Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the German coordination of the ‘European Liaison Committee against War – against the social war’ (ELC), I warmly welcome you to Berlin.

More than a year ago, on 8 July 2023, at our European Conference, we defined it as our mission to unite the forces of resistance against the warmongering, socially destructive and anti-democratic policies of governments at the European level and thus also to strengthen them in each of our countries.

On 30 September, we established the ‘European Liaison Committee against War – against the social war’ with this aim.

Today, in a situation  where, alongside the war in Ukraine, we are confronted with Netanyahu’s genocidal war in the Middle East against the Palestinian people and its expansion into Lebanon and beyond, it is clear how right the decision to found the ELC was.

I do not want to go into the full range of our work here. I just want to point out the conferences in Oslo and Belgrade, which took place in the run-up to our conference today.

The war in Ukraine, in which more than a million Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have already been killed or wounded, but even more so the war of genocide, in which more than 42,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed and villages and towns destroyed, has mobilised millions of people in Europe and worldwide to protest and demonstrate.

This war against the Palestinian people is also affecting the West Bank and is now leading to a war against Lebanon. Under US command, they are preparing  a war against Iran.

US President Biden continues to support Netanyahu with billions in arms deliveries, while German Chancellor Scholz has just promised to double arms exports to Israel. All governments in Europe bear responsibility for the genocide in Palestine.

The Ukrainian offensive on Russian territory near Kursk, as well as Biden’s planned deployment of US medium-range missiles in Germany, with a range deep into Russia, signal that the US government, NATO, the EU and all European governments are betting on escalation and arming themselves for  a great war against Russia.

In Palestine, it is about the right of the Palestinian people to exist and to self-determination. In Ukraine, it is primarily about raw materials worth approximately 10  trillion US dollars, for which people are dying.

We are united in our fight for the demands:

• Immediate stop to the massacre of the Palestinian population!
• Stop all arms deliveries to Ukraine and Israel! Immediate ceasefire in Palestine and Ukraine!
• No to any military intervention by NATO troops in Ukraine!

And I would like to add:

• Stop the war crimes of the Netanyahu government in the Middle East!

Dear colleagues,

In all European countries, we are experiencing ever more massive attacks on democratic freedoms in order to quash all resistance. Demonstrations, assemblies, student camps in defence of the Palestinian people are being banned or broken up by police violence, the fundamental right to freedom of expression and assembly, democracy itself is being eroded. Those who take to the streets for peace are defamed as right-wing or Putin-controlled, those who denounce Israel’s war crimes are vilified as anti-Semites.

Let me add one thing. 80% of young people in Germany fear a war in Germany. They do not want to be sent to the front as cannon fodder. They are right, just like the hundreds of thousands of young people from Ukraine and Russia who  flee from the war. They deserve our full solidarity!

Allow me to use the example of Germany to show how the Scholz government is preparing for war:

At the military level:

• The creation of a new NATO headquarters for Ukraine in Wiesbaden
• A NATO command centre in Rostock for naval warfare in the Baltic Sea was inaugurated a few days ago.
• The already mentioned stationing of US medium-range weapons in Germany.

On the civilian level:

• The health system is being redesigned to be fit for war. Through ambulantisation, i.e. the re-dedication of many inpatient hospitals, the beds can be moved like a field hospital. It is expected that 1000 soldiers will be injured every day.
• A few kilometres from here, one of the largest and most modern civil protection centres in Germany is being built. It can provide self-sufficient care for 5,000 people in the event of a crisis – the war in Ukraine, for example, is mentioned as an example of a crisis.
• The civil clauses that prohibit military research at universities are being overturned and schools are being opened up as recruitment grounds for the Bundeswehr.

On the economic level:

• The increased development of an arms industry. Horrendous billions of investments are being diverted from civilian production to arms production. Workers laid off from the bankrupt auto industry are finding new jobs with the arms companies.

To pay for the costs of the war, the government is unleashing the social war against its own people.

I do not want to repeat all the examples that we have often analysed. Whether it is real wages, pensions, social security, hospitals, schools or universities, the German welfare state, all the social achievements of the peoples, are being dismantled.

To mention just one example:

Germany, the strongest industrial power in Europe, is particularly suffering from the brutal economic war that US imperialism is waging against Europe.

The policy of sanctions against Russia and the cutting off of Russian raw materials such as gas have severely damaged the German economy. The high energy costs are leading to an exodus of industry from Germany.

VW wants to close three plants for the first time in over 80 years. 250,000 to 300,000 jobs in the German metal and electrical industry are threatened.

But resistance is growing. Germany is experiencing the biggest strikes in defence of real wages, and the number of strike days in the ver.di (United Services Trade Union) sector alone has quadrupled. The numerous plant closures and job cuts will provoke new struggles, as is now being announced at VW.

At the demonstration on 3 October in Berlin, many trade unionists demonstrated in  opposition to a trade union leadership that supports the government’s war policy and denies any connection between the war and the attacks on social achievements.  Similar circumstances certainly exist in other countries…

You will be able to report.

Dear colleagues,

Resistance has also been expressed in the elections. The BSW, the party around Sahra Wagenknecht, consistently rejects arms deliveries to Ukraine and Israel, and has mobilised against the government’s war policy from the outset.

This party is the only political force in the Bundestag that gives a voice to the social majority’s  rejection of the wars and genocide in Palestine.

While the Scholz government is  denounced by over 80% of the population, the BSW has achieved historic successes in the last three state elections. Behind these developments stands the  rejection of broad sections of the population to war, to the social war.

There are similar developments in various other countries. The colleagues will surely report to us.

Dear colleagues,

today we, colleagues from Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Greece; Croatia and Macedonia, are gathered here.

We are all active in the trade union movement, we are politically organised in different ways and have different traditions. We will certainly have different opinions on some issues.

I also learned that the same movements exist in the individual countries, but that the situations are also very different. For example, colleagues in Norway, where none of the established parties  are against arms deliveries to Ukraine, are in the process of building a new anti-war party.

We have similar developments in Serbia and Sweden.

But the first ELC meeting shows that, by respecting each other’s experiences and opinions, we can leave differences to further discussion.

Peace between nations is the central concern of the labour movement. Without wanting to compare, I would like to recall a historic event that shaped the history of the labour movement.

160 years ago, the first workers’  international was founded, with the significant participation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. At the international workers’ meeting in St. Martin’s Hall on 28 September 1864, 160 years ago, representatives of the English workers wrote in their address: ‘Let us discuss the big questions on which the peace of nations depends.’

Without comparing our gathering today with that historic event, I would say: Let us act today. ‘ The war should not be resisted only after it  slaughters 1,000 soldiers a day, when freedoms are suppressed by censorship and martial law, but before that, when  we can still organise and demonstrate. THIS TIME THEY MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE THEY START!“