Elezioni europee – Cosa c’è dietro le tensioni con gli Usa?/I partiti socialdemocratici subiscono una sconfitta storica alle elezioni UE
● Con la crisi economico-finanziaria internazionale, stanno acuendosi i conflitti tra Germania e Francia e Germania ed Usa;
● sotto la pressione americana, stanno crescendo in Europa forze centrifughe che rischiano di far saltare la UE.
● Gli enormi stimoli finanziari erogati dall’Amministrazione USA a favore di Wall Street non lasciano alcuna speranza di riorganizzare i mercati finanziari, e fanno temere un’inflazione incontrollata che devasterebbe l’industria tedesca dell’export, punto di forza della sua economia.
● La crisi finanziaria internazionale – considerata da importanti ambienti politici tedeschi un’opportunità per liberarsi dalla supremazia americana e britannica – anziché spingere Washington ad un basso profilo ed alla cooperazione con la UE, ha moltiplicato gli sforzi del capitalismo americano per risolvere i propri problemi a spese degli altri paesi.
o Questi i motivi che hanno spinto la cancelliera Merkel ad attaccare con forza insolita il governo americano; Merkel si dice scettica sui poteri concessi alla Fed; critiche anche a Bank of England.
o Germania e Francia stanno reagendo alla pressione americana cercando di perseguire i propri interessi imperialistici; il presidente francese e la cancelliera tedesca hanno stilato un articolo, “Dieci tesi per una forte UE”, di impronta anti-americana, che decretando il fallimento della liberalizzazione incontrollata sostiene “un’economia di mercato responsabile”, basata su investimenti di lungo termine e non su profitti veloci. Merkel e Sarkozy chiedono una “reale regolamentazione europea della finanza, e un commercio internazionale equo basato sulla mutualità”; l’articolo conclude con l’impegno ad un maggior ruolo internazionale del capitalismo europeo: “L’Europa deve sostenere l’emergere di forti industrie ed imprese europee … questo sforzo deve essere sostenuto dalla nostra politica volta a rafforza la competitività dell’economia europea”.
● I partiti socialdemocratici sono stati il principale obiettivo della rabbia elettorale; in GB, Germania e Francia essi ebbero un ruolo decisivo nella stabilizzazione del dominio della borghesia nel XX sec.; i risultati negativi attuali fanno prevedere un periodo di forte instabilità politica.
o la bassa partecipazione, poco più del 40% riflette al contempo la forte delusione di ampi strati verso parlamento e istituzioni della UE.
o Coloro che hanno partecipato al voto hanno punito i governi dei paesi maggiormente colpiti dalla crisi, che fossero conservatori o socialdemocratici: Grecia, Ungheria, Lettonia, Bulgaria, Irlanda, Spagna.
– Dalle elezioni europee escono rafforzate le forze nazionaliste e chauviniste, che non hanno un appoggio di massa, ma che approfittano della bassa affluenza alle urne e del declino dei partiti socialdemocratici:
o Olanda con il 17% del voto al secondo posto in il “Partito della Libertà, antimusulmano, contro il 20% dei Cristiano-democratici del primo ministro Balkenende.
o Austria: il Partito della Libertà ha raddoppiato i voti sul 2004, a 12%; non ha raggiunto la soglia il BZÖ del defunto Haider; mentre la lista della destra di Hans-Peter Martin è ginta al 18% (campagna contro la burocrazia Ue e xenofoba)
o Populisit dell’estrema destra hanno conquistato voti in Finlandia, Danimarca, Grecia, Romania, Bulgaria e UK (British National Party + 4 seggi).
o Ungheria, con un’affluenza di solo 1/3 dell’elettorato, la destra della Lega dei popoli, Fisdez, ha ottenuto il 56%; la neo-fascista Jobbik circa il 15%; qui l’estrema destra è riuscita a approfittare del vuoto politico creato dai tradimenti e dalla disintegrazione dei socialdemocratici. I socialisti al governo hanno ottenuto il 17%.
