Följande appell från den kroatiska organisationen Radnicka borba har skrivits under av Socialistiska Partiets verkställande utskott. Radnicka borba står världsrörelsen 4:e internationalen nära och appellen har bland annat även undertecknats av NPA i Frankrike och Antarsya i Grekland.
In solidarity with the workers, students, the unemployed and pensioners of Croatia
A referendum through which the population will accept or reject Croatia joining the European Union will be organized in the near future.
At the present time we consider that the different politics managed by the European Commissions have had only one goal : to bring neoliberalism into the societies, and by doing so, to subjugate the economies of less developed areas to the interests of European capital which will be detrimental to the majority of society. At the same time, that majority of the population will have no real influence in the decision making process – just like Croatian citizens did not have any real say about joining the EU – and those decisions will not be driven by their needs anyway, but by the interests and needs of giant corporations represented by European bureaucracy behind closed doors.
The neo-liberal practices and financial gambling have led to an enormous economic crisis, as the profit of corporations becomes the driving force behind most decisions.
This crisis has pushed the governments of various European countries to implement the directives of both the European Commission and the IMF. The general populations have had to suffer the consequences of this crisis, which only benefits the privileged classes and the capitalist system which is responsible for this crisis.
Public services such as healthcare, education, environmental protection, transportation or telecommunications are being driven to collapse, as they are becoming open to competition, and are becoming profit-making enterprises affordable only to the privileged classes. Looking at the anti-worker and anti-social policies that have been conducted, it is clear that the European Union does not represent ”a Europe of welfare, personal autonomy and values”, but a Europe of the bosses and for the bosses, where those who own capital and those who work for them can never be equal.
Social resistances have already started, against raising the retirement age in France, against salary and employment cuts in Greece, Spain and Portugal, against the attacks on the education systems in Italy and Britain. Those protests were brutally suppressed, which is not unusual for the member states of the EU, even though political and economical elites like to represent the EU as democratic, and open to peaceful opposition. Behind the slogans about democracy, equality and unity, there are serious violations of fundamental human rights that can be found in European policy toward national minorities and their demands for independence (for example, the situation in Northern Ireland or Basque country), its policy toward immigrants who are being prosecuted and deported (we witnessed how the ‘’problem’’ of Roma people in France was solved), the constant expansion of islamophobia under blessing of statements about the ‘’failure of multicultural society’’ or strengthening of far right political parties.
Workers, students, unemployed people and pensioners struggles, and a necessity for their unification, will bring a foundation for a different Europe, a Europe of workers, the basics of which will consist of solidarity, real egalitarianism and social sense – and such a Europe can only be attained by overthrowing the European Union and its structures.
We unconditionally support this resistances and struggles. They are our common European property, and we will do everything possible in order to support the organization of solidarity, to reinforce them and to implement them, over both European and international borders. We support workers’ fighting against neoliberal policy of the HDZ government, privatization of dockyards and other remaining public assets in Croatia, their fight for taking over the banking and financial systems, as well as students’ demands for free education.
The political and economic elites in Croatia, which are the only ones who will benefit from joining the EU, are giving a false alternatives to workers, students and pensioners in their campaign for a referendum: unless you want total isolation, you need to join the European Union and accept the rules of the free market. This inevitably leads to dictatorship, led by the European ruling classes. Those ‘’alternatives’’ are basically the same, and the only real alternative is to fight against the imposition of such a social and economic system, and to fight for the interests of the working class. Croatia was, and will remain, a peripheral source of profit, because of the nature of capitalism and the Croatian role in this self-interest guided system. The only real allies of the Croatian working class are progressive European workers, students, and the unemployed. Only together can we achieve our goals, and overthrow this dictatorship of capital and national repression.