Unity! EU & Popular Sovereignty Advisory Bulletin Summer 2010

SUMMER 2010 BRIEFING

UNITY

SPECIAL CUB 2010 EDITION

www.communist-party.org.uk

CP ANTI EU & POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY ADVISORY

FOR A PEOPLES’ BRITAIN NOT A BANKERS’ EU. ETUC DAY OF ACTION: September 29 will be an opportunity for every worker, employed, unemployed, every community and civic force to say ‘No’ to cuts, job loss and denial of our peoples’ sovereignty.

THE CP IS ORGANISING AN ACTIVIST BRIEFING ON THE EU IF YOU WANT TO GET INVOLVED: CONTACT US VIA THE WEB

The Communist Party says: • •

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Reject the Lisbon Treaty No to EU directives that privatise our public services, break with CAP and the Common Fisheries Policy Defend and develop British manufacturing Repeal anti-trade union rulings and social dumping laws No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity No to EU militarisation Restore democracy to EU member states Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefit developing nations Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing progressive economic policies Keep Britain out of the eurozone

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DAMNED BY THEIR OWN WORDS German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his French counterpart Christine Lagarde have written a joint letter to EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, which reads, "A single currency simply cannot work properly without enhanced economic policy coordination".

It goes on, "political sanctions such as the suspension of voting rights should be imposed on member states which infringe common engagements in a serious and/or repeated manner”.

Protest on September 29 We support the call for a European Day of Action on 29 September made up of a demonstration in Brussels and trade union actions across Europe.

Workers must demonstrate against EU austerity measures and demand recovery plans in favour of democracy, jobs and economic growth.

We believe the time has come for workers across Europe to launch a sustained campaign of strike action and protests to defend popular sovereignty and public services.

Brussels and the corporate elite it represents want to hand over our public services to private sector jackals in order to extract more profits at the expense of the working class. This kind of scorched Earth neoliberal economics being imposed by unelected eurocrats and bankers will not create jobs or a future for working people and must be resisted wherever possible.

Free movement?

All the treaties, including the Lisbon Treaty, enshrine the socalled ‘freedom of movement’ of workers within the European Union as part of the four economic freedoms: free movement of goods, services, labour and capital.

For employers, the use of the catch-all phrase ‘free movement’ conceals an ability to dictate the terms of employment through exploiting a reserve EU army of labour in the relentless pursuit of profits.

The legal scope of the right to free movement for workers is shaped by the European Court of Justice and by directives and regulations outside the scope of democratically accountable bodies, such as elected parliaments.

Of particular relevance to these workers are the recent decisions of the ECJ in the Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxemburg ECJ cases which take us back over 100 years when any trade union activity was perceived by the bosses to be ‘in restraint of trade’. Global companies based in Europe are free under EU law to tender for contracts across the EU, and they are free to hire their own (cheaper) labour force from abroad.

The workers can then be ‘posted’ to this country under terms and conditions established in the country of origin.

These terms and conditions may be less than the contractual terms and conditions operating here.

All the 1996 Posted Workers’ Directive says is that workers posted here must only be paid the minimum terms laid down in domestic legislation. This allows bosses the right to pay below nationallyagreed rates of pay.

The other side of the ‘free movement’ coin within the EU is the barelymentioned ‘Fortress Europe’ policy that excludes workers from outside the EU, particularly from the global south.

Moreover, the World Trade Organisation is now pushing for low paid non-EU labour to be brought into the EU through a process called Mode 4. Under Mode 4 workers from the global south can be shipped in temporarily to work without rights and for lower rates of pay.

A recent report on the ongoing EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations said the “full ambition of the FTA can not be achieved without Mode 4 - which currently faces a range of barriers like wage-parity conditions”. This represents a new form of ‘bonded labour’.

At the same time unequal and neo-liberal trade policies, like those imposed by former EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, continue to devastate third world economies, forcing greater proportions of the world’s populations to be driven abroad in a desperate search for employment and resources.