o Affluenza ancora inferiore in altri paesi dell’Est Europa e del Baltico: 19,6% degli slovacchi; 20,5% dei lituani.
o In Belgio e Francia i partiti di estrema destra hanno perso voti; in Polonia, dove avevano di recente avuto buoni risultati, non hanno ottenuto voti sufficienti per tornare nel parlamento europeo.
o GB: Labour Party, 15,3%, dietro i conservatori e il partito della destra nazionalista United Kingdom Independence Party; il partito conservatore Tory che formerà probabilmente il prossimo governo, sta negoziando sulla formazione del nuovo gruppo parlamentare europeo con gruppi nazionalisti estremisti, come il partito polacco Legge e Giustizia (PiS) … Un governo britannico euro-scettico metterebbe a rischio l’esistenza stessa della UE.
o Germania: SPD 20,8%, il peggior risultato nella storia del dopoguerra (europee 2004, 21% già ritenuto catastrofico, come risposta alla politica anti-welfare e filo imprenditoriale della coalizione rosso-verde).
o Francia, il PSF al 16,8%, oltre 10 punti meno dell’UMP di Sarkozy, che pure registra bassi livelli record di popolarità; rovesciati i risultati delle elez. eur. 2004, con i socialisti al 29%, l’UMPP al 16,6%. Nelle presidenziali 2002 il candidato socialista Jospin finì al 3° posto dietro il fasciata Fronte Nazionale.
o Il New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) di Olivier Besancenot non ha raggiunto la soglia del 5% (4,8%)
o I socialisti in Spagna (al governo) e Austria (principale partito di opposizione) voto fortemente contro; in Austria i socialisti hanno perso 1/3 dei voti rispetto al 2004, il peggior risultato.
o Italia: il governo di Berlusconi pur discreditato è riuscito a sopravvivere solo per la sottomissione e codardia politica della cosiddetta sinistra e estrema sinistra.
– I partiti socialdemocratici (PES) dovrebbe mantenere 159 dei 217 seggi del parlamento uscente, -1/4.
– Il blocco dei partiti conservatori europei rimarrà il maggior gruppo del parlamento europeo, con il 36%, 267 seggi su un totale di 736, contro i 288 precedenti.
– I conservatori hanno migliorato i risultati in diversi paesi, ma in Germania la CDU della cancelliera ha perso circa il 6%, pari a oltre 1milione di voti, rispetto al 2004;
– in GB il principale beneficiario delle perdite laburiste è stato l’United Kingdom Indipendence Party, anziché i Tory. Ha perso voti la fazione euro-scettica, Indipendence and Democracy, da 24 a 18 seggi.
– I gruppi della Sinistra europea, soprattutto costituiti da stalinisti e sinistra piccolo-borghese, non hanno tratto profitto dal di scontento contro i socialdemocratici; hanno perso complessivamente 7 seggi, 34 delegati nel nuovo parlamento europeo;
– hanno migliorato i risultati il Blocco della Sinistra in Portogallo (10,73%) e il Fronte della Sinistra in Francia (6,3%); +1% la Linke (post-stalinisti e burocrati sindacali);
– I verdi hanno aumentato di 11 seggi,per un totale di 54, con le conquiste in Germania e Francia; hanno invece perso 1/3 dei voti in Austria, dove erano nella coalizione di governo.
La Union[e] for Europe of the Nations (UEN), che comprende partiti populisti di destra, come la Lega Nord italiana, ha aumentato i seggi di 19, per un totale di 35 .
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The European election – What lies behind the tensions with the US?
– This weekend’s European election takes place under conditions of fierce domestic and international tensions. Germany’s conflicts with France, on the one hand, and the US, on the other, are intensifying at a point in which national conflicts within Europe threaten to blow the European Union[e] apart.
