A voice for a different Europe

Interview with Susan George
An Phoblacht (The Republic), 24 December 2007

The defeated EU Constitution has been repackaged as the Reform Treaty, which does not say a single word about social Europe. Rejecting it is crucial to save democracy.

EOIN Ó BROIN speaks to writer and social activist SUSAN GEORGE about how important the Irish referendum on the EU Treaty is for democrats and progressives across Europe. With her satirical political novel, The Lugano Report, acclaimed by no lesser figures than Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and George Monbiot, Susan George’s is a voice that should be heard.

“IT MAKES me feel as though I have been spat on. It makes me feel that they have nothing but contempt for the voters. It is as if we didn’t vote, our votes don’t count, our opinions don’t count and we are being told, ‘Just shut up and let the technocrats get on with it.’”

Susan George is not known to exaggerate. Her writing is careful and considered, well-researched and internationally respected. But the decision to repackage the defeated EU Constitution as the Reform Treaty has angered her. She feels “spat on”. That people in France will be denied the right to vote on the new treaty indicates, in her opinion, that EU political elites “have nothing but contempt for the voters”. Of course, she is “not totally surprised” because in, her view, “the EU is not a democratic organisation”.

Invited to Dublin by the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, Susan George spoke to a meeting of political activists in Liberty Hall in November. The meeting was the first in a series of events being organised by the campaign to highlight their concerns about the content of the Treaty and its implications for Ireland and the EU.

Although maybe not a household name in Ireland, Susan George is well-known in political and academic circles across the world. For three decades she has written and campaigned on issues of debt, global poverty, environmental protection and neo-liberalism.

Greenpeace International

From 1990 to 1994, George sat on the board of Greenpeace International. From 1999 to 2006 she was-vice president of ATTAC France (Association for Taxation of Financial Transaction to Aid Citizens). ATTAC promotes the taxation of international financial transactions in order to curb stock market speculation and provide revenue for development projects in the developing world.

She is currently chair of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, an international network of writers whose work seeks to contribute to social justice and who are active in various social movements.

Author of 14 books, translated into many languages, Susan George is best-known for her ground-breaking studies of global poverty, food insecurity and the impact of debt on the developing world. Since the publication of How The Other Half Dies (1976), she has been a trenchant critic of the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. More recently she has focused much of her attention on the World Trade Organisation and the impact of trade liberalisation on the world’s poor.

John Pilger described her 2003 book, The Lugano Report, as “an extraordinary, original book of exquisite irony, a kind of Catch-22 of capitalism”. Noam Chomsky said, “with acid wit and sombre truths, The Lugano Report brilliantly portrays, through the eyes of its imagined but all too realistic planners, a world that may be heading for deep trouble”. George Monbiot described the report as “a brilliant and innovative means of exposing a world order that serves only the strongest. A compelling satire, packed with information, this is the work of an author in complete control of her subject.”

The EU Constitution

In 2004, ATTAC France took a decision to oppose the EU Constitution. In their view, the treaty was promoting neo-liberalism, poverty, insecurity and mass-unemployment. On 29 May 2005, in the biggest ever turn-out for an EU-related poll, 55 per cent of French voters rejected the EU Constitution. The 70 per cent turn-out was in sharp contrast to the 45 per cent turn-out for the 2004 European parliamentary elections.

As vice-president of ATTAC France, Susan George played a central part in the campaign. Opinion polls had been indicating for some time that the ‘No’ side was gaining ground. There was widespread shock across Europe that France, one of the union’s founding members, rejected the Treaty. George explains the result as a consequence of “the spirit of the French Revolution”.

“It seemed to me to be in the long line of French movements on the left for human emancipation. Once people actually found out what was in the treaty it was quite natural to vote ‘No.’”

The French said ‘No’ because the treaty was “a blueprint for neo-liberal economics and privatisation, giving no protection to public services and very little protection for the environment”.

The Reform Treaty

Following the rejection of the treaty by the French and then the Dutch, the European Commission announced a “period of reflection”. Eighteen months later, the Council of Europe agreed the Reform Treaty, containing 96 per cent of the articles of the EU Constitution. George believes that, during the intervening period:

“The European Council and Commission were trying to figure out the best way to mask the fact that they were going to try and shove the same thing down our throats. You can’t just say that the French and the Dutch voted wrong so we’re going to hand them the same text again. They had to find a way to hide what they were doing.”

