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Weekly Worker 545 Thursday September 23 2004

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Call of the Assembly of Social Movements

We come from citizen and social movements, ‘no vox’ organisations, trade unions, human rights organisations, international solidarity organisations, feminist movements. We come from every region in Europe to gather in London for the third European Social Forum. We are many, and our strength is our diversity.

At a time when the draft for the new European Constitution is about to be ratified, we must state that the peoples of Europe need to be consulted directly. The draft does not meet our aspirations. This constitution consecrates neoliberalism as the official doctrine of the EU; it makes competition the basis for European community law, and indeed for all human activity; it completely ignores the objectives of ecologically sustainable development. This constitution does not grant equal rights, the free movement of people and citizenship for everyone in the country they live in, whatever their nationality; it gives Nato a role in European foreign policy and defence, and pushes for the militarisation of the EU. Finally it puts the market first by marginalising the social sphere, and hence accelerating the destruction of public services.

We are fighting for another Europe. Our mobilisations bring hope of a Europe where job insecurity and unemployment are not part of the agenda. We are fighting for a viable agriculture controlled by the farmers themselves, an agriculture that preserves jobs, and defends the quality of the environment and food products as public assets. We want to open Europe to the world, with the right to asylum, free movement of people and citizenship for everyone in the country they live in. We demand real equality between men and women. Our Europe will respect and promote cultural diversity and respect the right of peoples to self-determination and allow all the different peoples of Europe to decide upon their futures democratically.

We are fighting for a Europe that refuses war, a continent of international solidarity and ecologically sustainable development. We are fighting for human, social, economic, political and environmental rights to defeat and overcome the rule of the market, the logic of profit and the domination of the third world by debt.

For all these reasons, we are calling on the peoples of Europe to mobilise against neoliberalism and war. We are fighting for the withdrawal of the occupying troops in Iraq and for the immediate restitution of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. We are fighting for the withdrawal from the territories occupied by Israel and for an immediate halt to the construction of the wall and its destruction.

We support the Palestinian and Israeli movements that are fighting for a just and lasting peace. We are fighting for the withdrawal of the Russian occupying troops from Chechnya. These are the reasons why we will join the international day of protest against the construction of the wall in Palestine on November 9 2004, and the international day of action for Palestine on December 10 2004. In February 2005 we will join the actions of protest against the Nato summit in Nice.

We oppose the G8’s self-assumed task of global government and neoliberal policies, and therefore we pledge to mobilise massively on the occasion of the G8 summit in Scotland in July 2005.
At a time when the new European Commission shamelessly boasts a high profile of laissez-faire politics, we must start a process of mobilisation in all European countries in order to impose the recognition of both collective and individual social, political, economic, cultural and ecological rights for men and women alike.

To enable all the peoples of Europe to join this process, we must build a movement that overrides our differences and groups all the forces of the peoples of Europe ready to be involved in the struggle against European neoliberalism.

We call for a common day of action, organised and supported by the social movements and the European Trade Union movement. The meeting of the European Council in March 2005 could be the climax of this dynamic of mobilisation in all European countries and could notably be finalised by a European demonstration in Brussels.

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