Through the European Union (EU), Europe's capitalist states have moved slowly, bureaucratically, and clumsily towards the European unity which democrats and socialists have considered necessary for over a century.
This limited European integration is reversible only by regression to economic chaos and war. Socialists should not propose to roll history backwards to the old Europe of walled-off bourgeois states and alliances!
We seize the chance to unite the European working class. We propose that the working class set as its goal the creation of a fully democratic Europe, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the creation of the Socialist United States of Europe.
A programme for European workers
• For a Republican United States of Europe! Scrap the existing bureaucratic structures and replace them with a sovereign elected European Parliament with full control over all EU affairs.
• Fight to level up working class living standards and conditions. For a legal 35 hour week.
• Fight for a guaranteed decent European minimum wage.
• For a Europe-wide emergency programme of public works to tackle unemployment and social exclusion.
• Workers' control of the big multinationals, to steer production toward need and to guarantee every worker the right to a decent job.
• For Europe-wide public ownership of all the big banks and democratic control of credit and monetary policy.
• For the replacement of the Common Agricultural Policy with a plan worked out by workers' and small farmers' organisations, based on the public ownership of land. Food production to be geared to the needs of the world's hungry.
• For the abolition of VAT and the financing of public services by direct taxation.
• Stop state hand-outs to big business - subsidies, tax concessions, reductions in employers' contributions for social security - and use the money to create jobs in public services.
Prioritise rebuilding quality public services: halt all privatisation plans.
• For free abortion facilities, freely available, everywhere.
• For a Europe which respects the environment, putting controls on industries which pollute.
• For a Europe open to the world! Free movement of people into the EU; free access for Third World exports to EU markets; a big EU aid programme (without strings) to the Third World.
• For the right to vote of all residents of EU countries.
• Scrap the proposed Europe defence force. Replace all the EU states' existing military hierarchies by people's militias. For a Europe free of nuclear weapons!
• For a united working class. For Europe-wide shop stewards' committees in all the big multinationals and all the major industries!
• Fight to rebuild a European international socialist movement.
• For a Workers' United States of Europe.