The task for trade unionists and socialists must be to define the rights that give workers the real freedom, against the In this deal, where the scales are tilted so fake economic freedoms trumpeted by dramatically against the workers, the euro federalists and their allies. question of what rights workers are entitled to scarcely enters the equation. No2EU – Yes to Democracy, the EUcritical political platform that stood in

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the last European elections, argued against the development of a deeply racist Fortress Europe, designed to undermine wages and working conditions inside the EU and exclude people from outside.

To ferry workers around Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform is an environmental, economic and social nonsense.

If ‘food-miles’ represent an unacceptably large carbon footprint, then ‘labour-miles’ and shunting human beings around Europe in the pursuit of profit is even more damaging. In the 1980s, Tory minister Norman Tebbit famously told the unemployed to ‘get on their bikes’ to look for work. Now the EU is telling workers ‘to get on a plane’ and to find work.

Trade unions largely laid the foundations of democracy here and across the world in order to stop workers being treated like serfs and slaves and, instead, to control their own futures. Now we are at a crossroads, the working class can defend the democratic gains of the last 100 years or return to a new form of corporate feudalism and be dictated to by unfettered capitalist power.

Fight for socialism We believe there is an alternative. Communists stand for the right of nations to self determination, free from interference from imperialist EU institutions which openly reflect the interests of corporate capital. The alternative to the crisis is popular sovereignty, peace and, ultimately, socialism. Under these conditions natural resources and capital are democratically controlled and directed for the benefit of working people and not the parasitic ruling classes that have plundered our nations and led us to this international capitalist crisis. The hope of the world is socialism.

CAP - the rotten core of the EU The Common Agricultural Policy is hugely expensive system of European Union agricultural subsidies which represents half of the EU’s total budget.

Yet it is rarely discussed or exposed in the media, probably because it is also the most expensive, damaging and controversial EU programme.

Despite its free market rhetoric, the EU is purchasing millions of tonnes of surplus output every year at guaranteed market prices and hoarding it in huge quantities.

This has led to mountains of butter and rice and lakes of wine and milk, before selling the produce wholesale to the world’s poorest nations at lower prices in a process called ‘dumping’.

The CAP also rewards larger producers over small scale farmers. Because the CAP has traditionally rewarded farmers who produce more, larger farms have benefited much more from subsidies than smaller farms.

According to the 2003 Human Development Report the average dairy cow in the year 2000 under the European Union received $913 in subsidies annually, whilst an average of $8 per human being was sent in aid to SubSaharan Africa. The 2005 HD Report described the CAP as "extravagant, wreaking havoc in global sugar markets".

As a result, many Third World farmers cannot keep up with such cheap competition from Europe, driving them off the land and forcing whole populations to rely heavily on imports of EU-subsidised exports.

tonnes of powdered milk to the third world. A few years ago the Italian Rice Industry Association said that EU paddy rice stocks of 500,000 tonnes, nearly half of which are of Italian origin and 20 per cent of the EU's annual production, were in danger of rotting and should be used to help the world’s poorest people.

AIRI director Roberto Carriere said: "If the European Union does not use these stocks for food aid as quickly as possible, they will deteriorate and have to be destroyed".

However European Commission spokesman Gregor Kreuzhuber said "No! We have a huge structural surplus and we need to balance the market". Yet increasing quantities of rice are being poured into ‘intervention’ stocks, buying in food commodities at guaranteed prices under the EU farm policy.

This process ensures EU "price stability" rather than increased production and EU calls for "reform" will mean slashing jobs and capacity in the industry.

AIRI estimated that EU taxpayers had paid over 100 million euro for the rice stocks and it costs more than one million per month to store it. The CAP is not about producing food for people. It is a model created by the need for a complex political fix within the EU. As part of this political trade off agricultural member states like France, Spain, and Portugal receive more money under the CAP. Ultimately, it distorts agricultural development in the member states to the needs of the EU and the CAP itself. This is not only damaging to these domestic industries but creates the conditions for a deeply imperialist neocolonial relationship with the socalled third world.

