What comes after the EU?

Third International No Euro Forum
16-18 September 2016 - Chianciano Terme (Siena, Italy)
Details
Date: 
Friday, 16. September 2016 - 0:00 to Sunday, 18. September 2016 - 0:00
City: 
Chianciano Terme
Siena, Italy
No Euro International Forum
European meeting of democratic forces opposed to the Euro regime

http://www.noeurointernationalforum.com

Friday, September 16

Opening plenary meeting - 10:00/12: 30

EUROPEAN UNION: WHY IT CAN NOT BE REFORMED AND MUST BE DISMANTLED

Speakers
Anguita Julio, Bernardo Lùis, Höger Inge, Kazakis Dimitris, Lapavitsas Costas, Mazzei Leonardo, Mesec Luka, Montes Pedro, Nikonoff Jacques, Sapir Jacques, Sotiris Panagiotis, Tariq Ali, Zanni Marco

Round tables – h. 15:30/19:00

Round Table 1:
Germany: The different opposition to the single currency
Speakers
Höger Inge, Steinhardt Paul, Zmrzly Thomas

Round Table 2:
Spain: The Spanish left before the dilemma of the EU and the euro
Speakers
Busqueta J. Manuel, Centella J. Luis, Toledano Diosdado

Round Table 3:
Greece: How they destroyed a nation-state
Speakers
Giannis Rachiotis, Mitropoulos Dimitris, Symvoulopoulos Themis

Round Table 4 - h. 21:30/23:30
Brexit
Speakers
Tariq Ali, Lapavitsas Costas, Cremaschi Giorgio

Saturday, September 17

Round Tables - h. 09: 30/12: 30

Round table 5:
France: Alliances for the de-globalization
Speakers
Cotta Jacques, Dessenne Michèle, Perichaud Joël, Yves Rouille

Round Table 6:
How to react to the threat of a new global financial storm
Speakers
Montes Pedro, Screpanti Ernesto, Steinhardt Paul

Round Table 7:
Italy: Who will lead exit from the euro?
Speakers
Bagnai Alberto, B. Caracciolo Luciano, D’Attorre Alfredo

Round tables - h. 15:30/19:00

Round Table 8:
Eastern and North Europe: the resistance to euro-German nomination
Speakers
Mesec Luka, Pesonen Antti, Vasilij Volga

Roundtable 9:
Populism: anathema or resource for Democratic Change?
Speakers
Cotta Jacques, Formenti Carlo, Monereo Manolo

Round Table 10:
Euro-oligarchy, national sovereignty and democracy
Speakers
De Ménard G. Amiel, Franquesa Ramon, Porcaro Mimmo

Round Table 11 - h. 21:30/23:30

Immigration and the End of Schengen
Speakers
Chryssanthopoulos Leonidas, Mori Marco, Muratova Marija, Reiterer Albert, Sotiris Panagiotis

Sunday, September 18

Final Plenary Assembly - 09:30/12: 30

STRATEGIES AND ALLIANCES FOR THE LIBERATION OF PEOPLES
Speakers
Franquesa Ramon, Kazakis Dimitris, Langthaler Willi, Lapavitsas Costas, Nikonoff Jacques, Pasquinelli Moreno, Rachiotis Giannis

***

The betrayal of its self-proclaimed principles of justice, fraternity, freedom, cooperation, solidarity and peace by the institutions of the European Union appeared clearly in occasion of the recently signed treaties with the United Kingdom and Turkey. The mask has fallen and the real nature of the EU has appeared in front of the public.

During its formation, only a little minority denounced the absurdity of imposing a common currency and common institutions on such different economic areas and societies. The monetary regime is de facto based on the monopoly of money emission by a supranational, hyper-financialized system that speculates against the states and the peoples.

Though what may seem absurd has its own rationality: the demolition of national states corresponds to the convergent interests of the different bourgeoisies and first of all of the big financial and industrial transnational corporations, since a long time acting together.

The europeist narrative tries to hide the neo-liberal ideology (which is the essence written in the Union treaties) which states that any political intervention into the market is unacceptable. All obstacles against the dictatorship of capital over labour have been dismantled; no restriction should limit the free movement of capital. Public propriety has to be privatised.

The majority of the European left is guilty for having qualified this reactionary construction as progressive and having justified it. It was an outrageous betrayal of the interests and aspirations of the popular classes. It was like a second “4th of August”1 committed in the name of neo-liberal globalisation cynically sold as being something internationalist.

The European Union nearly imploded under the blows of the financial storm coming from the United States. The collapse could only be prevented through emergency measures with enormous social costs, a load that has to be carried by the working class and the peoples of the so-called “PIGS”2 and/or “peripheral” states.

The peoples tried to resist the social massacre in different ways, with big mobilisations and protests, by polls, giving birth to new movements and political parties. These new movements and parties, sometimes without clear ideological commitment, often transversal and socially heterogeneous, not only express the rejection of social cuts and austerity policies, of the neo-liberal mechanism of extortion and fraud, but also the aspiration to regain the lost or betrayed national and popular sovereignty.

The European rescue packages in form of austerity measures which are still being applied in the member states, have destructive effects.

