Last week, thousands of people , especially called by labor unions, demonstrated in Brussels to block the adoption of the The “Pact for the euro”. Is considered an unprecedented attack against European peoples’ social and political rights once it is expected to put peoples and states under total control of financial markets.
European citizens are suffering the cuts in their salaries and pensions since months. And with the “pact”, things could get much worse, acoording to the social activist Francine Mestrum, member of World Social Forum International Council for CETRI (Centre Tricontinental) and the Global Social Justice network. One of the problems is that “the worlds of trade unions and other movements are still quiet apart”. In her opinion, they should join together to face this neoliberal offensive.
Read the interview
Do you consider that these protests will impact the direction of economic policy in the region, since governments are not giving heed to the message of the streets?
FM – On Friday the 24th of March around twenty thousand trade unionists, mainly from Belgium, protested against the European austerity policies. It was a very important mobilization which got much attention in the media, though not in a positive way. Unfortunately, chances are minimal that it will have immediate and real consequences. Let me mention two problems:
First, no other social movements were involved in these protests, since the worlds of trade unions and other movements are still quiet apart. Thanks to the social forum process, attempts are being made to bring them closer together, but for the major actions, each organization clearly prefers its own agenda. Even on Friday, the two major trade unions from Belgium had separate actions and this is really a sad story, since they can never win without joining forces. I stress that there was no divergence on content, but only on strategy. We did have a couple of weeks ago a ‘Joint Social Conference’ at the European level, with trade unions and social movements, and this was a direct consequence of the European Social Forum. This is a very hopeful initiative, though it will be a very slow process and I wonder whether it does not come too late.
As for influencing the policies, I also have doubts since all our governments are very firm in their commitments. They tell us, in fact, that you have to dismantle the social state in order to preserve the social state! Our governments go to the European Council and talk to themselves, they say to themselves what they have to do and than come back home and tell people that ‘Europe’ obliges them to this or that!
In fact, all the European commitments concerning the welfare state are already being implemented at the national level. They now get a European label and that makes them more stringent.
So, at first sight, I have doubts whether these protests will really influence our governments. Look at what happened in France: in 2010 millions of people got on to the streets to protest against pension reform, but the government did not listen. On Saturday 25th of March half a million of Britains got on to the streets, but most austerity measures are already taken. It is a very difficult situation.
Europe has a significant history of struggle for labor rights and social security. What is the popular response to the threat of the austerity policy, zero growth, weak state, unemployment, , under the pretext of ensuring the “competitiveness?
FM – This is the tragic side of the story. Western Europe was the first and remains the last ‘island’ with social security and rather good social protection. Of course, our social states were not perfect, but compared to what existed in the rest of the world, it was really good and personally I still believe we should try to ‘export’ this social protection model elsewhere.
But we also have seen that neoliberal policies, also called ‘Washington Consensus’, has wiped out the emerging welfare states in third world countries. They put ‘anti-poverty policies’ in their place, and this is what they now also want to do in the European Union. This is a perverse mechanism that many social movements still do not understand. Because the system is creating more and more poverty, and of course we should help poor people. But the first thing to do is to avoid that people become poor. So we should not help poor people at the expense of working people. What neoliberal forces want is a state with protection for ‘those who really need it’, whereas all the others can buy protection on the market-place. In this way you get a redistribution of incomes not from the rich to the poor, but from the non-poor working class to the poor working class.
They want a minimal protection floor for all, but want to make an end to the existing welfare states. The overall slogan in the European Union is ‘making work pay’, which means that people should be stimulated to integrate the labour market, the underlying assumption being that people in fact do not want to work and have to be encouraged. This encouragement is not a higher wage, but a lower unemployment allowance or no allowance at all. The reality is that there are far too few good jobs available.
My impression is that people still do not understand this perverse mechanism, or that they believe the governments who say this is necessary for protecting our ‘competitivity’. The major problem however is that the left has no ready alternative that people find attractive enough. We see in all major European countries a shift to the right and the extreme right and this becomes really very dangerous. In France, the extreme right wing candidate will probably be in the second round of the presidential elections of 2012. In Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, right and extreme right wing parties have almost 50 % of the vote. So discontent is widespread, but not always geared to leftwing alternatives. People think their problems can be solved by stopping migrants to come to Europe or by sending away those who are here. The reality is that these people do all the dirty and badly paid work that Europeans do not want to do.
How the mainstream media in Europe is positioning itself on the pact and the protests? And about the social media?
FM – Almost all our media are mainstream, which is neoliberal. They have created the impression that trade unions are corporatist movements, only trying to defend the rights of their members and taking hostage the rest of society! The center of Brussels was blocked last Friday, and instead of praising trade unions for defending the rights of working class people, media said this was irresponsible and unacceptable.
In Belgium, trade unions are very institutionalized, we have an ‘economy of concertation’, our trade unions are even represented in the board of the Central Bank. They still believe they can negotiate with the government and try to stop all the neoliberal reforms, but I think they will not succeed, especially since the media are also opposing them.
We have a couple of alternative social media, also e-zines, but they are very small and cannot really cope with the competition of the major newspapers, television and radio.
A major problem is that most people, and the media, are not really interested in what is happening at the level of the European Union. They do not even know that the Union is currently intervening in matters it is not competent for. The Conclusions of the European Council of 24-25 March explicitly say that the European Union has no competences, according to the treaty, for speaking about wages, collective agreements, social security, and so on. These are national competences. All the same, they now give their recommendations to states on what they should do. This is a very undemocratic way of working, but very few people seem to care, except the social movements who, unfortunately, do not represent a majority in the population, and who, as I said before, do not have a coherent and attractive alternative.
As a member of the World Social Forum International Council, you are going to the border of Tunisia and Libya to hold talks with representatives of the resistance. Do you think Europe can be in some way inspired by movements from North Africa?
I wish it were true! And maybe it will be true, one day. Last week-end we were in Paris to discuss the actions and mobilisations against the G8 and G20 meetings in France this year. One overall slogan is inspired by the Tunesian revolt: ‘G8 dégage’ (Go away G8).
But again the protests in most countries are not supported by a majority of people who believe these reforms are necessary or who turn to the extreme right for solutions. As for the social movements themselves, they urgently need an attractive alternative. And the governments, just go on in an undemocratic way to impose their reforms. Most political parties and politicians have lost their credibility.
So, as you can see, I am not very optimistic on the short term. But we have no choice. We have to go on to protest and to mobilize, but, most of all, to explain to people what is happening. Here media and social media are extremely important. And we urgently have to work at attractive and feasible alternatives. There will be another major European protest in Budapest on the 9th of April.