BY JONATHAN STRAUSS
COPENHAGEN — "We want a totally different agenda", Enhedslisten (Red-Green Alliance) MP Karl Albrechtsen, from Denmark, told the "Europe after Nice" conference held here on March 3-4.
Attended by 160 delegates from 31 European countries, the RGA-organised conference discussed what attitude the left should take toward the capitalist-run European Union in the wake of the adoption at the December summit of EU ministers in Nice of a treaty aimed at transforming the EU into a federal structure, with a European constitution convention projected for 2004. Some of the chief mechanisms of a federal European state are already being established with a common currency and the creation of a Franco-German European Rapid Reaction Force.
Albrechtsen and the representative of the Swedish Vansterpartiet (Left Party), Jonas Sjostedt, said in their speeches that they would like to see their countries withdraw from the EU. RGA member of the European Parliament Ulla Sandbaek explained to one workshop that what is needed are networks of voluntary cooperation among peoples and states. This would also open European nations to more active international cooperation beyond Europe.
Polish academic Boleslaw Rok, and also a paper from Hungarians Annamaria Artner and Laszlo Andor, argued their countries had already suffered the costs of opening their markets to West European capital but hadn't received the benefits of the higher business, social and environmental standards of the EU. To be considered for the admission to the EU, economic deregulation had had to be implemented in the Eastern European countries, but their entry has since been frequently postponed.
Artner and Andor wrote there are "'sunk costs' that should not be ignored until there is hope for some return from the enlargement process for the associated countries", while Rok suggested "businesses could successfully combine economic competitiveness and social responsibility — it pays to be ethical".
Greens England and Wales European parliamentarian Caroline Lucas pointed out, however, that the privatisation of social services, such as the railways, in Eastern Europe was now proceeding under the banner of EU "enlargement".
A paper presented by Luigi Vinci from Italy's Party of Communist Refoundation argued that for his party the EU was a historical, cultural, political and economic given and suggested possible convergence around agreement on the principle of no forced unity among the nations of Europe, opposition to the transformation of the EU into a federation and the pursuit by the left of policies consistent with the EU being a confederation with powers vested in the parliaments of the member states.
Somewhat at a tangent to the discussion of the future of the EU as an institution, but in fact connected with it through the questions of achieving democratic functioning and the adoption of a Europe-wide or internationalist perspective were two contributions to the conference on the character of the transformation needed.
English Green Colin Hines, author of the recently published Localisation: a Global Manifesto, argued the new century's politics would take the form of globalisation versus localisation. Europe could form a sufficiently large geo-economic bloc to fight the drive to "international competitiveness" and replace this with more localised production and decision-making about this. Protection of national markets should be gradually reintroduced, he said, as the means to support the rebuilding of local economies everywhere, with trade restricted to the provision of goods not able to be locally produced, and the movement of capital controlled.
Boris Kagarlitsky, a Russian author and academic, said the left has vision but not politics, when the reality is class struggle, waged at the capitalists' initiative. Two key intermediate steps need to be pursued to demonstrate the logic of the need to transform society, which he suggested were: to promote and expand the productive public sector on a democratic and ecologically sustainable basis, and to fight for a more open and democratic state, linking this to social struggle.