https://themilitant.com/2020/03/07/budget-failure-at-eu-meeting-shows-the-bloc-is-unraveling/
Budget failure at EU meeting shows the bloc is unraveling
article
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 10
March 16, 2020
DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY STOCK Greek teachers protest against layoffs
in Athens, March 21, 2014. “Merkel out” sign shows anger over Berlin’s
demand that
Athens impose greater “austerity” on working people to get new EU loans.
In 2018, Greek rulers agreed to restrictions on social spending for next
40 years!
figure
Greek teachers protest against layoffs in Athens, March 21, 2014.
“Merkel out” sign shows anger over Berlin’s demand that Athens impose
greater “austerity”
on working people to get new EU loans. In 2018, Greek rulers agreed to
restrictions on social spending for next 40 years!
DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY STOCK Greek teachers protest against layoffs
in Athens, March 21, 2014. “Merkel out” sign shows anger over Berlin’s
demand that
Athens impose greater “austerity” on working people to get new EU loans.
In 2018, Greek rulers agreed to restrictions on social spending for next
40 years!
figure end
A rancorous summit over the European Union’s effort to adopt a new
six-year budget broke up Feb. 21 with no agreement among its rival
capitalist powers.
The deep divisions among them show that far from coming together after
the U.K. walked out of the EU in January, the competing capitalist
ruling classes
face intractable conflicts that are tearing at the seams of the bloc.
And the pipe dream of some day having a superimperialist state in Europe
is shattering.
The governments of Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden refused
to agree to demands they pay more into the coffers to make up for the
loss of revenue
following the U.K.’s exit.
They are backed by the rulers of Germany — the strongest capitalist
power in the EU — who also have no intention of paying more. But the
four northern
governments can no longer count on backing from the British government,
a former ally in their recurring fights over who pays for the
ever-rising size
of the EU budget.
The rulers of these wealthier nations begrudge demands from the rulers
in weaker countries in eastern and southern Europe that want to continue
receiving
special subsidies, dubbed “cohesion funds” by EU bureaucrats, aimed at
papering over inequalities between member states that have very
different levels
of industrial and economic development.
Though it’s far from being a state, the EU member nations have assembled
a vast bureaucracy in Brussels that churns out rules and instructions it
tries
to impose on constituent governments. And it feasts upon a huge trough
of cash.
But the bottom line is that from the beginning the EU was structured to
benefit the ruling classes in Germany and, to a lesser degree, France —
the two
most powerful imperialist powers on the continent — at the expense of
the others.
Last year a majority in the EU’s parliament forced through new rules
allowing it to punish governments by withholding these “cohesion funds”
if they don’t
comply with the EU’s dictates. The move was adopted at the behest of
Berlin and Paris, in order to strengthen the EU’s ability to discipline
new governments
elected in Hungary and Poland. EU bureaucrats claim that anti-EU ruling
parties in both countries ran afoul of what they haughtily call the EU’s
“core
values,” by extending government control over their judicial systems.
As the dispute continues to simmer, EU officials are considering whether
to ask their European Court of Justice to take action against the Polish
government.
These attempts by the rulers of Germany and France to use the EU to
impose their orders on different nations fuel the divisions rending the
bloc. A European
“union” among capitalist rivals that are sharply divided by cutthroat
conflicts for markets and resources was always an illusion. But creating
such a “union”
and imposing its rules made conflicts that were never far from the
surface more volatile — and had ruinous consequences for the working class.
The adoption of the common euro currency by many EU countries in 1999,
supposedly to pave the way for unity and prosperity, gave the German
rulers even
greater clout over neighboring governments. For all practical purposes,
the euro is the German mark under a new name.
Under the impact of the 2008 financial crash, Berlin and Paris
accelerated their plunder of the weaker nations, hitting working people
in Greece and Spain
especially hard. They insisted the Greek government carry out assaults
on workers and farmers as a condition for receiving new EU loans. The
government
obliged, slashing the minimum wage, imposing massive layoffs, cutting
pensions and benefits and hiking sales taxes in the face of protests by
working people.
In 2018 EU bosses forced the Greek rulers to agree to restrictions on
spending for 40 more years!
French President Emmanuel Macron berated those governments at the summit
who opposed increasing the size of the EU budget, complaining, “It would
be unacceptable
to have a Europe that compensates for Britain leaving by scaling back
its means.”
Macron says fund ‘EU army’
Initial budget proposals had included cuts to the EU’s military
spending, which Macron wants to expand in order to create a
European-wide army he dreams
Paris will command.
For decades the rulers in Germany and other powers in Europe have sought
protection under Washington’s nuclear umbrella and the massive military
forces
it deploys. They’ve let their own military forces languish, under the
illusion they can compete with rivals around the world using just EU
tariffs, with
no serious military might to stand behind them.
The EU and its predecessors were founded as a trading bloc by weakened
capitalist classes in Europe in the decades after the Second World War,
when the
U.S. emerged as the uncontested preeminent imperialist power.
As the EU expanded, many of the capitalist parties across the continent
and beyond saw it as a model for a globalized world — in which different
economies
were increasingly integrated and interdependent, and national conflicts
would be a thing of the past.
But in the real world of dog-eat-dog capitalism, where exploiting ruling
classes are driven to compete with each other or go under, such
harmonious relations
can never be realized. Each ruling class uses its state power, including
the armed forces, to press forward its interests against competitors.
Today, with
the prospect of a new economic slowdown and sharpening conflicts,
so-called globalization is coming apart.
This fact is vividly reinforced by the crisis created for many bosses
and their governments worldwide caused by the shutdown of production in
China from
the coronavirus outbreak there.
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