That the Reform Treaty is almost identical to the EU Constitution is not in doubt. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, speaking to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in July 2007, said:

“In terms of content, the proposals remain largely unchanged – they are simply presented in a different way.” Giscard d’Estaing, former President of France, was chair of the convention that drew up the Constitution.

As a life-long campaigner for trade justice, George is particularly concerned about the implications of the Reform Treaty for the developing world.

“The relationship between developed Europe and the global south is going to be profoundly changed,” she believes. Articles promoting unfettered international trade and transferring power for international trade negotiations to the EU “would enable the EU to push through exactly the kind of treaty that Peter Mandleson is negotiating right now with the African Caribbean and Pacific Countries, 78 of the poorest countries of the world”. The European Commission agenda of seeking to open up developing world markets to European corporations, irrespective of the impact of such policies on the world’s poor would be strengthened if the Reform Treaty is passed.

“The EU will use these new powers in the Reform Treaty to do exactly what he pleases,” says George, “and people from Trócaire and other development organisations can complain all they like to the Irish Government but the Irish Government is not going to be able to do anything about it.”

George is also dismissive of those who argue that the Reform Treaty is Europe’s best hope of defending the gains of Social Europe in the face of globalisation. “I don’t see how anybody can argue that,” George says in exasperation. “There is not a single word about Social Europe in the Treaty. On the contrary, this is a treaty to enrich the elites further. It is a treaty that is going to continue to crush democracy. And it is a treaty that is going to break down the capacity of the state to provide for its citizens.”

George contends that the motivations behind the drafters of the treaty are best summarised by liberal economist Adam Smith’s famous phrase: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.”

Despite strong opposition to the Reform Treaty, Susan George cannot be described as anti-European. In her 2004 book, Another World is Possible If… she argued the case for a strengthened Social Europe as a global counterweight to US-led corporate globalisation and militarisation.

Rejecting the Reform Treaty for George is a crucial aspect of her alternative.

“I want to open up some space. We have to keep saying no until they get the point and we can sit down and have a real discussion about the future of Europe, one which would include electing a convention which would draft a new treaty but only after a lot of debate.”

She adds:

“Europe ought to be an alternative model to the United States, promoting social solidarity, human development and peace.”

With opinion polls indicating that 62 per cent of the Southern Irish electorate is undecided on the Reform Treaty, Susan George’s arguments are a reminder that opposition to the EU and opposition to the Reform Treaty are not the same thing.

• Susan George’s new books, We The Peoples of Europe (Pluto) and Culture in Chains: How the Religious and Secular Right Captured America (Polity), will be published in 2008.

An Phoblacht

Although commenting on the Dutch and French rejection of the Constitution (was it as long ago now as 2005?!) Praful Bidwai’s article from the Khaleej Times remains just as relevant to the Lisbon Treaty.

It highlights in clear terms why the Lisbon Treaty is unacceptable to democrats and why it is now so important for all Europeans to involve themselves in an evolutionary political struggle.

Apathy or disdain are no alternatives. Indeed they are the very weaknesses the rulers invite and encourage in order to defeat democracy.

The Vote for a Gentler and More Democratic Europe
Praful Bidwai, Khaleej Times, 5 June 2005
http://tinyurl.com/55vrtv

As the powerful impact of the emphatically negative French and Dutch verdicts in the referenda on the European Union’s new Constitution sinks in, it becomes increasingly apparent that the vote may not have been driven largely by isolationism, national chauvinism or xenophobic fears about immigration, as many had expected.

These sentiments did form a significant (but minor) component of the reasons behind the ballot in the two countries. But the dominant consideration seems to have been just the opposite: the urge for a more democratic EU that respects, defends and extends its citizens’ rights and strives for a humane common future for a Social Europe, which the conservative, pro-corporate Constitution would have negated.