Indeed, the ongoing development shows that the European Union and the Euro are in a dissolution process. The attempts of the ruling classes to avoid this dissolution can only extend the agony of the EU. The end of the European Union is inexorable. The pro-EU elite, increasingly challenged by the people, will have to give way to political and social forces standing up for change. These will be called tomorrow to lead the nations that have regained their sovereignty. These forces have different class character and pursue different, sometimes even opposing aims. Whereas in some countries reactionary and xenophobic right wing parties are growing (some of them even more liberal and antidemocratic than the ones ruling now), in other countries political mass movements strive for the restoration of democracy and the reduction of inequalities. With these movements it’s possible to build a united front in order to break the European “prison”, re-establish democracy and social justice. Each people can thereby regain its sovereignty and independence.

We know: liberation will not be easy. We all have seen in which way in Greece the state has been robbed of its sovereignty and the people transformed into a mass of individuals without any rights. The neo-liberal supranational institutions can indeed be labeled as social terrorists.

The peoples need courageous political parties with clear ideas and goals, the opposite of Syriza. They will not be able to liberate themselves unless the process of democratic revolution is followed until the end. Any failure of this attempt in the frame of the current crisis of neo-liberal globalization and the disintegration of the European Union and the Euro could easily result in an upcoming new barbarism.

The Third International Forum will open a place for discussion among different democratic forces. This should contribute to the development of a new common strategy as a basis for an internationalist alliance among peoples and nations on the common ground of exiting the Euro zone, the European Union and NATO. Facing neo-liberal globalization we need a process of deglobalization to be conceptualized and put into practice in each of our countries.

All those who want to contribute to this great task are invited to participate in the Third International Forum.

European Coordination against the Euro
• Antikapitalistische Linke Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
• EPAM, Greece
• Euroexit Personenkomitee gegen Sozialabbau, Austria
• Initiative for a Communist Left, Greece
• Manifiesto Socialismo 21, Spain
• P101, Movimento di liberazione popolare, Italy
• Pardem, Parti de la démondialisation, France
• Salir del Euro, Spain

1 The 4th of August 1914 Social Democracy betrayed the Principle of defending peace by voting in favour of the fratricidal war among the European peoples.
2 PIGS is the abbreviation first used in 2008 by journalists for the following four countries of the EU: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

Preliminary speakers' list

Germany

• Inge Höger, MP Die Linke
• Paul Steinhardt, former Frankfurt investment banker, economist, editor flassbeck-economics.de and makronom.eu
• Thomas Zmrzly, activist of the German Eurexit committee

Great Britain

• Tariq Ali, author

France

• Jacques Nikonoff, economist, former speaker of Attac, president of Pardem (Party of deglobalisation)
• Jacques Cotta, film maker, journalist with France Télévision and political author. Founder of the website “la sociale”
• Jacques Sapir, economist and author
• Yves Rouille, former leader of the union CGT
• Gilles Amiel de Ménard, scientist, Pardem

Greece

• Costas Lapavitsas, economist, former MP of Syriza and founder of the European Network Research Network on Social and Economic Policy
• Costas Isichos, Popular Unity and ex minister of the first SYRIZA government
• Alekos Alavanos, Plan B, economist, leading figure of the left movement
• Nikos Galanis, Popular Unity and Initiative of Communist Left
• Panagiotis Sotiris, philosopher and member of Popular Unity
• Dimitris Mitropoulos, Popular unity and Initiative of Communist Left
• Dimitris Kazakis, economist, leader of the United Popular Front EPAM
• Leonidas Chryssanthopoulos, former ambassador for Greece
• Themis Symvoulopoulos, employee of ERT (public media outlet), EPAM

Ukraine

• Maria Muratova or Victor Shapinov, both leading members of Borotba exiled on Crimea and in Donbass
• Vasilji Volga, Union of Leftist Forces

Italy

• Mimmo Porcaro, intellectual of the no-euro left
• Carlo Formenti, sociologist, university professor, scholar of populist phenomena
• Alfredo D’Attore, MP, former Democratic Party, now one of the leading exponents of the nascent “Italian Left” party
• Vladimiro Giacchè, economist (Communist Left)
• Giorgio Cremaschi, Ex-president of the FIOM (CGIL metalworkers’ union), current spokesman for the National “Euro-stop campaign”
• Alberto Bagnai, economist, editor Goofynomics
• Luciano Barra Caracciolo, jurist and editor of Limes
• Moreno Pasquinelli, Movimento di Liberazione Popolare – Programma 101
• Leonardo Mazzei, Movimento di Liberazione Popolare – Programma 101

Spain

• José Luis Centella, secretary general Communist Party of Spain
• Josep Manel Busqueta, former MP for CUP, Catalonia
• Pedro Montes, economist and president of Socialismo21
• Diosdado Toledano González, Salir del Euro
• Manolo Monereo, political analyst and candidate for Unidos Podemos
• Ramón Franquesa, professor for world economy at the Universidad de Barcelona, co-ordinator Frente Cívico de Cataluña

Austria

• Albert F. Reiterer, sociologist
• Boris Lechthaler, Solidarwerkstatt
• Leo Gabriel, social anthropologist and leading member of the World Social Forum
• Wilhelm Langthaler, author, speaker of the Anti-imperialist Camp
• Gernot Bodner, physician and founding member Euroexit.org

Portugal

• Luís Bernardo, member editorial board Portuguese edition Le Monde Diplomatique. Previously member Attac Portugal. Co-initiated the European Lexit Nework

Slovenia

• Representative of United Left (Združena levica)

Finland

• Antti Pesonen, IPU (Independence party)