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| From left to right: French President Francois Hollande, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and Spain's PM Mariano Rajoy. (Archive Photo). |
The European Communist Initiative carried out an important intervention regarding the upcoming meeting of the heads of the states of the so-called “European South”, which the Greek government is organizing on the 9thof September in Athens.
The “European Communist Initiative” notes in this statement that the organizers of this meeting aim to utilize it to reinforce the illusions of the peoples of Europe about an “Alliance of the South”, which will allegedly “put an end to austerity” and calls on the peoples to strengthen their struggle to overturn the anti-people political line of the EU and the capitalist system which they serve.
The full statement of the Secretariat of “European Communist Initiative” can be found below:
“A conference of the leaders of the Mediterranean countries of the EU, of the so-called "South" of the EU, will be held in Athens on the 9th of September, at the initiative of the "left" SYRIZA-ANEL government of the new memoranda and the dozens of anti-worker measures, and will be focused on the developments in the EU, the refugee-immigrant question and the notorious issue of "development".
This initiative comes just a few days after the meeting between old and "new" social-democracy in Paris.
These two initiatives, just as other similar ones, have as their "common denominator" the aim to sow false hopes amongst the peoples that the capitalist system and its reactionary inter-state "edifice" on the European continent-the EU-can be improved and "humanized". They seek to persuade the people that another correlation of forces at the centre of Europe, in favour of the "South" and at the expense of the 'North", or in favour of social-democracy over the liberals, will bring the "end of austerity", "equality", "solidarity" and "development" n the EU.
However, the peoples of Europe have experienced for decades that the EU and every kind of bourgeois government (both liberal and social-democratic) aim to support the profitability of capital, its recovery by intensifying the anti-people political line. The "development" that they are promising was never and cannot be "just" and is based on the destruction of the workers'-people's rights and the intensification of exploitation.
The workers ascertain from their experience that the competition between the imperialist centres and the capitalist countries (of the North and South, with social-democratic and liberal governments) which intensify the imperialist wars and interventions, bring new torments and persecution for the peoples and drive people into becoming refugees.
The peoples can understand that mechanisms like ISIS and their repellent activity, funded and supported by the USA, NATO, the EU and their allies in the Middle East region, constitute the pretext for the intensification of repressive measures by the EU and its governments.
Today, the result of the British referendum for a departure from the EU has brought to the surface contradictions amongst the various imperialist centres in relation to the future and prospects of the EU. The main issue in the controversy inside the Eurozone and EU remains the bourgeois management formula, i.e. between fiscal stability and the monitoring of the member-states by the EU mechanisms on the one side and on the other side a relaxation of fiscal adjustment so that state funds can be released to support the monopolies. This controversy is alien to the people's interests because both approaches will be to the detriment of the working class and poor popular strata as they both have the sharpening of the anti-people offensive as their precondition.
The governments of old and new social-democracy in Europe use the slogan "no to austerity" in a misleading way. This slogan has no relation to curbing or overturning the barbaric anti-worker measures, relieving the people. On the contrary, it is related to supporting the business groups with additional hot money. This is also demonstrated by the fact that these governments, just as the liberal ones, push forward new barbaric anti-worker measures in Greece, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus in order gather funds for big capital.
However many summits and high-level meetings between the "leaders of the countries of the South" take place, however much grand rhetoric is uttered about "restarting the EU", the EU cannot become pro-people, but can only become worse for the peoples, nor in any case can the capitalist system be humanized, which it serves.
Hope is to be found in the struggle of the peoples to overthrow capitalist barbarity!”
08.09.2016