It is equally apparent that the impact of the referenda, which render the Constitution null and void, will extend to the larger world beyond Europe. If a democratic debate now opens up, focused on the aims and purposes of the European project, it will pose major issues about whether and how the EU can contribute to a more balanced, equitable, non-hegemonic world order and provide a counterweight to the United States, or whether it would be content to be an emulator-competitor of the US on Washington’s terms, and thus help further distort the global order. So all of us have a stake in the debate over Europe.

First, the 70 and 62 per cent turnouts respectively in France and the Netherlands mean that the EU seems important to its ordinary citizens and evokes strong emotions – not just of anger (at ruling governments and persistent unemployment), and fear (of a loss of identity), but also nobler ones like defence of humane values. These latter probably played a far more important role in the overall “no” vote. They certainly explain the success which the pro-integration Left and progressive social movements had in forming the core – and the coherent part – of the “no” coalition and in mobilising large numbers of people, including the youth, not to speak of fence-sitters at the last stage of the campaign.

The EU vote, especially in France, reflected a class divide. The upwardly mobile professionals voted “yes”. But the working class, facing 10 per cent unemployment and grave economic uncertainty, rejected the “Europe of the Bosses”.

The public debate generated by the Constitutional referenda has clearly reflected a conflict between two ideas: that of a kinder, gentler Europe, and a Europe that projects power and wants to dominate. There’s a tussle here between two agendas: one of the people and social rights, and the other of “free markets” and corporate privilege.

The Constitution was basically dominated by the second agenda. The Convention which drafted it was established through nomination. It was mainly comprised of representatives of governments and national/European parliaments, and generally excluded civil society organisations. This was in keeping with the EU’s evolution in recent years, especially after the elitist Maastricht treaty.

The Constitution is an unwieldy 400-page-plus document, with 448 articles. Very, very few people have read it. Nor has the media summed up its provisions accurately or fully. The Constitution is almost impossible to amend. Any change requires a consensus at three levels virtually impossible to achieve. It perpetuates top-heavy structures like the democratically unaccountable European Central Bank. It would also have created an individual EU president with a term of 30 months in place of the more democratic six-month rotating presidency.

Similarly, by amending the consensus rule, under which all EU decisions had to be unanimous in the 25 member-states, it gives excessive powers to the Big Four (Germany, France, Britain and Italy) and discriminates against smaller states by stipulating a majority of only 65 per cent of citizens and 55 per cent of states.

The statute erodes the democratic decision-making space on immigration and social policy and grants the veto to national parliaments only for defence, foreign policy and taxation. The emphasis, however, is on a common foreign and security policy. An especially egregious feature of the Constitution is that it contains policy prescriptions especially “free market” dogmas. Policy is a legitimate function of the government of the day, not the Constitution.

The Constitution subordinates hard-won social rights to so-called free competition, and treats corporate interests as sacrosanct. For instance, it whittles down the fundamental right to work, to the right to look for a job! It removes valuable social protections. And it mandates that public services like water supply, healthcare and education be thrown open to “competition” and thus be privatised. The Constitution would have completed and sealed the long under-way transition from social Europe to corporate Europe.

At a seminar in Amsterdam, which I attended, Susan George, the famed author of How the Other Half Dies noted that the word “competition” occurs 47 times in the text. While “market” occurs 78 times, “social progress” is completely missing!

Equally disturbing is the obligation of each member state to “improve its military capabilities”. The EU, which spends half as much as the US on the military (in GDP terms) is being asked to compete with America and match its spending on military research too.

A related EU defence strategy paper calls for military “intervention anywhere”, which is “early, rapid, and when necessary, robust”. It says: “We should be ready to act before a crisis occurs.” This is similar to the obnoxious Bush doctrine of pre-emptive/preventive war!

The ultimate irrationality is that the EU’s new militaristic orientation is unrelated to any external threat!

The Constitution’s defeat precipitates a fresh crisis. This can be resolved only by deciding one central issue: what kind of Europe is desirable – an arrogant, powerful superpower unkind to its own citizens, or a federal entity that respects equality, caring-and-sharing and justice, and wants to reform the iniquitous world order?

We can only hope that such a debate gets going soon and that the EU emerges as a genuine alternative model to the hegemonic American one. Only thus can it live up to its original promise of creating an order where nations don’t go to war, execute people or subject them to the market’s brutalities.

Copyright 2005 Khaleej Times