[Individual-members-EL] EL press release: " The Government's Treaty must be put to refendum in the EU"

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October 19, 2007 
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In the name of a democratic and social Europe: "THE GOVERNMENT'S TREATY MUST
BE PUT TO REFERENDUM IN THE EU"

 
<http://www.european-left.org/Members/mherberg/pressrelease.2007-10-22.68204
92069/image> In the name of a democratic and social Europe: "THE
GOVERNMENT'S TREATY MUST BE PUT TO REFERENDUM IN THE EU" 
EL for Referendum 
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1. On the same day that the European Council concluded the Reform Treaty,
200 thousand Portuguese workers met on a demonstration in Lisbon and 300
thousand others in various French towns. In both cases, as in Rome on the
20th October, the Work world raises his voice demanding for full employment
policies and a Europe that safeguards the social rights. 

The treaty is closed; more than ever the question of alternative solutions
for Europe remains open.

  


2. The Treaty that the governments signed today doesn't correspond to this
huge appeal.We, the parties of the European Left, have actively lobbied with
all our powers to prevent the EU Reform Treaty from becoming the guiding
treaty of European Union politics, on the grounds of its basic
neo-liberalist and militaristic agenda. We had hoped that the responsible
politicians of the EU and its member states had learned from the open debate
surrounding the Reform Treaty, and from the votes of the peoples of France
and the Netherlands. 

However, the form and manner of the new draft treaty's composition, and
above all its content, show that they clearly have a low capacity for
learning. By now, after six years of fretting over internal issues, the
union should have turned to its real duties. However, the agreed changes to
the treaty, tackle current issues only in a few respects, and future
challenges hardly at all. 

Further, the future capabilities of the European Union are still uncertain -
the most blatant deficiencies in current European politics, and the related
causes of the growing chasm between policy and the acceptance of the EU by
its people, remain intact. For these reasons we say: Treaty of Lisbon - no
way! 

3. Even more, it confirms the authoritarian power of the European Central
Bank and its only goal - price stability; it consecrates the Stability Pact
policies, which affect social expenses and public investment, impinging
specially on the poor the consequences of these budgetary restrictive
policies; it insists on the principle of "free and undistorted competition",
which was the umbrella for the eruption of the precariousness in labor
relations, the erosion of rights, the attacks against Public Services and
Social welfare, and the wages decrease.

4. On the same day of this extraordinary demonstration in Lisbon, the
Council and the European Commission shared with the European Trade Union
Confederation a diagnosis about the work market in Europe. The document
subsequently produced was erroneously announced as an agreement. But,
regardless of this fact, it is true that it opens the way to the concept of
flexicurity to the whole of the Union. 

The European Left considers that such a concept cannot be made universal in
the European space. Under the slogan "flexicurity", the employers and the
European Commission have the goals of ending the collective recruitment
agreements, the liberalization of layoff and individual dismissal, and the
precariousness of labor relations. 

What concerns them is not security but flexibility. On the contrary, the
European Left stands for the fundamental significance of Work in the
construction of the European project and calls for the determination of the
trade unions facing this new attack against social rights. 

The main issue here is a regression of civilization character. Europe
doesn't need more flexibility because it already has too much
precariousness. The European workers need the reinforcement of all that
guarantees the assurance of labor and labor relations, social welfare,
pension rights, protection on health, unemployment. 

What Europe needs is a new Solidarity Contract, enlarging to the immigrants,
women and youth, the social rights and benefits in which was built the
difference of our continent. That is the precondition on how to reach the
gap between rich and poor, people and regions, as well as the openess in the
EU.

5. The new Treaty gives the Charter of Fundamental Rights legal basis but it
is known that the European Left considers this document limited in scope. It
didn't align with the highest level of national legislations. And that's why
it should be renegotiated and its value reassessed. 

This wasn't the option of the governments. The new Treaty begins to
depreciate the Charter by not including it in the main text; it carries
forward accepting its non-universality in Europe, by giving Poland and the
United Kingdom the option of opt-out; and finally it forbids any
implications that the Charter might have in any new goals and policies of
the Union.

6. The new Treaty reaffirms all the objectives and procedures that prevent
the European Union from having, at the global level, its own policy in
regard to the United States. The Treaty subordinates the European defense to
NATO, an offensive military organization, instead of supporting its
dissolution under the auspice of the United Nations. It recommends an
increase of the military expenses instead of doing exactly the opposite; and
it accepts the involvement of European multinational forces in the "more
demanding" military missions, in the name of the defense of the "values" and
"interests" of the Union. 

The European Left refuses the participation of the European military forces
in military interventions. 

We believe that the EU is able and should disarmament, reducing the military
budgets of its member countries and to stop thinking in military terms. The
EL also believes that the so called war on terrorism cannot serve as an
excuse to reduce and undermine fundamental rights, civil liberties,
transmission of personal data to third countries and the abuse of power by
the security forces. On at least three aspects the new treaty opens a
Pandora box on the violation of fundamental rights: death penalty, the use
of disproportionate force by the security forces of each country, the
transmission of personal data of the EU citizens without parliamentarian
control. 

The European Left denounces the militarist dimension of the new Treaty and
its subordination to the imperialistic logic and to the aggressive policy of
the USA, in a moment of exponential raise in the risk of new wars. 

Should these possibilities within the treaty with regard to the Security and
Defence Policy become reality, as is already happening through cooperation
between member states and therefore bypassing control from the European
Parliament and largely from the national parliaments, then our world will
not be safer, but even more dangerous. Europe will then not be equal to its
responsibility to contribute to world peace.

Even in the field of Justice and internal affairs, now becoming a subject of
the European policies the agreed items do not correspond to increase
transparency of the European policies. 
The notion of "terrorism" is introduced without any interpretation of the
term. This is dangerous, because it can lead to military interventions
"against terrorism" outside the EU borders.



7. For all these reasons, the European Left opposes to the Treaty that the
governments have closed today. In different countries their militants and
activists will argue for a great popular debate with the active
participation of the Trade Unions, workers, NGOs and social movements about
the future of the European project, and stand for referenda as a condition
for parliamentary ratification. 

This Treaty represents also a trick, because it resuscitates the deceased
Constitutional Treaty, rejected by the French and the Dutch in referenda
largely participated. Even more now than in the past, the ratification of
this governments' Treaty absolutely depends on the exclusion of the peoples
and citizens from the decision making process. It worsens the democratic
deficits and the popular suspicion on the political leadership. This is a
Treaty that endangers the idea of openness and perspective of all people
living in the EU and therefore disestablishing the idea of EU itself. 

The EU is living a political crisis due to among other reasons the lack of
direct participation of the European citizens in the democratic building
process.

The European Left notes that to solve this political crisis it is needed to
widen democraticy and the direct participation of the European citizens.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  


  	
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