Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the early 1980s, and two other Kurdish women were found shot dead in Paris in January 2013.

Carrying banners reading “Turkish state the murderer, France the accomplice”, demonstrators accused the Turkish state of being behind the murders and criticised the French judiciary for what they said was the slow pace of the investigation.

“Today it has been one year since the murder and we still have no answers to our all questions,” Rezan, a Kurdish student living in France, told Reuters. She declined to give her family name.

Chief suspect Omer Guney, a Turkish immigrant in France, was placed under formal investigation within about a week of the triple murder.

Sources told Reuters in October that French investigators had collected evidence about Guney’s connections to Turkey, and the magistrate in charge of the case was about to lodge a formal appeal for information to Turkey.

Turkey has denied any involvement in the murders, suggesting instead they were related to internal disputes in the PKK.

The PKK is outlawed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“The investigation is not making progress, we want justice,” said Ali, another demonstrator in Paris, who also declined to give his family name.

(Reporting by Pauline Ades-Mevel; Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/11/uk-france-kurds-demonstration-idUKBREA0A0AZ20140111

A few students clashed with police firing teargas but most marched peacefully, some climbing on bus shelters to shout demands for the interior minister’s resignation.

Anger erupted this week over the treatment of a 15-year-old Kosovar girl who was detained in front of classmates on a field trip. The government says eight of her family had been denied asylum and were no longer allowed to stay in France.

Such expulsions occur regularly around France as the government tries to limit illegal immigration. But the treatment of the girl touched a nerve, with critics saying police went too far and betrayed France’s image as a champion of human rights.

The students, saying the expulsions are unfair to children, hope to pressure France’s Socialist-led government into allowing the girl and a recently expelled Armenian boy to return to France.

At one high school in Paris students piled green garbage cans in front of the entrance and hung a banner saying “Education in danger”.

“Everybody should have a chance. Everybody should have a job, work and have a family. When children try to achieve that, France refuses, and that is not my country,” said protester Romain Desprez.

The Kosovar girl, Leonarda Dibrani, told the Associated Press from the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica that she wants to return to France. Activists say her Dibrani family fled Kosovo about five years ago because they are Roma and faced discrimination and few opportunities.

“My home is in France,” Dibrani said in French. “I don’t speak the language here [in Kosovo] and I don’t know anyone. I just want to go back to France and forget everything that happened.”

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/17/french-schoolchildren-protest-migrant-explusions-paris-kosovar

Lettre ouverte

Monsieur le Premier Ministre du Gouvernement Grec, Antonis Samaras,

Les intellectuels et artistes d’Europe vous adressent cet appel solennel, au nom de la liberté démocratique, à la réouverture immédiate et inconditionnelle de la radio-télévision publique grecque, ERT.

La Grèce, berceau culturel de la civilisation occidentale, pays qui inventa l’admirable notion de “démocratie” et où naquit le mot même d’Europe, vit aujourd’hui – avec l’illégitime et brutale fermeture de sa radio-télévision publique (ERT) – une des périodes les plus sombres de son histoire moderne et contemporaine.

Le peuple grec, révolté par cette décision pour le moins arbitraire, aussi injuste qu’injustifiable, ne s’y est d’ailleurs pas trompé, lui qui se trouve désormais coupé, sans plus de connexion télévisuelle ni radiophonique, de sa diaspora : cet acte d’une rare violence politique, en tout point contraire aux principes mêmes de la démocratie, rappelle, de sinistre mémoire, la dictature, entre les années 1967 et 1974, des colonels.

Et encore : même celle-ci, cette junte militaire qui ne se souciait pourtant que fort peu du bien-être de ces concitoyens qu’elle commandait alors d’une impitoyable main de fer, n’osa pousser son autoritarisme jusque-là.

De cette très regrettable décision, aussi funeste dans son fond qu’intolérable dans sa forme, vous en êtes, Monsieur le Premier Ministre, le véritable responsable. Cet acte, qui ne vous honore guère, est la négation même – le paradoxe s’avère énorme, vous en conviendrez aisément – du beau nom que désigne votre parti : “Nouvelle Démocratie”, lequel, votre peuple n’ayant jamais été consulté sur cette question (pas plus d’ailleurs que vos alliés politiques), n’a jamais aussi mal porté son titre. Il relève même, en l’occurrence, d’une abusive et très malhonnête arnaque sémantique.

