European Union

Podemos MEP Miguel Urbán talks about Europe’s political crisis – and why the left must meet it with radicalism, not moderation.

For the Left the Brexit vote is absolutely no cause for celebration. We can neither support the motivation of the vast majority of the Brexit voters, nor can we use the outcome of that vote for our political work. Social welfare systems will be increasingly under attack, the flow of workers from Eastern Europe and refugees will diminish, racist class divisions will intensify, not to mention the rise of racist forces in other EU countries spurred on by this vote.

Since the Greek trauma – both the neo-colonial diktat from the Euro-group and agreement by Tsipras to submit despite the popular OXI – the European radical left has debated “Plans B” without any strategic or tactical consensus. The referendum in the United Kingdom (UK) is the bitter illustration of this, without the anti-racist left opposed to the EU having the conditions of expression of a credible alternative to the dominant national, European and international institutions and policies. With less of a media profile than Brexit, the referendum on 6 April, 2016 in the Netherlands, rejecting the agreement of association between the Ukraine and the EU shamefully illustrates the same booby trapped “choices” for the internationalist left.

On June 23, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union (EU) by 17,4120,742 (52%) to 16,141,241 (48%) with a high turnout of 72%. The referendum gave voters the simple choice of whether the UK should “Leave” or “Remain” in the EU. It was called by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, as a result of pressure from “Eurosceptic” Tory (Conservatives) Members of Parliament (MPs) and the growing right-wing, anti-EU, anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP, pronounced U-kip).

Within a year two populations of Europe – one in the south, the other in the north – have voted against the EU and its policy. They did this out of entirely different motives and with different aims. Whereas on 5 July 2015 the Greek OXI was directed against the austerity dictates of the Troika and the degradation of Greece to the state of a semi-colonial country, the British Brexit above all was characterized by the fear of “foreigners” and the desire to escape from the freedom of movement in the EU. But at the same time the Brexit expressed the desire to settle accounts with the ruling political elites. Whereas the left was the driving force of the Greek NO, the British NO was captured by the right.

The majority for Britain leaving the EU was an expression of class revolt against the EU of the upper class. This provides a good starting point for the Left to become the head of a rebellion against the EU, which has been the hub of social dumping, erosion of tax-financed welfare schemes and democratic influence, suppressing all attempts to depart from neoliberal policies and total failure to respond to the climate crisis. If the Left doesn’t manage to take the lead in this fight - on an anti-racist and internationalist basis - it will be more or less racist forces of the extreme Right that will profit.

Potemkin Review met with Dr. Éric Toussaint, a founding member and President of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) - Belgium, and a global spokesperson for the movement. Author of more than a dozen books on the political economy of neoliberal globalization and the fight for alternatives, he has also served in an advisory role on matters such as the cancellation of illegitimate debts and the establishment of debt audit commissions in countries such as Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, and East Timor, as well as for organizations such as the UN general secretariat, UNCTAD, and the African Union. Most recently, he presided as the scientific coordinator for the Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt established by then President of the Greek Parliament Zoe Konstantopoulou in 2015. He sat down with Gokhan Terzioglu, Steve Knauss & Antoine Dolcerocca from Potemkin Review to give the following interview:

The process of European unification is undergoing a deep crisis, certainly the deepest since it started at the beginning of the 1950s. In less than a year, the EU faced two major tests—first the Greek quarrel, then the refugee crisis — that revealed its true face: a mixture of impotence, unwillingness, egoism, arrogance and cynicism. It is not a pretty spectacle. No illusions can remain about this entity that, far from embodying the federal ideal, has become an empty shell, an object of shame and deserved sarcasm. Those who still ritually proclaim its virtues are the representatives of a highly discredited political elite who seem to no longer have any culture or values. The more they assert their belief in the EU, the more they disqualify it, even in the eyes of the millions of people who have never felt any sympathy for conservatism, nationalism and xenophobia.

We published An Open Letter to Yanis Varoufakis by George Souvlis and Samuele Mazzolini about the Democracy in Europe Movement 2015 DiEM25. this is Varoufakis’ reply.

In the following open letter, George Souvlis and Samuele Mazzolini respond to the launch of DiEM launch in Rome in March