FIVE YEARS on from the last elections and the so-called European Union is no more than a supermarket, a super-bank and a greedy super-power.
For the continent's ruling classes the function of the Union is clear: dismantle the Welfare State and wage war on the working class, youth, women and immigrants.
Our verdict is unanimous: this Europe is not our Europe.
The up-coming European eleçtions will see left-wing parties and alliances campalgning for an alternative.
The left will enter the Strasbourg parliament in greater numbers than ever before. At the heart of their campaigns is a simple message: Europe yes - but Maastricht no!
In Germany, the ex-Communist PDS (Party of Democratic 100,000 demonstated in Brussels against government austerity Socialism), which, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has emerged as that country's principal left-opposition party, will be fielding a diverse list of candidates. Among them will be a member of the left-wing Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) in Italy.
This marks an encouraging trend amongst radical parties and organisations to build more concrete links - an important counter-point to the existing links between Europe's ruling circles.
In the French-speaking region of Belgium the election campaign coincides with the demands of an important layer of left trade unionists for a new organisation, following financial scandals with the Socialist Party.
The United Left (Gauche Unies) is the result - an alliance which has the aim of continuing after the elections are over.
In Britain, the crisis of Major's government so vividly reflected in the council elections on May 5 seems certain to herald a new Tory debacle in the Euro-elections.
However the complicity of Labour's leadership in promoting the bosses' Europe, and giving credibility to the reactionary Maastricht Treaty, restricts the scope for British workers to cast an anti-Maastricht vote.
Socialist Outlook calls for a Labour vote in the Euro elections not because we endorse Labour's craven political platform, or the careerist, moneygrubbing politicians seeking to climb aboard the EU gravy train, but because it is another opportunity to deal a blow to John Major's Tory vandals.
The path towards a socialist united states of Europe lies not through reformist legislation passing through the talking-shop of a Strasbourg parliament, but through forging practical links of solidarity and joint campalgning between trade unions, antiracist and anti-fascist groups across the continent.
The success and Impact of International Workers Aid for Bosnia, built from small beginnings, offers a glimpse of the type of work that can and must be done.
Vote Labour: and fight for internationalism!
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 4 = anti-racist