– Differences between Berlin and Washington are mounting over how to deal with the international financial and economic crisis. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel attacked the US government Tuesday with unusual vehemence. Addressing an audience of economic representatives in Berlin, Merkel declared that she looked “with great scepticism” upon the powers ceded to the American Federal Bank as a consequence of the economic crisis. She also criticised the Bank of England. The American and British financial press reacted indignantly. The London Financial Times headlined: “Merkel mauls central banks”, while the Wall Street Journal called Merkel’s public criticism “unusual”.
– Despite its negative effects, leading political circles in Germany saw the international financial crisis as an opportunity to shake off the supremacy of Wall Street and the City of London. Despite its best efforts, the financial centre of Frankfurt was never able to seriously compete with London and New York.
– The strength of the German economy has been its export industries, but it is precisely this sector that has been hit hard by the crisis of the financial markets. There was already increasing resistance in Germany to the activities of international hedge funds, which had bought up a number of German companies. When the collapse of Lehman Brothers then dragged a number of German banks into the abyss and plunged the world economy into recession, the conclusion in Germany was clear—the crisis was “made in America”.
– But any hopes that Washington would adopt a more modest role in response to the crisis and be more inclined under the newly elected President Obama to cooperate with the Europeans as equals have been dashed. The crisis has only made American capitalism redouble its efforts to solve its problems at the expense of the rest of the world.
● The incredible sums that the Obama administration has made available to stimulate Wall Street have destroyed any hopes of re-organizing the financial markets, while feeding fears of uncontrollable inflation, which would have devastating consequences for Germany’s export industries. It was this fear that Merkel articulated in her speech in Berlin.
She accused the governments in Washington and London of injecting trillions of dollars into financial institutions with the intention of restoring them to their traditional positions of power, prior to the introduction of any new regulations on international financial markets. She “very clearly” saw the danger that the financial markets’ regaining power would make their regulation more difficult. Merkel continued, “All those who emerge somewhat strengthened out of the crisis will try to resist future restrictions.” She noted with concern that banks already had an outstanding new arena for speculation, “namely the shifting back and forth of government credits,” because states had expended so much money on their rescue.
– The Süddeutsche Zeitung commented that in many capitals “the realisation was growing that the financial crisis had been unleashed by distortions on the US property market, but that its real origin, is very different: the years of overly generous monetary policy, in particular, by the US”.
– The German and the French governments, which are in a similar situation, are reacting to American pressure by seeking to realise—with increasing aggression—their own imperialist interests. Two days before her Berlin speech, Chancellor Merkel joined French President Nicholas Sarkozy in penning an article entitled “Ten theses for a strong European Union”. This article culminates in the demand: “Europe must play a leading role in the world”.
– The anti-American slant of the theses begins with its analysis of the causes of the international financial and economic crisis. “The (free market) liberalisation without rules failed. This failure led to the severe crisis we find ourselves in now,” the article states. “The model that we want is a responsible market economy that favours both entrepreneur and employee, not the speculator; a market economy based on long-term investments, not on returning a fast profit”.
These are two conservative politicians who enjoy close relations with the highest business circles and can by no means be accused of harbouring any sympathy for socialism. Their attack on the market, speculation and profit can only be understood as an attack on American capitalism.
– Merkel and Sarkozy call for a “real European regulation in the financial sector” and a “fair world trade on the basis of mutuality”. In the event of a failure of the Doha round of world trade negotiations, they threaten to go it alone with “the adoption of a provisional European solution”.
– This is followed by an unconditional commitment to a greater international role for European capitalism: “Europe must favour the emergence of strong European industries and enterprises. It must ensure the development of European enterprises which can play in the first league worldwide; and our policies for strengthening the competitive ability of the European economy must support this effort”.
The conflict with the US is also transforming the European Union. Under American pressure, centrifugal forces are growing on the European continent, threatening to break the EU apart. There are a host of indications that extreme nationalist and chauvinist forces will emerge strengthened from the European election.
