a widespread awareness among the working class that the package of dozens of labour laws represents a mortal threat to their future.

The G7 summit will be held in Évian from June 15 to 17. The heads of government and central banks from North America, the major European powers, and Japan will meet there to try to resolve their differences and consider common responses to the problems they face. South Korea has been invited, as well as India, Brazil, and Kenya.

“Even defeating Milei in the 2027 presidential elections would be significant. It would concretely demonstrate that, whether through insurrection or the ballot box, the far right can be defeated. And if the anti-capitalist left plays a decisive role in these movements, it would serve as an example for the left internationally.”

The left in the United States is once again, as always, debating how to engage in electoral politics. The debate seems more meaningful this year when more voters consider themselves to be independents (45%) than to be either Republicans (27%) or Democrat (27%). Could the left now present the disaffected with a political alternative.

After the Israeli army’s violent interception of the Gaza flotilla, activists have denounced humiliation and violence — a long-documented glimpse into the torture and sexual violence suffered by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. More than 430 activists from the 50 boats that set out to break the blockade of Gaza were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation army between Monday 18 and Tuesday 19 May, in international waters off the coast of Cyprus, up to 500 km from the coast of Gaza for the most distant boats and about 100 kilometres for the closest.

“It’s turning out to be a major general strike; the data we have from last night shows workers are determined to treat today as a major day of struggle,” said the CGTP’s General Secretary in the morning outside one of the striking schools in Lisbon.

In Bolivia, mobilizations against austerity and an agrarian reform favourable to the concentration of land have weakened the government of Rodrigo Paz and his neoliberal policies.

Is this the beginning of a shift in dynamics? To attempt to formulate an answer, our perspective cannot begin with the latest election results, but rather with an analysis of Andalusian political history. In this regard, we operate on a fundamental premise: there is no electoral victory without a prior social and political victory. In the south of the Spanish state, the right wing did not conquer the institutions by chance in 2018; it did so by first winning the battle for "common sense", displacing collective frames of reference and colonising the public agenda long before the ballot box validated its hegemony.

The clashes over the next 20 days on the streets, in workplaces and on social media in Colombia will determine not only the name of the country’s new president – between a neo-fascist and a progressive – but also, to a large extent, the balance of power in South America. The Colombian presidential elections, with a second round on 21 June, are a precursor to the Brazilian elections in November and are of central importance to the construction of Trump’s “shield” on the continent.