Thousands march on Barcelona EU summit
Veronica Fagan reports on the week-long protests in Barcelona
Anyone who had any doubts about the health of the anti-globalisation movement should be well and truly convinced by the week of mobilisations in Barcelona that the movement is alive and kicking.
While it is impossible to be precise about the numbers on such huge protests as this, even the British media are saying that there were 25,000 people on the streets on Saturday for the main anti-globalisation march.
This means that this protest, despite the attempts of Bush and Blair to silence the movement in the aftermath of September 11, was of the same order as the magnificent turn out for Genoa last summer.
The highlights of the week were many:
Sunday 10 March 400,000 people demonstrated against the National Hydrological Plan
Thursday 14 March 100,000 trade unionists answered the call of the European TUC, demonstrating for "More Europe with full employment"
Saturday 16 March 300,00 people marched under the banners of the Campaign against Capital and War.
Police violence, which had started on the Friday when protestors in the Gracia area of the city had been attacked, continued on Saturday. Even this didn’t dent the resolve of the marchers – or the enjoyment of a huge open-air concert with Manu Chao and other bands to round off the events.
The various protests took place in the context of a summit in which the European heads of state were determined to push forward with the logic of capitalist globalisation. The official EU web site listed the priorities for this meeting as follows:
interconnection and opening-up of the trans-European transport networks;
liberalisation and interconnection of the electricity and gas markets;
integrating the financial markets, to make Europe a real financial power;
developing a more flexible labour market capable of creating more jobs, and
improving the education and training of Europe’s students and workers and increasing their scope for mobility.
Despite the fact that all the European governments agree wholeheartedly with these objectives, there are tensions between them.
This is both because of their own individual national interests and because some of them feel more constrained about the pace at which they can impose change because of relatively strong trade unions or social movements opposing their neo-liberal policies.
This is the context in which we have seen Tony Blair gain a new best friend – a European counterpart to his alliance with George W – in Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi. For Blair it is irrelevant that Berlusconi’s coalition government includes the MSI, the direct descendants in the Italian political family of Mussolini’s fascist Brownshirts.
The basis of this new relationship, which has infuriated both our own John Monks and Italy’s centre left parties, is particularly based around opposition to the idea that any rights should be given to Europe’s increasing army of temporary workers.
The most contentious debate at the summit itself was around the question of opening up the energy market. France opposed immediate liberalisation.
Both Jospin and Chirac talked tough with the impending French Presidential election clearly in mind. Finally a compromise was agreed, with Germany also backing France. This will open up non-domestic energy, 60% of the market, from 2004.
This was particularly galling for the other leaders given that Electricité de France has aggressively expanded into other European markets that have already liberalised supply. The company already owns London Electricity, the supply business of SWEB and the country’s biggest regional electricity distribution board.
The summit also agreed to boost spending on Research and Development to 3% of GNP by 2010, to raise the average retirement age from 58 to 65 and to provide day care for 90% of working mothers. Agreement was reached on moving towards a single market in financial services.
The right to water
The massive demonstration on March 10, when even the police estimate was 150,000 was called in opposition to the Plan Hidrológico Nacional (National Hydrological Plan) adopted by the Spanish government in June 2001.
The plan calls for the building of 120 new dams and would also redirect the flow of the Ebro River. These projects would lead to the destruction of many designated conservation areas, including the Ebro Delta.
Although the plan was apparently developed to address water shortages in parts of Spain, opponents argue that the plan encourages wasteful use of water, and is not a sustainable solution. They call for a decrease in water usage, especially by industry and public services which waste large amounts of water by failing to clean and reuse waste water.
The cost of all Plan Hidrológico Nacional (PHN) projects will total more than 23 billion Euro, which will be passed on to those who purchase the water, both industry/commercial users and household consumers.
A international movement is growing to encourage more respect for water as a precious, scarce resource. The privatisation of water places control of this important resource in the hands of large corporations, which care little about whether the public has access to safe drinkable water.
Water privatisation is a major problem in many parts of the world. In Durban, South Africa, water privatisation led to more than 200 deaths from cholera and typhoid after water service was stopped to poor neighbourhoods.
In 1999, Bolivia privatised its water resources following a mandate by the World Bank – but was forced to back down after enormous protests.
Most of those marching came from Catalonia or Aragon. The crowd was filled with red and yellow Catalonia flags. Unions and other organisations came in large groups, bringing banners and costumes - one group called "somos las aguas", (we are the waters) representing the "River of Life," walked through the crowd wearing nothing but blue body paint.
Police presence was minimal – just a few police cars were in side streets - and they seemed anxious not to anger the huge crowd. There were no arrests.
Trade unionists on the march
The leaders of the ETUC have made demonstrating at European summits a regular activity over the last few years since Luxembourg – though few British trade unionists would know, given the failure of the British TUC to mobilise more than a handful of people for any of these events.
The focus of this protest was the call for full employment without the abandonment of the social model supposedly approved at the Lisbon summit and against the liberalisation of the energy and transport.
During the demonstration, Jose Maria Fidalgo, the secretary-general of Workers’ Commissions [CCOO], insisted on the need to reach a Europe with full but not deregulated employment in 2010.
He argued: "They have the moral obligation to build a Europe on the European social model. That is – as was said in the Lisbon strategy – to reach, in the year 2010, a Europe of full employment with rights, and not a deregulated Europe without any rights. If they take the latter path, the EU will lack any legitimacy. They must therefore take decisions tomorrow in relation to full employment, to the social Europe"...
Yet again, therefore the leaders of the European unions demonstrated their continuing refusal to see that this European Union is a Europe of Capital, of deregulation, of unemployment, and of war. The whole point about the Lisbon summit in the summer of 2000 was that it promised to create 20 million jobs – by carrying through greater liberalisation. Full employment and job security can never be delivered by this Europe.
At the same time, workers across Europe demonstrated their real anger at the iniquities of the same system – an anger to which the anti-capitalist movement is increasingly trying to relate since the inspirational sight of the metal workers banners on the streets of Genoa last summer.
Police violence and repression
Even before the summit itself started, Amnesty International called on the Spanish authorities to ensure that policing of demonstrations respects the right to peaceful protest.
"People must be allowed to express their opinions, no matter what those opinions are, The authorities have the responsibility to ensure the safety and security of participants in the Summit. However, it is the duty of the authorities to ensure the rights of protestors to peacefully exercise the rights of freedom of expression and assembly."
Amnesty had previously expressed concern about the behaviour of the Catalan police on a number of other occasions including during a protest by immigrants in Almeria in January 2002 and during an anti-globalisation demonstration against the policies of the World Bank in Barcelona in June 2001.
The organisation is additionally concerned that the Spanish authorities have decided to suspend Article 2 of the Schengen Convention between 9-17 March. On 12 December 2001 the European Parliament specifically recommended that member states "avoid blocking borders or denying individuals or groups of people who seek to participate peacefully in legitimate demonstrations the right to cross borders".
Despite this, dozens of buses were prevented from crossing the French border into Spain with no reasons given to those trying to reach Barcelona.
In Barcelona itself the violence from the police started on Friday afternoon when the police started charging groups of protestors in the Gracia area, some of whom were apparently throwing stones.
Friday was a day of decentralised activity throughout the city, in which over 20,000 people took part. Police violence continued on the Saturday with systematic baton charging and the firing of rubber bullets.
The Catalan police seemed determined to follow the model of Berlusconi and their Italian counterparts in Genoa, rather than the lower key approach of the Belgian police during the Brussels summit in December, where at least during the main actions the authorities kept their distance.