– In Holland, where the population voted on Thursday, the anti-Muslim “Freedom Party”, led by the right-wing populist Geert Wilders, obtained second place. Winning 16 percent of the vote, it trailed not far behind the Christian Democrats led by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who won 20 percent. The social-democratic Labour Party placed third, with just 13 percent.
– In Great Britain, the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party is expected to win more support than the governing Labour Party, which confronts an electoral debacle. The conservative Tory party, which is likely to form the next British government, is currently negotiating with extreme nationalist groups, such as the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS) led by the Kaczynski brothers, on the formation of a new parliamentary group in the European parliament. In the coming legislative period, the Tory party plans to quit the European Peoples Party, which includes all the major conservative parties endorsing the European Union. A Euro-sceptic government in Great Britain—one of the four largest member countries—would place in doubt the very existence of the European Union.
– These right-wing forces do not have mass support. They are able to profit from the extremely low electoral turnout of around 30 percent and the decline of the social-democratic parties, which have led the way in attacks on the working population for years. Nevertheless such extreme right forces represent a real danger. The break-up of Europe into competing nation states and regions would have devastating social and political consequences. It would evoke all of the nationalist abominations that plagued Europe in the first half of the 20th Century and were recently on display in the Balkans.
– The working population cannot and should not defend the European Union. The EU is a tool of European capitalist interests. The more aggressively it seeks to extend its influence abroad the more sharply it attacks the working class inside Europe itself. It plays a key role in the dismantling of social and democratic rights. The current social catastrophe in Eastern Europe is largely a product of EU policies. The anger and outrage reflected in the huge levels of voter abstention are directed against the EU and its institutions. Right-wing forces, however, are seeking to exploit this anger and divert it into chauvinist channels.
– The working population cannot remain indifferent or passive in the face of this development. They must seize the initiative to unite Europe on a socialist basis. The defence of social and democratic rights must be bound up with the struggle for an international socialist program and the realisation of the United Socialist States of Europe. This is the perspective put forward by the Socialist Equality Party (PSG), the German section of the Fourth International. A vote for the PSG this Sunday is a first step towards developing an international socialist party throughout Europe.
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Social democratic parties suffer historic defeat in European Union[e] elections
– European social democratic parties were the principal targets of electoral anger in the European elections completed on Sunday. A number of the continent’s most prominent social democratic organisations recorded record low levels of support. At the same time, the low level of voter turnout, just over forty percent, reflected profound disillusionment among broad layers of the electorate with the European parliament and all of the institutions associated with the European Union.
– In Britain, the Labour Party’s share of the vote dropped to 15.3 percent and the party finished in third place behind the Conservatives (24 seats) and the right-wing nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party (14 seats). The Labour Party will send just 12 deputies to the new European parliament. The election result is widely seen as a further nail in the political coffin of the beleaguered British prime minister and Labour Party leader, Gordon Brown.
– In Germany, the electorate punished the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which received just 20.8 percent of the vote—its worst ever election showing in postwar German history. In the last European election in 2004, the SPD recorded what was seen as a catastrophically low vote of 21 percent, as the German electorate delivered a decisive repudiation of the pro-corporate and anti-welfare policies of the SPD-Green Party coalition government that was in power at the time. In this year’s European election, despite desperate attempts by the SPD leadership to restyle the party as an advocate of the working man, the result was even worse. Newspapers describe crestfallen faces at the SPD headquarters in Berlin as the results came through.
– In France, despite the fact that President Nicolas Sarkozy has been registering record low levels of popularity, the opposition Socialist Party was unable to make gains. It received just 16.8 percent of the vote, more than ten points behind Sarkozy’s Union[e] for a Popular Movement (UMP). The Socialist Party fell to third place in the French capital of Paris, and at the national level barely surpassed the Green Europe-Ecology Party, which won 16 percent.
– Sunday’s result in France represents a reversal of the European election of 2004, when the French Socialists won 29 percent, with the UMP trailing far behind with 16.6 percent.
