The Difficult Task of Building a European Movement

In June 24-25, only a few weeks after the French and Dutch “no” to the European Treaty, almost 200 representatives from social, political and trade-union networks and organizations from 20 European countries met in Paris to discuss the consequences of this “major political event” and explore the possibilities of “building a broad citizens’ movement on a European scale to develop political and social dynamics in favor of Another Europe”.

For one and a half days, dozens of speakers took the stand for five minutes each to present their analysis and proposals. The overwhelming presence of trade unions and Communist Parties (the meeting was held in their headquarters in Paris) put the Bolkestein Directive and the working week on the center stage of the most urgent battles to be fought, and the various representatives of Attac Europe, who had met the day before the meeting to elaborate a proposal, called for “organizing local social forums on March 4, 2006, to debate the future of Europe and bring proposals to the ESF in Athens”.

Most of these ideas made to the final call, which was approved and brought before the French general assembly of local groups organizing against the Treaty, which gathered together more than 700 people from all over France in Nanterre on June 25.

But the agreement reflected on the final declaration was only a small part of what went on during those two days inside the bulb-shaped spaceship-like conference room of the head office of the French Communist Party. The long and sometimes monotone series of contributions, to which there was never a reply or intention to open a debate, revealed how diverse and rich the analysis of the European movements are, but also what a need there is to tackle the things that keep the movements apart.

One continent, many movements

Worth mentioning were the contributions of the Dutch representatives, who offered a different view of what can make the majority of a population vote against the instructions of their government representatives and trade-union leaders -as Harry Van Bommel pointed out, in The Netherlands the “no” won without any big campaign or mobilization. Following this idea of a widening gap between the people and the political elites, Françoise Castex, member of the French Socialist Delegation to the European Parliament, made one of the most shocking comments of the weekend when she assured that 99.5% of the European Socialist Party are in favor of the Constitution rejected by most of their own voters. In her view, the ESP is “a traumatized and disoriented party”, incapable of challenging Blair’s neoliberal strategy and stand up to defend the French and German social model. Many representatives mentioned the role played by Blair in this crisis. However, the lack of British representatives -present only through the Communist Party of Great Britain-, made it difficult to deepen this analysis.

But the British were not the only ones who were missed -Scandinavia only made it to the meeting through a member of Attac Sweden, who refused to speak for the whole region, but stressed the need to respect the diversity existing among different European movements. In her view, “the French ‘no’ is helping us get out of the ‘yes’/’no’ swamp and develop a progressive ‘no’ to this Europe, but our debates continue to be different.”

Jose Egireun, from the Basque union ESK, also stressed the need to understand that “mobilization dynamics need to be built upon local realities, and then create networks”, and urged the audience not to narrow the analysis to the “French vision of the world”. Be it French, Italian, Dutch or German, the truth is that the meeting seemed more a gathering of national/regional movements than a truly European meeting -most of the times, representatives would propose their own countries to hold future meetings, and show very little interest to learn from other countries’ experiences or engage in a debate on what would a European movement require in terms of building a shared understanding of the challenges ahead.

The Eastern European representatives, for instance, stated very clearly that the situation they were facing was completely different to that portrayed by most of the delegates. As Peter Damo (Romania) expressed, “the extreme right is using the French and Dutch ‘no’ to convince people that Europe does not want Eastern European workers, that French and Dutch nationalism are the reasons behind the ‘no’ vote. And so the ‘no’ is becoming a mobilizing tool for them.” According to the Eastern European speakers, the issue of the internal regional divisions created by the adhesion calendar, the lack of information, the misuse of the ‘no’ by the right-wing and the general frustration existing in the region are the challenges that characterize their situation, making it very difficult for them to apply prescriptions coming out of countries with very different levels of mobilization and political awareness.

It was also an Eastern European delegate, Simo Endre, from the Hungarian Social Forum, who brought up the issue of nationalism and how the European Treaty leaves out national minorities and reinforces exclusion -thus bringing up an issue that has been key in the mobilization for the ‘no’ in countries like Spain and which was not included neither in the Declaration nor on the general debate.

From consensus to enthusiasm

In the end, most of the contributions from the floor were incorporated into the final draft declaration: it was reminded that it was important to add to the labor issues the struggle against the building of a military Europe (an ongoing process with or without an approved constitution, as Tobias Pflüger from GUE/NGL reminded), to recognize the role played by the environmental organizations and their demands in delegitimizing the Treaty and to incorporate women and gender issues. A mobilization calendar was also drafted, including a list of all the proposals made during the meeting and collecting the different proposals to use the ESF process as a reference.

However, at the end of the meeting, the overall feeling was more that of a self-restrained satisfaction for having successfully completed a formality than of genuine joy. Haris Golemis, from the Poulantzas institute in Greece, said after reading the final declaration: “What we have here is the same old text, the same old list of complaints, of mobilization dates... and it does not reflect the hope created by the French ‘no’. We will sign it, but without any enthusiasm.”

This leads, inevitably, to a question that some delegates expressed and others whispered: can a meeting of self-appointed representatives of social movements, most of them from the ranks of the old CPs, a meeting full of the same old faces, the same old interests, the same old chairs bring any enthusiasm on the possibility of building a grassroots, European-wide social movement?