The war is the new failure of the European Union

We had already witnessed the failure of a Europe that promoted solidarity, the convergence of the levels of development between countries and regions, where democratic criteria would be essential, an exemplary Europe in the defence of labour rights and in the fight against discrimination, racism and xenophobia. Today, after the Balkans war, the promise of a Europe of peace has collapsed. In reality, how could it be otherwise? What we have, alongside the war, is a Europe of Treaties that imposes a neoliberal course, attacks sovereign rights, and looks on the Mediterranean and human rights with relative disregard. A Europe dependent on the United States and NATO, with no autonomy in its geostrategic choices.

Russia and Ukraine are accusing each other of trying to blow up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, the largest in Europe. There have already been the sabotages of the Nordstream gas pipeline and, recently, of the Kakhovka dam. We don’t know who was responsible for the explosions, but what is certain is that they did take place. And whoever the real perpetrator may be, there is no doubt that the infrastructures are being used as war weapons, with direct consequences on the people’s safety and on environment.

Is it possible to continue to regard with great indifference the dramatic danger of an attack in Zaporizhzhia, wherever it may come from, with immeasurable consequences for peoples, territories and ecological systems?

Everything must be done to reject the blackmail and stop the escalation which is leading to a full-scale war of conflicts between imperialist powers, that currently hegemonic one led by the United States and that of the emerging blocs, with the risk of nuclear disasters and the possible use of nuclear weapons.

The only truly realistic solution to this war begins by condemning the rhetoric of military escalation, by a stance of the international community rejecting the deadly game between the USA/EU and Russia and demanding an immediate ceasefire and the opening of negotiations for a peace plan, as advocated by Lula da Silva.

This is the struggle for peace of a left that stands in solidarity with the peoples, on an independent line, in any institutional instance or body, aware that workers have nothing to gain from war. A fight for peace with the slogan „Putin out of Ukraine, NATO out of Europe“.

Under cover of the war in Ukraine, social war is deepening within the EU. The demonstrations in several French towns against the young Nahel’s murder by the police show the deep social problem spreading as Macron’s liberals step up their attacks on the rights and incomes of an increasingly precarious, discriminated and forgotten population, which is expanding to the North and South of Europe.

It is essential that the left forces align themselves against this social war, in the fight against wage devaluation, in the defence of labour rights which are bound up with the demand for measures to deal with the climate and environmental emergency, and ally themselves with feminist, LGBTQIA+ and anti-racist rights, by integrating the fight for peace and against the military escalation advocated by the Euro-Atlantic axis into social mobilisations. At all these levels, elements of disobedience to the treaty-based EU and of social confrontation with the neoliberal elite are emerging. They are an essential political element of resistance, of the fight against the far right and populism, of the construction of a political and social alternative.