Resisting Financial Dictatorship – Reclaiming Democracy and Social Rights!
Political declaration & coordinated actions – JSC 2012
Where we come from
Last year, the JSC presented its diagnosis of the crisis. It highlighted its systemic nature – financial, economic, social, ecological and political. This crisis shows the failure of a development model and of two decades of neoliberalism. The JSC also denounced the neoliberal character of the responses by governments. European demonstrations (like that of September 29, 2010) have not up to now been able to reverse the balance of power. Subsequently, we want to continue reshaping this balance of power by all means available and in coalition with all social actors: trade unions, NGOs, social movements, academics and political representatives. (…)
Priority Actions and Campaigns
The JSC proposes to the organisations the following actions and campaigns. Obviously, each organisation is not asked to implement every idea proposed.
1. The seriousness of the current situation leads the JSC to call European forces to converge in their struggles. We need to rebuild a new common European space: the absence of a visible alternative and of a space for mobilisation hinders mobilisations on a European scale. TheAlter Summitis meant to play this role. Today, with several organisations and social movements, intellectuals, and representatives of the European left, we propose the first steps towards this Alter Summit in a process which is open to all forces who want to change the EU in a profound way.
2. We will actively engage in a series of immediate actions to advance our goals. We will be active- on April 7 at the Euro-Mediterranean meeting of the campaigns on citizens’audits of public debts;
- on May 5-6 in Brussels at the CEO-TNI meeting;
- on May 17-19 in Frankfurt on the issue of the ECB;
- at the Global Action Day on June 20, connected to the Rio+20 Peoples Summit, in order to build resistance against green neoliberalism;
- at the Subversive Forum in Zagreb on May 13-19;
- in the EPSU campaign (to be launched officially on April 24) and actions on water as a common good (a paradigmatic one!);
- in the Global Action Day on June 20 related to the People Summit at Rio+20, resisting “green neoliberalism”;
- at the meeting in Athens in September;
- at the project Firenze 10+10 in November.
3. We will develop or support transnational campaigns on the following themes:
- citizens’ audits of public debt, with particular emphasis on the impact of debt on women;
- mobilisation campaigns against the ratification of the “fiscal compact” treaty by the national parliaments, with referendums in the European countries where this is useful and possible;
- ampaign for distribution of wealth (coordination of wages and adequate European minimum income);
- transformation of the role of the ECB, allowing loans to European countries at very low rates and under democratic control, in order to develop employment and public services, meet social needs and begin the ecological transition; and pushing the ECB to buy back the debt on the secondary market, in so far as it is not cancelled;
- Campaigns for tax justice, linked to a day of action programmed for 2013;
- Campaign against corruption (also looking at ways of “auditing” the corruption level);
- Campaign against the Free Trade Agreements and for an alternative trade mandate for the EU;
- campaign in defence of public and universal health services as a social right.
4. We propose the implementation of unitary citizens committees in all European cities, bringing together activists, women and youth movements, trade unionists, NGOs, “indignados” and political representatives, in order to resist the attacks by the EU, and also to build a mass solidarity movement with Greece and all populations in struggle against the austerity programmes – not forgetting the Eastern and Central European countries, who were the first to be hit by harsh austerity measures.
5. We will defend the right of collective action in Europe. Therefore, we will work on the Posted Workers Directive, presently under revision, and we will oppose the adoption of the proposed regulation Monti II, which constitutes a major attack against social rights and the right to strike; through actions of sensitization of MEPs; by considering the advisability of using legal means to counter Monti II and other attacks on our rights.
6. We will create a communication tool to prepare the Alter Summit, to circulate information on the campaigns that we conduct or support, to sound the alarm over the anti-social and anti-democratic attacks in our countries, including the destruction of collective bargaining.
On all these themes, a series of questions has been tackled in the workshops: there are important results and debates, which demand further deepening. These will be collected in a complementary publication.
To read the whole document in different languages visit: www.jointsocialconference.eu/