Brussels drive to create its own currency, political structures and an army to protect its interests and compete for In 2007 in response to a parliamentary written question the British government resources have been closely monitored. revealed that over the preceding year the However, any study into the EU's EU Public Stock had amassed “13,476,812 imperialist attitudes towards the south and the obscenity of food mountains tonnes of cereal, rice, sugar and milk created by CAP reflects the rotten core products and 3,529,002 litres of wine”.

In January 2009 the EU will also purchase of the corporate EU ‘project’. and further subsidise the export of This article first appeared in 30,000 tonnes of butter and 109,000 Country Standard.

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RESOURCES

REGISTER ONLINE FOR CP ENews & Views AT

www.communist-party.org.uk

GO TO THE CP WEBSITE FOR NEWS AND FEATURES ON EU www.communist-party.org.uk

GO TO WEBSITE OF THE NO2EU -YES TO DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN AND REGISTER www.no2eu.com

READ THE STANDARD RURAL RADICAL VOICE CAMPAIGNER AGAINST CAP AND CFP

COMMUNISM COSTS US AN AMBITIOUS PROGRAMME AND A NATIONAL APPEAL THAT DESERVES YOUR SUPPORT “This is an ambitious National Appeal”, says general secretary Robert Griffiths, “ But we are a growing party with plans to take the class issues especially those relating to cuts, job loss and EU denial of sovereignty - to every trade union and community in England, Scotland and Wales.”

It has been such a busy year for the CP. Truly a year of anniversaries - 100 years of International Women’s Day, the centenary of the Women Chainmaker’s Strike, the 65th Anniversary of the Victory over fascism and 90 years since the founding of the CP. That is before we rolled out a programme of Communist Universities, took an active part in the Moscow conference to oppose historical revisionism and holocaust denial and fought local and a general election. The party is producing a 90th anniversary DVD, a new range of pamphlets and posters and is investing significantly in a new website. Then there is Manifesto press! And we had only just recovered from making a major financial contribution to the No2EU - Yes to Democracy Euro election campaign that achieved 150,000 votes.

So, Robert continues, “We ask comrades, our growing number of supporters and those who do not yet

MANIFESTO PRESS

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commit to membership, but acknowledge the key role of the communists to help fund our communist campaign.”

It is easy to donate, either in person via a CP branch, by mail or, better still, go to www.communist-party.org.uk

No2EU - Yes to Democracy demands a

referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and warns that working people across Europe will pay the price for the collapse of Euro project No2EU – Yes To Democracy will be re-launching as a campaign group and issued an immediate demand for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty as it emerged that the German Government are planning to impose changes to the treaty that will tighten the grip on economic policy in individual nation states.

No2EU has also warned that tens of millions of working people across Europe will pay the price for the failed European political and economic experiment through job losses, savage cuts in living standards and the demolition of vital public services with the contagion spreading to Britain as the ConDem government gears up for over £50 billion of public spending cuts.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary and the spokesperson for NO2EU, said: “The chattering classes, the bankers and the Euro elite have dragged the whole of the continent into a political and economic experiment which is now teetering on the brink of collapse and, as we warned repeatedly, it will be ordinary working people in their tens of millions who pay the price as their lives are ripped apart.”

You can buy titles online - go to CP site> shop

A CP BRANCH NEAR YOU

• Freedom From Tyranny - by Phil Katz Deals with the growth of historical revisionism, holocaust denial and anti communism in Europe.

ALSO • Killing No Murder - Robert Griffiths • The Education Revolution -Theo MacDonald • IImperial Controversy - Andrew Murray

Go to communist-party.org.uk

Printed & published by the Communist Party. CP 030/B/08-10

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