European Union

“There will be no return to the trade union laws of the 1970s. Laws banning secondary and flying pickets, on secondary action, on ballots before strikes and for union elections – on all the essential elements of the 1980s laws – will stay,” wrote the then Labour Party leader Tony Blair in an article published in the “Daily Mail” in 1997. In the same article Blair went on to stress: “Even after the changes the Labour Party is proposing in this area (trade union rights), Britain will remain with the most restrictive trade union laws anywhere in the western world.” This was a shameless ‘pitch’ to...

Questions and answers on the eurozone crisis. This version of the article is longer than the one in the printed paper Why isn't the EU/ IMF rescue plan for Ireland working? The plan is not to rescue Ireland, but to rescue the banks (German, French, British, etc.) which lent money to Irish banks. Social cuts for the people of Ireland are supposed to allow the Irish government to use resources instead to make good its guarantee (given in 2008) to cover all the debts and deposits of those banks. On condition of harsh cuts, the EU and the IMF provided the Irish government with long-ish-term loans...

Questions and answers on the eurozone crisis. Why isn't the EU/ IMF rescue plan for Ireland working? The plan is not to rescue Ireland, but to rescue the banks (German, French, British, etc.) which lent money to Irish banks. Social cuts for the people of Ireland are supposed to allow the Irish government to use resources instead to make good its guarantee (given in 2008) to cover all the debts and deposits of those banks. On condition of harsh cuts, the EU and the IMF provided the Irish government with long-ish-term loans to "increase confidence", and to cut short the process of Irish banks...

Across Europe on Wednesday 29 September public service workers and users are marching and demonstrating to defend public services against cuts, and defend jobs. They are responding partly to a call by the very bureaucratic European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), an umbrella group for the already highly bureaucratised national TUCs. The day includes a large demonstration in Brussels. 100,000 are expected in the city that is the heart of the European Union. Delegations include a group travelling with the RMT rail union from the UK. The slogan of the demonstration is “No to austerity. Priority...

The cuts programme is Europe-wide. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Greece are all making big cuts in social provision. This is a social and political choice by the ruling classes. In the tumult of 2008, many mainstream writers said that neo-liberalism was dead, and capitalist governments would have to seek a new programme, possibly conceding more social provision. Yet the EU governments are gambling on a push for a strongly neo-liberal way forward from the crisis. That means gearing government policy to making the eurozone an attractive site for footloose global...

The debate at a 2 June meeting in London on the crisis in Greece and the eurozone was framed by a forceful opening speech from Costas Lapavitsas, a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Lapavitsas summarised ideas presented in his recent interview for Solidarity , and argued for a Greek "exit with social restructuring" from the eurozone as the best option. "I am not advocating the end of the world", he said. "The end of the world is nigh, whatever we do". Or, at least, the end of the current eurozone. Whatever the Greek government does now, it will...

The revolutionary socialist left is avowedly internationalist. We base our actions on ideas such as these in the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx : “The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. “The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. “National differences and antagonism...

Costas Lapavitsas, author of a recent report on the eurozone crisis, spoke to Solidarity. Q. A bit under two years ago, the governments of the leading capitalist countries introduced huge bail-out packages for the banks, which did succeed in stopping the banks going bust. Will the European Union/ IMF package of 10 May do the same for Greece? A. The best way of answering this question would be to point out the differences between the two situations. In 2007-9, US, UK and German banks were running out of liquidity [ready cash] because of the bubble and the speculative games they had played. The...

We demand the cancellation of the Greek debt. To reject the austerity plans, to divest the banks of the control they exercise over the economy and society, to substitute a single European public banking service in place of the European Central Bank, with a monopoly over credit, is to fight for the cancellation of the debts and for a genuine European construction: that of the peoples and the workers, of a convergence of their struggles, for a social and ecological Europe of solidarity. If we do not initiate this about-turn, to build another Europe, the sovereigntist and nationalist logic, with...

On 1 December the Lisbon Treaty will come into force. The new European Union of 27 member states will acquire a more or less workable political structure, and one in many ways more unified than the old structures for six, ten, or fifteen states. More decisions will be made by a sufficiently large majority rather than by unanimity. The European Parliament will have more powers. There will be a EU president. An Charter of Fundamental Rights will set a baseline across the EU, although Britain has got an "opt-out" intended to ensure that the Charter cannot be used to ease Britain's anti-union laws...