Dear colleagues and friends,
This resolution of solidarity with the peoples of Greece, Spain and
Portugal, mobilizing against the austerity policies imposed upon them,
has been passed by the EuroMemo Group for an alternative economic
strategy, at its Poznan conference, on September 29th, 2012.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Solidarity against Austerity
The EuroMemo Group declares its solidarity with the peoples of Greece,
Spain and Portugal mobilizing against a so-called European policy
imposed against their own elementary interests
We support your mobilization in protest against the policies currently
imposed on your countries! What a coalition of the international
financial communities with a group of European countries led by
Germany has been imposing upon you is no aid, but blatant attempts to
shore up the banking system at your expense. This pushes your
countries ever more deeply into a vicious cycle of austerity and
recession.
We are being told that your countries “aren’t doing enough”. In
reality, the combined forces of Northern European and of global
‘governance’ are imposing new ‘aid plans’ on your countries which
pretend to ‘save you’ by abolishing workers’ rights, pushing the poor
into extreme misery, and weakening the middle classes.
Yet we do know that these programmes will fail like the Structural
Adjustment Programmes which have been imposed on countries of the
Global South; and they will certainly be as harmful as the programmes
based on the “Washington Consensus” which had devastating effects on
the peoples of Middle and Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
The goal of these policies is not to “save” your countries. The idea,
instead, is to gain time so as to save the creditors and shareholders,
while pushing your countries to ever more austerity which may only be
brought to an end by a default – with all its destructive consequences
which will have the side-effect of reinforcing existing polarization
and hierarchies in Europe. With the collusion of their political and
economic elites, your countries are being turned into the experimental
subject of a new kind of social and political change that will then be
exported and applied to the rest of Europe.
For this neo-liberal offensive to achieve its goals, however, a regime
must be set in place which will set aside most elementary democratic
rights. Parliamentary regimes reverse directions, and the “people’s
representatives” hand over power supposedly invested in them to
‘experts’ and bankers: nothing less than a coup d’État carried out in
parliament.
All the measures taken to date have done nothing but undermine the
sovereign debt of your countries, and as a result over the past years,
that debt has exploded, instead of being reduced. The coercive,
artificial deepening of the problem of sovereign debt has been used as
a weapon with which to assault and seize your entire societies.
The model applied to Southern Europe in recent months is intended for
all Europe, and even beyond, wherever conditions can be made similar.
This is what is at stake in this situation, and this is why defending
the people of Southern Europe cannot be reduced to an abstract gesture
of solidarity: the future of democracy and the future of the peoples
of Europe hang in the balance. Everywhere, the “commanding necessity”
of a “painful but necessary” austerity will be presented to all of us
as the way to escape the fate of the Southern Europeans — whereas in
fact this austerity will lead us there directly.
Alternatives are really possible, and they are at hand: A restructured
EU founded on solidarity, democracy and sustainability is still
possible – and it will be in the interests of the peoples of all of
Europe – South and North, both of them in similar ways.
Organized by European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN)
http://www.euromemo.eu/calendar/event_19917.html
—
Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, 4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at