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Euromarch - the struggle for a Social Europe

by Andy Mathers, 1999

Cologne will play host this summer to the summits of both the European Union and the G8. For 3 weeks Cologne will be the centre of attention as world leaders meet to plan the next stage of their neo-liberal strategy and their opponents demonstrate resistance to these policies and themselves meet to develop alternatives to combat the increasing divide between rich and poor, between powerful and powerless. This resistance is increasingly manifest at local, regional and global levels and organisations are developing which express these tendencies. One such organisation is the pan - European Euromarch campaign against unemployment, job insecurity and social exclusion and this article aims to document its emergence and development and to begin to analyse its significance and potential.

Social and political context

The context for the development of organisations such as Euromarch is one in which global capitalist crisis has been met by attempts to restructure social relations and consequently economic, political and social institutions. Such restructuring has had regionalising and globalising dynamics of which the development of the European Union and recently of the European single currency are concrete manifestations.
Neo-liberalism is widely seen as the dominant strategy underpinning the development of policies which have been adopted by national governments and regional and global institutions alike. The austerity measures associated with neo-liberal policies have been the catalyst for many of the social struggles which have contributed to the development of organisations like Euromarch. In this sense, the Euromarch campaign has been born in a situation in Europe where over 20 million people are unemployed and 50 million live at or below the poverty line. ^[1]

The EU summit in Amsterdam in May 1997 was the rallying point for the series of European marches against unemployment, job insecurity and social exclusion, involving up to 5000 people, which had been snaking their way across the continent in the preceding weeks. The resulting demonstration saw 50,000 people march in support of the »Florence Demands« which had been formulated at the outset of the marches. This highpoint was the visible aspect of the embryonic pan-European movement which was beginning to organise itself at grass roots level. The contacts made as a result of the marches were strengthened and formalised and Euromarch as an ongoing organisation was born.

Euromarch has developed into a network of activists who are organised under the auspices of a pan-European secretariat based in Paris with liaison committees operating in countries throughout the continent. Policy is debated and demands are formulated at open »Assizes« which are held at approximately 6 monthly intervals. Regular coordination meetings are held at national and pan-European levels and these have tended to focus on declarations and organisational matters for the protest activities which have surrounded the EU summits in Amsterdam, Luxemburg (November 1997), Cardiff (June 1998), Vienna (December 1998) and in Cologne (June 1999).

A Euro-wide paper, »Marches-Europeenes-News« is produced regularly and this is supplemented by nationally based publications. Much communication takes place via e-mail and use of the internet as continent wide meetings are costly to arrange and incur sizeable travel expenses. However, the »Assizes« are well attended with 500 participants from many countries. These gatherings, together with the counter-summits, provide opportunities for the exchange of information, experiences of struggles and for debate over policies, demands, actions and ways of organising the movement. Although debate can become heated, there is a spirit of cooperation which is just as well with the large number of languages being spoken. The organisation of summer camps in Thessalonika (1998) and Cologne (1999) provides another forum of debate for activists from diverse movements.

Those involved in Euromarch range from rank and file trade unionists, through political activists to social movement campaigners, but the most numerous and prominent participants have so far been unemployed activists. This reflects Euromarch«s central focus on unemployment and its main task which has been the mobilisation of marches and marchers against unemployment. However even within this issue there is a diversity of organisations which come under the umbrella of the Euromarch organisation. For example in France there are several unemployed organisations like Action Chomage!, APEIS, CGT (Unemployed Workers Committee) and MNCP which organise together despite their differences. The political perspectives of Euromarch activists also vary from left-wing Social Democrats, Socialists, Greens, Communists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, non-aligned etc., all of whom find Euromarch a worthwhile forum within which to pursue their particular politics. Similarly there are activists from a wide range of social movement campaigns. A list of the groups represented at the recent Cologne »Assizes« included campaigns for the rights of women, Black people, migrants, asylumseekers, pensioners, the homeless, students, school students as well as environmental and anti-fascist campaigns. Such a broad range of involvement is encouraged by Euromarch and in this vain Euromarch activist, Gitti Goetz, in her appeal for the Vienna demonstration hoped that »organizations and groups of unemployed, women, trade unionists, asylumseekers, and homeless will not only take part, but also become active themselves with their own ideas, forms of action and demands.« Such a diversity of participants is reflected by the breadth of demands which have been formulated.

With such a new movement and one so broad and diverse as Euromarch, encompassing people, campaigns and movements from across a continent, it is not surprising that the demands formulated to date, have been general ones. Euromarch has reasserted the right to work and has declared its opposition to the intoduction of »Workfare« style programmes. It argues for a drastic reduction in working hours without loss of pay and for the immediate introduction of a 35 hour working week. The idea of a guaranteed minimum income underpins the demand of a unified European social welfare system which would provide basic social rights to health, housing, education and welfare regardless of gender or nationality. Euromarch is campaigning for the imposition of a Tobin Tax on capital and speculation and for a uniform property tax. It declares itself in favour of equal rights for all and against any form of racism and social exclusion, including controls on immigration which restrict the right to the free movement of people. Such demands clearly have the potential to attract the support of the people of Europe but their translation into concrete policies is no easy matter as conditions in different countries vary so greatly and the debate around specifics may lead to divisions in the unity achieved around the general demands. There have also been claims that the outlook is too defensive and that minimalist demands have been shaped in order to maintain maximum unity but that the demands and resulting policies will not challenge the capitalist system which is at the root of neo-liberal restructuring.

