FRANCE Internationalist Rally in Strasbourg, May 11 2019 Down with the antidemocratic institutions of the European Union! A call from the National Steering Committee of the POID (Independent and Democratic Workers Party)

To Working people, young people and activists of all political horizons in the labour movement 

We are calling on you to gather in Strasbourg next May 11, at a grand internationalist rally (1). The so-called European Parliament meets in Strasbourg, a parliament that is in reality but a decoration to disguise the anti- democratic, anti-labour, anti-social measures of the European Union institutions. 

On the 11th of May in Strasbourg we will say “This Europe is not our Europe!” – It is the Europe that privatises, the Europe that deregulates, the Europe that orders austerity plans on all the peoples of the continent. 

Yes, that is a fact that the workers and the young people in France confirm daily: all of the government’s counter- reforms: Blanquer (education); Buzyn (hospitals); retirement pensions; SNCF (French railways) and all the cuts in the public budgets that lead to privatisations and the destruction of public services, all of this results from the European treaties, from the famous “free and undistorted competition”, from the equilibrium imposed by the euro, the Maastricht Criteria and all the measures that are dismantling the labour gains in each of our countries. 

The sole function of the so-called European Parliament is to pursue make- believe in a caricature of democracy. It is a parliament without power, tasked uniquely with camouflaging the capitalist class’s veritable dictatorship, which expresses itself through the institutions of the European Union. 

In Strasbourg, with our comrades from all over Europe, we will say: this Europe of treaties, of criteria and of the European Central Bank dictatorship 

must be done away with. Along with our comrades from Catalonia, whose formidable movement to proclaim the Catalan Republic was stopped in its tracks by the repression unleashed by the monarchy – a monarchy inherited from Francoism and directly supported by the European Union – we will say that this prison of peoples must be done away with. Today there are still dozens of Catalan Republic activists rotting in prison because of that repression. We will say that this prison of peoples, the one that for three years now has purported to keep the workers and the people of Great Britain from implementing the Brexit that they voted for but which is impossible for the powers at the head of the European Union to implement – because that would mean that the people have the right to decide, this prison of peoples must be done away with. 

In Strasbourg we will say: we are supposed to believe that “Europe means peace”, that the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg is the symbol of “Franco-German reconciliation”, that it is the symbol of “the Europe of peace”. But the Europe of capitalists is the Europe of war. The European Union has condoned, supported and participated in all the imperialist wars of these past years: the first Gulf War in 1992, the breaking apart of Yugoslavia, the bombing of Afghanistan, the second Gulf War in 2003 an all the imperialist military interventions on all the continents of the planet. This is the European Parliament that, by recognising self-proclaimed president of Venezuela Juan Guaidό as of January 31, 2019, backed U.S. imperialism’s attempted coup d’état in Venezuela. 

We will go to Strasbourg as a broad delegation to say: yes, the peoples have the right to decide. All peoples have the right to decide. The people in France have the right to decide. They have the right to decide to be rid of Macron, to be rid of the Fifth Republic, and to decide that it is necessary to prepare the conditions for general strike. 

We will go to Strasbourg to say: we demand a sovereign Constituent Assembly. The people of France have the right to decide on their future, on the form and content of democracy. They have the right to break with the links that imprison them in the fetters of the European Union. 

Workers, young people, activists of all horizons, 

We call on you to come to Strasbourg because we are committed to the task of building a genuine workers party that defends the interest of the workers against the capitalist class, just as we are engaged in the fight for the Workers International, with our brothers and sisters, activists and young people throughout Europe and the whole world, because we act for the free and fraternal union of all the peoples of Europe and the world, rid of war and exploitation. 

Down with War! Down with Exploitation! 

Down with the anti-democratic institutions of the European Union! 

For the free Europe of peoples and free nations, freely associated! 

For the free Europe of workers and young people freely associated, everyone in Strasbourg on May 11. 

(1) This internationalist gathering was called by the European Workers Conference that was held in Montreuil, France, on May 11, 2018.