Pis : il équivaut à une trahison politique et linguistique tout à la fois, en totale opposition, y compris sur le plan moral, avec le sens profond du concept de “démocratie”, ce principe que les humanistes que nous sommes souhaiteraient universel.

Ainsi est-ce notre solidarité la plus sincère et totale que nous exprimons aujourd’hui au peuple grec, de plus en plus douloureusement malmené, à force d’absurdes et contre-productives politiques d’austérité ces temps-ci.

Vos très expéditives et sommaires méthodes, inacceptables à tous points de vue, ne font, en outre, qu’aggraver le problème plutôt que de le résoudre, au niveau social, dans la mesure où, en plus de ne point vous soucier de la volonté populaire, vous envoyez ainsi illégalement, sans préavis ni ménagement, près de trois mille personnes aussi désarmées qu’innocentes, lesquelles n’ont certes pas à payer pour les erreurs de leur hiérarchie professionnelle (que les gouvernements grecs du passé ont eux-mêmes contribué, suprême hypocrisie, à mettre à la tête de cette institution), au chômage.

Même votre Conseil d’Etat vous a désavoué, par décision de justice, en ordonnant la réouverture immédiate de cette radio-télévision que vous avez ainsi cru pouvoir impunément liquider.

Il est donc urgent, toutes affaires cessantes, que vous rouvriez définitivement, Monsieur le Premier Ministre, la radio-télévision publique grecque : celle-ci ne vous appartient pas, ni à vous ni à votre parti, pas plus, d’ailleurs, qu’au gouvernement que vous présidez, à l’évidence, si mal.

Elle est, comme son nom l’indique, un bien public, souverain, commun et inaliénable à la fois. Ne spoliez donc pas davantage encore, par cette inique et incompréhensible suppression d’une consistante partie de l’espace public, le peuple grec, que les divers représentants de votre caste nationale n’ont que trop volé déjà ! Et, surtout, ne bâillonnez pas ainsi l’intangible liberté d’expression, sans laquelle il n’est point de démocratie qui vaille ni de civilisation qui tienne !

Soyez donc digne, Monsieur le Premier Ministre, du glorieux passé de votre pays, la Grèce, et de ces grands hommes – de Homère à Aristote, en passant par Hérodote, Hésiode, Pythagore, Epicure, Socrate, Platon, Hippocrate, Sophocle ou Eschyle – qui ont fait son immortelle histoire, tant sur le plan philosophique que scientifique ou artistique : cette Histoire sans laquelle l’Europe elle-même, et donc l’Union européenne en tant que telle, n’existerait pas aujourd’hui. Vive ERT !
Les signataires de cette lettre ouverte: Soisic Belin, journaliste, attachée de presse aux Editions Albin Michel (Paris). Hélène Bravin, essayiste, journaliste (Paris). Marc Bressant, écrivain, Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française. Jacques De Decker, écrivain, secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie royale de Langue et de Littérature françaises de Belgique. Nadine Dewit, artiste-peintre, Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Liège (Belgique). Marek Halter, écrivain (Paris). Jean Jauniaux, écrivain, chroniqueur littéraire (Bruxelles). Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, linguiste, membre de l’Académie royale de Belgique. Giorgio Marconi, fondateur du “Studio Marconi”, galerie d’art à Milan (Italie). Daniel Mesguich, comédien, directeur du Conservatoire national supérieur d’Art dramatique (Paris). Gilles Perrault, écrivain, journaliste (Paris). Michelle Perrot, historienne, professeur émérite des universités (Paris). Patrick Roegiers, écrivain (Paris). Daniel Salvatore Schiffer, philosophe, écrivain, éditorialiste (Paris-Bruxelles-Luxembourg). Annie Sugier, présidente de la Ligue du Droit international des Femmes, association créée par Simone de Beauvoir (Paris). Jeanie Toschi Marazzani Visconti, essayiste, journaliste, éditorialiste (Milan, Italie). Elisabeth Weissman, essayiste, journaliste (Paris).

Source: http://www.lalibre.be/debats/opinions/vive-ertau-nom-de-la-liberte-democratique-51c7bf3335703374da318ea4

A left-wing French activist has been rendered brain dead after being brutally assaulted by neo-Nazi skinheads. Police called the attack against the 19-year-old ‘politically motivated.’

Police described the attack against left-wing anti-fascist activist Clément Méric as “politically motivated incident involving the far-right versus the far-left,” with witnesses saying angry words were exchanged between he and “skinhead type individuals,” according to AFP.

