Today the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs committee (ECON) has voted in favour of the legislative package on economic governance that enforces EU citizens to pay the costs of the crisis, after having raised billions of Euros to save the very banking system that caused it.

This is another measure of economic austerity that puts even more in cause the European Social model and has a negative impacting in an already weak recovery in growth.

European Left and GUE/NGL MEP’s Jürgen Klute, Nikolaos Chountis, Miguel Portas and Thomas Händel have voted against the package.

The Party of the European Left, gathered in Budapest foe the Executive Board meeting during this weekend discussed the economic and social situation of European countries and stated that  European Union has never yet pushed an offensive against social rights and popular sovereignty as far as with the series of measures the European Council adopted in 24 and 25 March, in the context of its “economic governance” and especially of the “Pact for the Euro”.

The decisions taken, directly cover the seventeen members of the Eurozone, but pressures are being exerted on the other countries of the European Union to follow accordingly. Six of them have already decided to do so.

The President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, describes them as the “greatest change achieved by the Union for ages”. This is true: After turning Greece into a field of ultra-neoliberal experimentation, these structural decisions formulate a European Memorandum, aiming at locking all European peoples into a future of social regression, a new historical phase of unprecedented brutality. The “Pact for the EURO” is the pact against social Europe! It is a silent “coup d'etat” of the markets against democracy.  

The Party of the European Left expresses its absolute opposition to such a pact, bearing, as it does, an ultra-regressive conception of building Europe. The EL congratulates the decision of the icelandic people taken by referendum for the second time, to refuse sacrifices imposed to make them pay for the financial crisis. It gives its full support to the many and powerful social mobilisations which are organized, one after the other, in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, in Great-Britain, Hungary, Portugal and all over Europe.

Through these struggles, European peoples display their disobedience to the ultra-austerity plans. More and more people, ranging from workers, unemployed youth, women and migrants, up to cultural activists are now defending the values of social services, common goods, human working conditions and wages; More and more people are asking for a guaranteed minimum wage, for radical reforms of taxation systems and for a radical redistribution of wealth, “from top to bottom”. Even small entrepreneurs are today under the pressure of the system.   

The European Left affirms its conviction that a social and political counter-offensive of the left and the social movements is indispensable and its determination to promote this project without delay. 

Building this project, requires great efforts of dialogue, convergences and, if possible, joint initiatives with all trade-unions, social associations and political forces, of elected representatives and progressive public figures in Europe. It is the duty of the Left to take up this challenge.

Read the full declaration on the Pact for the Euro, approved on the Executive Meeting here.