As is the watchword of progressive movements, after the debate is over all actions need to have the unified activity of all participants. However it is the diversity of activities which has come to characterise the struggles of groups which come under the Euromarch umbrella. Action at a European level has also had a catalytic effect on national activities, for example the Amsterdam demonstration provided the impetus for the campaigns of the French unemployed movement in the winter of 1997, and this activity then fed back into the Euromarch organisation which has a strong French presence. The large number of occupations of unemployment offices played a central role in the French campaign and challenged the Labour Minister, Martine Aubry, who ridiculed the movement and claimed that the occupations were the actions of a tiny minority. In Germany there were fewer occupations but more regional and local demonstrations which coincided with the monthly publication of unemployment figures. This served to keep the issue of unemployment a prominent one, especially in the run up to the national elections. In Spain, the unemployed also took to the streets but this time to form blockades to draw attention to their situation and to the increasingly casualised nature of work where 90% of all new contracts are temporary. In Italy the unemployed and other people living in precarious situations, who have become known as the »Invisibles«, have asserted their right to free transport. In the run up to the 1997 demonstration this took the form of an occupation of trains and the successful demand to be taken to Amsterdam. Euromarch has also played a part in linking struggles and this was highlighted at the Cardiff summit where the demonstration was followed by a street party protest organised with the assistance of the »Reclaim the Streets« organisation.
A significant aspect of the protests has been their cross-national dimension. Activists from across the continent have been present at the nationally based actions and they have been able to draw attention to the commonality of the diverse struggles. Resistance to the introduction of »Workfare« style programmes has received an echo in the actions from across the continent and it is this common resistance that has enabled bridges to built between the various groups and struggles both within and across national boundaries. This bridge building was symbolised by the joint activity of unemployed activists to span the bridge at Strasbourg in May 1998. ^[2]
However there is by no means unanimity over what form action should take. The last Euromarch »Assizes« saw a debate chiefly amongst the Italian delegates about whether another train occupation or a march linking up with people in their communities would be the best way to approach the Cologne demonstration. Behind this division is perhaps a difference in aims with one side attempting to further strengthen the grass roots campaign and the other more concerned with putting pressure on national and European leaders and institutions, especially through use of the media. The pan-national demonstrations which target the EU summits are also being accompanied by counter-summits which have been described as the »European Parliament of the Unemployed«. These provide a forum within which alternative policies can be developed. However here too there is a potential tension between shorter-term policy changes and longer-term social and political transformation.

In its opposition to the extension and broadening of neo-liberal style policies, Euromarch can be seen as part of a growing extra-parliamentary opposition to governments of any political persuasion which pursue these types of policies and to their adoption by the European Union. This opposition encompasses campaigns and struggles in a movement which spans highly organised political and pressure group type organisations which plan their actions carefully to display their opposition, and more spontaneous struggles which are more sporadically organised and focus around everyday resistance to neo-liberal policies. The differing perspectives of participants are not so easily identified but a contrast can be made between those who see such a movement as a source of social democratic renewal and those whose aim is to develop a more fundamental challenge to the existing order by building an explicitly anti-capitalist movement. In this sense key Euromarch demands like that for a minimum income can be viewed as the basis of a »Social Europe«, but the meaning of the word »Social« is itself subject to debate and its content will be an object of struggle.
With the election of social democratic governments in several key countries a situation has arisen in which social democratic parties are in office in the majority of EU countries, but these parties are generally carrying out neo-liberal policies. Euromarch could be seen as a way of exerting pressure on these parties to alter the course of their policies at the national and EU level. Alternatively, Euromarch could be viewed as a way of linking and coordinating struggles with a view to developing an anti-capitalist strategy to challenge not just government policies but also the whole dynamic of capitalist restructuring. In this sense the debates which are occuring are debates about the orientation of the labour movement and what Christophe Aguiton (Euromarch Secretary) calls a redefinition and reconstruction of the working class and its relationship to social movements.

In this wider struggle, building international, as well as European wide, links are seen as central to the development of Euromarch. Strong links have already been made with unemployed organisations in South Korea and with the land rights movement in Brazil. Euromarch will be raising money to bring over representatives of such movements to take part in the activities and demonstration in Cologne. Moreover the understanding of the global dimension of struggles has led to an extension of the actions surrounding the EU summit in Cologne in late May to include the G8 summit in June. Contact has been made with many organisations worldwide to ensure that joint actions can be organised to bridge the three weeks which separate the two summits. These three weeks will provide the opportunity for debate and action which will be truly global in character and will represent global resistance to the policies of neo-liberalism.

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Graham Taylor who read the drafts of this article, the ideas and any errors within however remain my own.