ON JUNE 14, marches from all corners of Europe will converge on Amsterdam to protest at the Inter Governmental Conference of the European Union. The marches are against the austerity policies, the casualisation of work and the racist policies being adopted by governments throughout the continent - against "unemployment, insecurity and exclusion". The fact that the marches are taking place at all is a historic step forward for international solidarity - the fruit of almost a year's campaigning, involving unprecedented levels of coordination between the various national campaigns, coupled with broad united fronts within each participating country, which have linked up organisations of the unemployed with those of victimised excluded minorities, together with trade unions and political parties and groupings.
But the marches have also chosen to aim their protest at the right target: the European Union's drive to greater monetary and political integration is being carried through at the expense of massive cuts in the jobs, living standards and welfare rights of Europe's working classes.
At the centre of this orchestrated offensive being waged by governments of all of the main EU member states is the drive towards European Monetary Union (EMU)
- a single currency - which the top Euro bureaucrats hope will eventually embrace all 15 member states. Convergence criteria The Maastricht Treaty in 1991 set the target date of 1999 for the launch of the new currency, and set a series of criteria to measure the extent to which the various European economies had successfully "converged" and created a stable base to proceed. These convergence criteria relate to levels of government spending, government borrowing and inflation in each participating state: * Inflation must be low - between 2 and 3 percent * The public debt of each country must not exceed 60% of that country's Gross Domestic Product * The government's public borrowing deficit must not be more than 3% of its Gross Domestic Product. The criteria must be met during the current calendar year (the 12 months to December 1997), and on the basis of their performance in this "reference year",
countries will be approved or rejected for participation in the 1999 euro launch.
The difficulty for many governments has been that they have been required to squeeze public spending to reduce borrowing and national debts during a period of recession. Attempting to squeeze down public spending with official figures showing 20 million unemployed across the EU' is leading to a wave of attacks on unemployment and other welfare benefits, pensions, health services and education. Maastrichr is a mechanism for enforcing a rigid monetarist discipline on member states.
No scope to renegotiate Some - including the Swedish government - have suggested that aspects of the Maastrichr Treaty should be renegotiated: but it is a binding Treaty, and can only be changed by unanimous decision of all 15 participating countries. The only way to escape from its clutches is for Parliaments of member states to refuse to ratify the Treaty and to withdraw from the convergence process. We say that's what they should be compelled to do.
The British labour movement, and working class organisations all over Europe need to adopt a clear policy of opposition to the single currency.
While there is no reason why socialists should be opposed in principle to the idea of a single currency, the terms on which the actual currency on offer will be introduced are completely unacceptable.
Until now there has been a dearth of open discussion and debate on these questions in the labour movement. But the tremendous support that has come from trade union branches and other organisations to sustain the Euro-Marches shows the real possibilities of building a labour movement campaign against the single currency, and against the Maastricht Treaty itself, and thus increasing the pressure on Tony Blair's government to say no to the euro.
The success of the Euro-Marches, and the emerging coordination of strikes and protests like that around the Renault plant closures, show that new levels of international cooperation are now possible. This pamphlet underlines the fact that we have to link up and fight back, uniting Europe's workers against Europe's bosses, if we are not to be defeated separately - and then exploited together.