THERE IS an urgent need for a labour movement campaign against the Maastricht Treaty, to give voice to the socialist case against the new bosses' Europe.
The treaty itself is quite unambiguous and makes no apologies for its central aims, which it sets out with brutal frankness.
Crucial to the whole operation is the creation of European monetary union. To bring that 'harmonisation' of the economies. And this in turn means cutting national budget deficits and reducing inflation to levels acceptable to the most powerful EC governments.
Or, to put it more bluntly, it means dagator and out of the Treates pepina:
Member States shall avoid excessive government deficits'. The same article outlines a complex paraphernalia of measures for checking that member states comply with this provision, including eventually levying fines and other punishments.
Cutting budget deficits will radically alter the way in which social policy func tions in EC states. State subsidies to the welfare state in many countries, and especially Britain are going to be savaged.
'Price stability is mentioned as a crucial goal many times in the treaty. For example Article 105 on monetary objective of the ESCB (European System of Central Banks) shall be to maintain price stability.
It is not just the welfare state which will be crushed by this deflationary regime. In every country but Germany the economy depends on open or hidden state subsidies and support. Without it, important areas of Buropean industry - those outside the German-dominated industrial centre of Burope-are going to suffer badly.
The treaty does not deal at length with questions of citizenship and civil liberties. These are requires European policy states: ' The primary elections. Dynamic Douglas Hurd keeps vigilant watch on the Eurocrats mainly dealt with in the notorious 1985 Schengen agreement. But Article 8b of the treaty gives the right to citizens of any member state to vote, and stand as candidates, in municipal and European elections in any EC country in which they are resident.
The same right does not exist to stand in, or vote in, national elections. Giving voting rights in national elections to EC residents is fraught with difficulties, especially since millions of immigrant workers are excluded from national When the Treaty is put together with the Schengen agreement, a frightening picture of "fortress Europe' emerges. Since citizens and residents of EC countries will have extensive rights to move their place of residence within the Community, a wall is being erected against immigrants and asylum seekers.
"terrorism'.
diers from various countries.
the third world.
most right wing press. ing capitalism on a national level. united states of Europe.
Anyone barred from one country in the EC will be barred from them all. Increased cooperation between immigration and security services will step up surveillance throughout the EC, in the name of fighting crime and The treaty (article )) establishes an extensive framework for common foreign policy, and security and military policy. This is already coming about through the plans for a 100,000strong military strike force, comprising solGiven the demise of the USSR, who will this military force be used against? The most likely targets are on the periphery of the EC, in With so much at stake for the working class, it is a scandal that the opposition to Maastricht should have been left to individual MPs, with the pace being set by the A socialist campaign to defeat Maastricht is urgently needed, that will refute the naive view that the vast superstructure of the bosses' EC can be 'democratised' from the inside or annexed through the election of socialist parties to the European Parliament.
There is not the slightest chance that piecemeal reforms legislated through the talking shops of Brussels and Strasbourg • could topple capitalist rule in a postMaastricht Europe, any more than parliamentary reforms have shown any chance of defeatOnly the independent mass action of the working class can confront and defeat the power of capital and its state apparatus, building on the kind of pent-up militancy that has recently been displayed by workers' struggles in France, in Spain, Italy and Germany.
The working class across Europe needs to forge its own international fighting links and a new class struggle leadership that will lend genuine solidarity to the struggles in each uropean country. The chain of European im perialism must be broken at every possible point, as the only serious basis for a socialist