Nineteen-year-old Meric, a student at Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities, suffered multiple blows from the assailants. One of them was reportedly wearing brass knuckles.

Four suspects, aged 20 to 37, were arrested, Paris prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said.

It remains unclear how many people were involved in the attack or how the fight developed.

Méric was reportedly visiting a clothes sale with friends late Wednesday when they got into a confrontation with three individuals. They left to gather a larger group of people, and attacked Méric as he left the building, knocking him to the floor. In addition to injuries sustained from the assailants’ blows, he also hit his head on the pavement.

The deadly blow is believed to have been delivered by a 21-year-old with links to Paris-based neo-Nazi organization JNR (Young Revolutionary Nationalists), AFP reports citing police sources.

He was declared brain dead in one of the capital’s hospitals later on Wednesday night.

Social media exploded in fury at the attack, with some saying “Clement was murdered by thugs,” and others deriding racist right-wing propaganda, pitting the far-right and far-left directly against one another.

Politicians from left and right lashed out at the violence.

“There is no place for small neo-Nazi groups whose enemy is the nation,” Interior minister Manuel Valls said. “A group of the extreme right is at the heart of this … There is a discourse of hate and a climate that favors this discourse. We need to pay attention to this, because they threaten our values.”

Paris-based neo-Nazi organization JNR (Young Revolutionary Nationalists) were blamed for the incident by a collection of far-left French parties known as the ‘Parti de Gauche,’ in a statement released shortly afterwards. “The horrors of fascism have brought murder to Paris,” the statement read.

The JNR has been active for more than 30 years, and is infamous for committing similarly violent attacks since its founding. Left-wing groups have demanded that the JNR be banned if a direct link to this recent assault is proven.

The 48-year-old founder and head of the JNR, Serge Ayoub, told reporters on Thursday that the  allegations were false, and that the beating was likely instigated by left-wingers.

French President François Hollande’s office issued an official statement in the wake of the attack, condemning the perpetrators and revealing that police were under “firm instructions to ensure that the perpetrators of this odious act are arrested as soon as possible.”

“For too long these groups have created disorder and have to be repressed,” Hollande said.

An anti-fascist vigil being held at the London mosque which suffered an arson attack on Wednesday has said they will keep him in their thoughts. Also hundreds of students came to Sciences Po University to pay tribute to Meric.

The Party of the Left has called for demonstrations in Paris to protest against violence by groups on the extreme right.

The European Trade Union Confederation has called a day of action and solidarity throughout Europe on 14 November to fight against the austerity policies being deployed throughout Europe. This day of action will mean a general strike in this country, which, for the first time in recent history, will also be simultaneously held in other European countries.

In Spain, the recession is taking an incredible toll on the population. We have an intolerably high unemployment rate (more than 25%), the welfare state has been rapidly dismantled and public services and labour relations are deteriorating.

With this strike we want to change European policies, which only pay attention to the voices of the powerful. We also want to fight against employment reforms and a policy of dogmatic deficit reduction, which has brought us close to having 6 million unemployed.

Unemployment benefits are being cut. The unemployment rate among young people in Spain is over 50%, condemning our youth to social exclusion or emigration. The education cuts pushed through by the government are depriving many of any possibility of accessing higher education and force a classist, sexist and conservative education on them. The cuts in the health budget and the introduction of prescription charges mean that the most disadvantaged could be left outside the national health system, and the lack of budget provision for thedependent care law leaves thousands of people without appropriate care. As a result, thousands of families are pushed towards social exclusion.

The government’s path is not the way to emerge from the crisis. The sacrifice is not being shared by the whole of society: the economic and financial elites are spared and some even benefit from it, protected by the government. Politicians are shamelessly defrauding the democratic process. This is why we will be striking.

• Fernando Lezcano is communications secretary and spokesman for the CCOO (Workers’ Commissions)

Portugal: Armando Farias: ‘We convey our solidarity’

Unemployment in Portugal already affects 1.4 million workers in a country of 10.5 million. We have some of the worst working conditions in Europe, and the cost of living is still going up while wages come down. Around 500,000 workers earn the national minimum salary (€432 a month after tax). More than 1 million pensioners survive on misery pensions (€200 to €300 per month). This general strike is occurring during a violent capitalist offensive, and for this reason it has very high political significance. Our aims are to stop recessionary policies, to demand the renegotiation of the debt, to defend national sovereignty, to defeat rightwing policies and to adopt a programme of development for our country.

