Translated "Avante!" article by Rui Paz, collaborator of the International Department
An expressive part of the federalist elites which currently are obliged to isolate themselves from the euphoria of how they greeted the Euro, the Lisbon Treaty and other stages periods of the European Union (EU) integration process, carries on defending that the solution for the current political, economic and social crisis passes by “more Europe!”. They criticize and with reason, Germany’s Chancellor, a dictator as for her threats and acts against the peoples’ sovereignty, but repeat the words of order which lead exactly unto what the German great capital aims at, its interference power reinforcement within the political guidance of the other states’ governments. “More Europe!” in reality, signifies the deepening of federalism, more German hegemony, more social setback and attacks to democracy, more militarism.
In reality, the EU, as gradually proceeds its deepening, becomes, more and more, a real threat against most of the member-states’ sovereignty and a deadly danger concerning the democratic and social achievements conquered through the workers’ and peoples’ struggle, after the Nazi-Fascism defeat.
The brutal offensive throughout the social level is accompanied by an close attack against peoples’ sovereignty and the principles of democracy. Federalism supporters try to conceal that, without the respect for each State’s sovereignty and the will of decision of each people, democracy is not possible.
It is convenient not to forget that the whole EU integration process has run from democracy as the devil from the cross. How many major decisions were approved within the silence of offices, forbidding referendums and popular inquiries? How many electoral processes in which the electors voted against the EU’s biddings were repeated unto the outcome was according to the aimed objectives?
In the moment the “home troika” gathers in Parliament, in order to ratify the so-called “budget treaty”, it is imperative to recall the main objective of the federal leap in process, which is not but the deficit reduction but, with the pretext of the debt decrease, oblige the overwhelming majority of the people to pay the crisis effects, therefore obtaining a fundamental change in the distribution of the produced wealth in favour of the great capital. According to the imperialist logic, the labour-force price ought to decrease unto an unsupportable level for the workers, within all the EU states. It is a same mentality of a concentration camp and slavery, which is to be legalized along with the slogan of “more Europe”.
The more the EU integration process advances, the more the suffering peoples understand Europe’s capitalist integration process subversive and antidemocratic character and the existence of an illegitimate power which is determined to nurture a constant coup situation against the very own parliamentary principles.
Currently, it is easy to verify how the PCP, through Alvaro Cunhal ‘s voice, the late Secretary-General, was totally right, when he warned: “ With federative structures and a really indeed central government, together with common policies imposed by the more developed and powerful countries, with the less developed countries change unto periphery countries with no policy of their own, with the passive and submitted acceptance towards an autonomous NATO, commanded by the United States and dragging along the peoples unto criminal wars - this new Europe smother’s silences and liquidates the less developed countries’ sovereignty, does not serve the peoples and nations interests, nor the Portuguese people and nation interests” ( in the Truth and the Lie within the April Revolution, 1999,p.321).
As in other moments of History, the peoples will ought to defend and restore, through their struggle, their rights and achievements and as well as Democracy itself.