– Sources inside the party are already comparing the 2009 result to the 2002 presidential election, when the Socialist Party candidate, then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, ended in third place behind the candidate of the fascist National Front and was eliminated from the presidential runoff.
– The social democratic parties of Great Britain, Germany and France are amongst the oldest political parties in their respective countries. All of them played a decisive role in the stabilisation of bourgeois rule in the twentieth century. Their disastrous results in the current European election represent a political point of no return for the parties themselves and augur a period of profound political instability.
– In other leading countries with either a Socialist Party-led government (Spain) or where the Socialist Party represents the main opposition (Austria), voters turned massively against these parties. The Austrian Socialist Party lost a third of its support compared to the European elections of 2004 and recorded its worst-ever election result.
The main parties and organisations to benefit from the fall in support for social democratic parties were conservative and extreme right-wing parties.
– The parliamentary faction of social democratic organisations—the Party of European Socialists (PES)—is expected to retain 159 of the 217 seats it held in the outgoing parliament, representing a loss of around one quarter of its delegation.
– The block of European conservative organisations—the European People’s Party (EPP)—will retain its position as the largest grouping in the European Parliament, with an estimated 267 (36 percent) of the assembly’s 736 seats. This is a decline from the 288 seats it held in the outgoing parliament. The UMP in France, the Conservatives in Britain and the Christian Democrats in Germany all hailed the election as confirmation of their popular support.
An examination of the polling statistics, however, reveals that while the conservatives were able to improve their vote in a number of major European countries, their overall result was far less than an unqualified victory.
– In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union[e] (CDU), led by the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, saw its share of the vote fall by nearly 6 percent (over a million votes) compared to the European election of 2004.
– In Great Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party was the principal beneficiary of Labour’s losses, rather than the UK’s oldest party, the Conservative (Tory) Party.
Despite gains for free market liberal parties in some countries—notably Germany, where layers of traditional CDU voters switched to the Free Democratic Party—the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) also saw its support decline. It gained 81 seats, as compared to 100 seats in the outgoing parliament.
– Notwithstanding the success of the United Kingdom Independence Party, the “euro-skeptical” faction, Independence and Democracy (Ind/Dem), also lost support. The faction’s former total of 24 seats has now been reduced to 18.
– The faction of the European Left, which is predominantly made up of Stalinist and middle-class “left” organisations, was also unable to benefit from widespread discontent with the social democratic parties. In a number of countries, such leftist groupings did increase their vote—notably the Left Bloc in Portugal, which won 10.73 percent of the vote, and the recently formed Left Front in France, with 6.3 percent.
– In Germany, the coalition of post-Stalinists and trade union[e] bureaucrats united in the Left Party were able to increase their share of the vote by just over one percent, and will have 8 seats in the new parliament.
– Overall, however, the faction of the European Left lost 7 seats and was reduced to just 34 delegates in the new parliament.
– In its first electoral intervention, the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) of Olivier Besancenot in France failed to gain the five percent minimum necessary for representation in the European parliament, polling 4.8 percent.
– The Green faction was able to increase its representation, largely due to gains in France and Germany. It won 11 new seats, increasing its total to 54. The election campaign of the Greens in both Germany and France was characterised by breathtaking opportunism, in which both parties sought to appeal to disoriented layers of the middle class with a mixture of populist promises and unstinting defence of anti-social policies. In Austria, where the Greens have shared power for the past five years in a ruling coalition with the conservatives, the party lost about a third of its support.
– Another faction which will increase its presence in the new parliament is the Union[e] for Europe of the Nations (UEN), which includes conservative and right-wing populist parties such as Italy’s Northern League. It gained 19 new seats and will have a total representation of 35 deputies.
– Extreme right-wing nationalist parties appeared to gain the most from the collapse in support for the social democratic organisations. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islamic Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, won some 17 percent of the vote, making it the country’s second strongest party in the European parliament.
