EU treaties in the light of history
3
The Europe of big capital
5
7
The price of the Euro
Political Europe and its institutions
9
11
Towards a different Europe
14
For a social Europe
16
Women in Europe: the persistence of inequality
18
How the EU organises fiscal injustice
21 Public services for the common good
22 The "automobile society"
24 Europe's ecological challenge
26 Fortress Europe
28 The threat of military Europe
30 The EU's eastward expansion
31 The Common Agricultural Policy
32 Against the south
35 The socialist alternative
36 Our International
About this special issue
This special issue of International Viewpoint has been prepared by the Fourth International's
European Secretariat. We hope to deepen our analysis of European questions, and identify some concrete conclusions for militant activity in the field.
"For a different Europe" reflects the general orientation adopted at our last World Congress in June 1995. But his publication is not a resolution of any Fourth International body.
EU treaties in the light of history Europe has a long history of wars, invasions, bloody conflicts and social ruptures. No wonder the "utopia of union" is so strong. The 20th century confirms it: two "world" wars, the holocaust against the Jews, fascism, nazism, resistance movements, civil wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions.
"Unifying Europe" means overcoming, or mastering, the strong contradictions between states, but also the contradictions between social classes. In reality, unification between states always takes place on the basis of a certain "choice of society" Either capitalist (market economy, based on private property and generalised competition, production for profit, hierarchy and social inequality), or socialist (a classless society without social inequality, production to satisfy the needs of the population, collective property and co-operation).
The socialist project was actually the first which tried to unite the continent, between 1916 and 1923. There was a real perspective of an international society without war, exploitation and national oppression.
Unfortunately, the revolts of the labouring classes against exploitative, authoritarian and murderous capitalist systems in Russia, Germany, Hungry, Italy, Rumania and Poland were violently repressed. The new Soviet Union found itself alone. Isolated. It soon fell under the control of the Stalinist dictatorship. The people of Europe were now presented with a great, but false, dilemma: "exploitation under a democratic capitalist system, or totalitarian pseudo-socialism." War ravaged Europe for the second time. The urgent need to control the explosive rivalries between France, Britain and Germany reemerged. The problem is that these rivalries have deep historical and structural roots.
• France was catapulted to the high point of human history by the universal importance of the 1989 French Revolution. But the country was handicapped by a less powertul economy than its neighbours.
• Britain was the first modern empire, with its industries and its colonies, its financial networks and active diplomatic corps. But the country was in decline.
Rather, it is a contribution to the most difficult political and strategic debate which the labour movement faces today.
The authors
Maxime Durand, Sophie Joanny, Jean-Louis Michel, Albert Rochal, Pierre Rousset, Catherine Samary, Alain Tondeur, Eric Toussaint, François Vercammen and Robert Went all contributed to this special issue. We also thank Winnie Wolf, PDS Member of the German Parliament, for his article on the "automobile society."
All the authors accepted that the European Secretariat adapt their texts to make a coherent presentation. The Secretariat is, therefore, sole responsible for any errors or omissions in the final version.
Subscribers, collectors, librarians! This issue counts towards your yearly total. This means that you will recieve a re-subscription notice one month earlier than would otherwise have been the case
Extra copies of this report can be purchased from any of the addresses on page 36, or by writing to our publishers, PECI, BP 85. 7522 Paris cedex 11, France. Fax (+33 1) 43792961, E-mail <100666.1443@ compuserve.com> We offer a discount on orders of five or more copies.
3
Eurorationalisation PLANTU • Germany is a first rank economic power.
But the country was handicapped by its late unification (during the 19th century)
and its lack of colonies. Politically, the country was stigmatised by the ghosts of
With the working class (briefly) on the offensive at the end of the war, the new Europe is blocked on two sides. To the east is the Soviet Union, the cold war enemy. To the west, the United States: a former English colony, now the leading superpower.
Throughout the last 50 years, the dynamic of European unification has had an economic aspect, and an equally important politico-statecraft aspect. Sometimes one has been the main "lever," sometimes the other. On the social side, Europe's rulers have been obliged to make successive, important concessions to the working classes, which are massively organised, and often turbulent. These concessions have concerned employment, salary, trade union rights, and elements of economic democracy in the workplace.
More than ever before, Europe lives to the rhythm of intense internal and external contradictions, which can flare up at any moment (remember the tension caused by the fall of the Berlin Wall?). A dose of supranational constraint, a transfer of part of national sovereignty to pan-European (state) institutions, capable of taking decisions which will be binding on all member states seems increasingly indispensable. It is the price for political stability and economic
The problem is that such a transfer has 4 International Viewpoint #290
EuroEuro- panic strike never taken place before, in Europe or elsewhere. The bearable slowness of unification
A short historical detour explains the apparently mysterious difficulties, recurrent crises, and the interminable succession of European Treaties, each one more boring and
In 1947 the USA put a condition on their Marshall economic aid plan for Europe. Washington insisted that the participating European states form the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC, later becoming the OECD). This was no philanthropic act. Rather, it was a way of advancing towards a "single market, without quantitative (external) restrictions to the movement of merchandise." The pressure came, most of all, from the booming American economy, which needed new outlets.
In fact, economic reconstruction was achieved not on the basis of a united Europe, but through the action of separate national states, each strongly marked by the Second
In July 1952 the European Coal and Steel Community was formed between France, Germany, the Benelux countries and Italy. In a rare moment of frankness, the treaty admitted that its goal was "to replace secular rivalries with a fusion of essential interests," creating "a community. between peoples long opposed by bloody divisions." 3
The agreement effectively created a "common market" in two products. Overproduction of coal and steel was considered to have been a root cause of the recent war. Protectionism (restrictive practices, state subdiscrimination between producers from different member states, import tariffs and taxes) were forbidden. Quotas were established, and backed up with a generous subsidy system. For the first time, a European body (the "High Authority") received supra-national authority, in this precisely specified field.
This agreement was part of a broader economic and political mobilisation of the "free world" by the United States, which was preparing for a confrontation with the Soviet Union and China. Its own coal and steel production was insufficient, and it was clear that West-European production could not be boosted significantly without the support of the German economy. And this was unthinkable unless France would agree.
The participants in the European Coal and Steel Community would remain at the core of all subsequent integration activities. Over-stretching
The impressive success of the ECSC incited "Europeanist" circles to try to extend supra-national decision making. But they tried to bite off more than they could chew. Efforts between 1950 and 1954 failed spectacularly to create the planned European Defence Community. The stumbling block was the historic question of German re-armament. even within a wider European structure, this was still too unpopular. The political fall-out from this failure had a long-
The Treaty of Rome (1957) re-launched the integrationist initiative. It created the European Economic Community (EEC). The aim was to gradually establish a total common market, by abolishing internal barriers, and creating a common external tariff policy. The only supra-national interventionism introduced by the treaty was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The Treaty of Rome was based on the principles of economic liberalism. Employment, prosperity and other social objectives were mentioned, but they did not have the same weight as in documents from the 1940s. There was nothing in the Treaty of Rome to inflame the crowds, and nothing to frighten them either. It was essentially concerned with increasing commercial exchanges in Western Europe, and with political convergence between the six original members of the European Coal and Steel Community. The Treaty also made possible the creation of Euratom, through which European capitalism would try to catch up with the USA in nuclear technology and nuclear
For the next thirty years (1957-86), there was little or no further European integration. The most significant event was the 1972 signing of a monetary agreement, which in 1978 became the European Monetary System. This was an attempt to stabilise the relationship between the different currencies of the EEC. It was a response to the American government's unilateral withdrawl from the Bretton-Woods agreements (1944-1971),