Struggling against neoliberal EU strategy ‘Global Europe: Competing in the world’

Theme of the outcome

Others and/or Cross-thematic

Description of the outcome

Since we are fighting for a Europe based on social, environmental and democratic principles and rights -not corporate greed and power- we need to put the fight against the neoliberal economic policies of the EU –especially against the 'Global Europe’ strategy- at the center of our struggles.

The Lisbon Treaty, the EU institutions, the organized power of transnational corporations and their lobbies, the mayor political powers in the nation states, the EU policies like the trade and investment strategy 'Global Europe: Competing in the World', the aggressive push of the EU for new Free Trade Agreements (with Africa, Pacific, Caribbean, Asia, Latin America, etc.) and especially the migration regime like the Return Directive, which reinforced still more Fortress Europe, is resulting in an unsocial, unsustainable, unjust, militarized and racist EU, producing a huge ecological and social debt with the Global South.

The actual financial, energy, food, ecological, and institutional crisis of neoliberal order, which the EU is part of and a main player, will intensify the impacts on peoples and the environment globally, unless we change the current model of finances, production and consumption. Responding to this is an extremely challenge to all of us.

However, there are growing opposition and intensifying struggles to this neo-imperial Europe, both in Europe and in the Global South, as well as a convergence between these struggles, such like the climate justice, trade justice, food sovereignty, migration and anti-debt campaigns.

These mobilizations of social movements, unions and other political actors are promoting and constructing actual alternatives, based on grassroots democracy, participation and economic, ecological and social justice. Which enriches our common struggles to construct a different Europe.

Specific proposals and calls to the social movements:

· To express their solidarity to the Irish No to the Lisbon Treaty and furthermore articulate common mobilizations on the Lisbon Treaty.

· To co-organize the Global Week of Actions against the 'Global Europe' trade and investment strategy, the transnational corporations and EU Free Trade Agreements in April 2009, linked also to the 17th of April the international day of farmers’ struggles.

· To join the common efforts to organize a session of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal –building on the sessions already held on the European transnational corporations in Latin America and the Caribbean- to address the responsibilities of EU institutions and politics in advancing a global corporate agenda.

· To carry the struggles for the rollback of corporate power and corporate lobbying in the EU, by joining the Alter-EU campaigns against corporate lobbying in Brussels and link it to national campaigns against corporate lobby in the parliament and other public institutions.

· To construct and make possible alliances with the migrant movements and link the mobilizations against EU Return Directive and the EU Pact on Migrations and Asylum with the campaigns against corporate power and the EU trade and investment regime as one of the most important drivers to forced migration.

· To denounce, and promote protests mobilizations against, the current solutions by the political elites to the financial crisis, that by using tremendous amounts of public money, puts the main burden of rescuing financial speculators and an unjust financial system on the shoulders of the working people and the citizens of the world.

Seattle-to-Brussels Network
Bi-regional Network Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean ‘Enlazando Alternativas’