– In Austria, the Freedom Party doubled its 2004 vote, polling 12 percent.
– With 4.7 percent, the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), formerly led by the deceased right-wing populist Jörg Haider, failed to meet the requirement for representation in the EU parliament, but right-wing EU deputy Hans-Peter Martin was able to win nearly 18 percent of the vote with his own list. In the election campaign, Martin combined rhetoric opposing the EU bureaucracy in Brussels with xenophobic slogans.
– Far-right populists were also able to make gains in Finland, Denmark, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and the UK, where the far-right British National Party won four seats.
– In Hungary, the right-wing Peoples League (Fidesz), led by ex-Premier Viktor Orbán, won 56 percent of the vote, while the openly neo-fascist Jobbik organisation won around 15 percent of the vote. Here the ability of far-right parties to capitalise on the political vacuum left by the political betrayals and disintegration of social democratic parties is particularly evident. Both Fidesz and Jobbick were able to profit from the complete collapse in support for the ruling Socialist Party, which, with 17 percent, polled less than a third of the vote obtained by Fidesz.
– While extreme rightist and Euro-skeptical tendencies were able to make headway in a number of countries, this does not reflect broad popular support for their policies. First, the extremely low level of participation means that in most countries the majority of the population did not turn out to vote. In Hungary, only a third of the electorate cast votes.
– In other Eastern European and Baltic states the totals were even lower. Only 19.6 of Slovaks voted and just 20.5 percent in Lithuania.
– Second, far-right parties saw a decline in support in Belgium and France, where the National Front of Le Pen lost four seats. Extreme right parties which had formerly polled well in Poland—the League of Polish Families and the Self-Defence party—failed to win enough support to re-enter the European parliament.
The elections were the first to be held across Europe since the onset of the gravest economic crisis of world capitalism since the 1930s. They provided the first opportunity for the European electorate to pass judgment on its major parties.
– The results amount to a statement of no-confidence in the ruling elites across Europe and of the institutions of the European Union. The majority of European voters expressed their disgust with the European Union[e] and the various national governments by not turning out to vote.
– Those who did vote punished, in particular, the governments of those countries hit hardest by the crisis. The governing parties of Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Bulgaria, Ireland and Spain, irrespective of whether they are conservative or social democratic, all suffered a catastrophic drop in support.
– At the same time, the electorate rejected all those parties which are most closely associated with the causes and perpetuation of the current crisis—the German Social Democrats under former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who promoted free market policies and savaged the German welfare state, the Labour Party of Tony Blair, whose “Third Way” completed the transformation of Britain into a veritable paradise for speculators, and the “socialist” government in Spain led by José Luiz Zapatero, which presides over the highest unemployment in Western Europe.
Moreover, the decline in electoral support for the organisations comprising the “European Left” makes clear that voters have no confidence in a perspective which seeks to replace the collapsed social democratic perspective with a newly minted edition of reformism.
– The consequences of such a perspective are especially evident in the case of Italy, where the discredited right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi has been able to survive solely due to the political subservience and cowardice of the country’s nominal left and “far-left.”
The growth of neo-liberal and ultra-right forces represents a real danger in Eastern Europe and a number of Western European countries. The British Conservative Party has announced its intention of quitting the European conservative block—the European People’s Party (EPP)—to ally itself with Euro-skeptical and extreme rightist forces inside Europe. Such a step would only exacerbate centrifugal nationalist tendencies.
– The capitalist European Union[e] is a trap for the working class. The only progressive solution to the growing crisis is the unification of the working population across the continent to establish its own socialist alternative—the Socialist United States of Europe. This was the perspective put forward in the elections by the German Socialist Equality Party (Partei für Soziale Gleichheit—PSG). The PSG won a relatively small vote, just short of ten thousand votes. What is clear, however, is that these votes represent conscious support for a program which clearly articulates the implications of the current international crisis and provides a revolutionary and internationalist political axis for the working class.
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