Our strike motto is simple: “Against exploitation and impoverishment”. We are fighting the measures contained in Portugal’s 2013 draft state budget, and we are working against brutal tax increases that will mean cuts to income, both salaries and pensions. We also oppose the cuts in unemployment benefits, in sickness pay and other welfare benefits. As is the case elsewhere in Europe, we’re against the destruction of the welfare state and the overwhelming destruction of jobs in public administration, which brings with it the dismantling, degradation and higher cost of public services.

With this in mind, we convey our solidarity with all of the European workers who will participate in this day of action.

• Armando Farias is head of the commission executive of the CGTP-IN(General Confederation of Portuguese Workers)

France: Bernard Thibault: ’End this downward spiral’

Today in France, more than 100 protests will take place across the country, following the call of five French unions.

Every day in Europe, austerity policies show their devastating effects and prevent any chance of recovery. By choosing austerity against solidarity, European governments, under pressure from the troika, are dealing a serious blow to the social ideal that should animate Europe.

The shock treatments inflicted on workers – particularly in Greece, Spain and Portugal – demonstrate the political impasse leading to the destruction of social rights, which undermines democracy while maintaining despair. It is a crisis that is fuelling racism, xenophobia, and the temptation to move towards isolationism.

Europe, as the former director general of the International Labour Office (ILO) said in June, is following a path contrary to social progress: “European countries the most affected by the crisis are diverting from the core values of the ILO … We seek to reduce public debt, but the social debt accumulates, and it will also need to be paid.” The European Union is now an area of competition between employees and public services, which are under an increased financial strain. It is time we strongly showed our desire for another Europe, one of social progress and solidarity.

Throughout Europe, unions are opposing austerity measures that are sinking the continent. European workers are engaged in one common struggle: to pull Europe out of this downward spiral. Today’s events will allow workers across Europe to act together to express their opposition to austerity and social regression, to demand better working and living conditions, and to advocate for the effective co-ordination of economic and social policies to help those who are most in need. We are calling for a new social contract and stimulus measures at European level, supporting both employment and industry.

• Bernard Thibault is general secretary of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour)

Greece: Tania Karayiannis: ‘This is our only hope’

The constant deterioration of the economic crisis in Europe, especially in south Europe and Greece, has stirred a wave of reactions across the continent. The wisdom of the central political options laid out by the EU, and its persistence in implementing austerity policies that extend social disparities, are the most challenged issues. Governments are now confronted by their own citizens.

In this context, the policy pursued in Greece over the past few years, on the pretext of saving the country from the risk of huge public debt and bankruptcy, is socially unfair and has clear ideological features. It is expressed through the following policies: a continuous wage and pension cut, attacks on labour, social security and social rights, the heavy taxation on private property and the threat of further dramatic public services restrictions.

Such extreme neoliberal policies limit the rights of all workers and vulnerable social groups, in favour of bankers and lenders. They are leading our people to poverty and misery. It is obvious that the solution lies in implementing policies promoting social justice, which would overthrow the doctrine of “competitiveness”. There is no doubt that Europe needs a new orientation and implementation of policies that lead to stabilisation, development, progress and prosperity.

The common and co-ordinated struggle of the trade unions in all European countries is necessary today more than ever. This is our only hope for exiting the crisis.

• Tania Karayiannis is international officer and member of the executive committee of Adedy, the union of civil servant employees

UK: Ben Rocker: ’This isn’t a token action’

The Civil Service Rank and File Network called for action on 14 November to coincide with the European general strikes. But we also did it around very specific issues that workers here are getting angry about.

We’re about to lose any semblance of decent working conditions. The government has subjected low-paid civil servants to a two-year pay freeze while increasing workers’ pension contributions. Workers have less money and struggle to make ends meet. After losing on pensions through holding just three single days of strike action in almost two years of the dispute, the initial response from the Public and Commercial Services union was inadequate. As a result, a growing group from different offices started talking about pushing for action. I was inspired by what construction workers did last year: not only forcing Unite to call astrike over pay cuts and de-skilling, but also building up a momentum that beat seven big employers. It underlined that, if there was a possibility of winning this dispute, it would be thanks to us workers.

My hope is that 14 November is just the start. We’ve already been able to embarrass the union into calling protests on 30 November, now we need to rattle the Cabinet Office. This isn’t a token action. We’ve been pushed too far, and we’re fighting to win.

• Ben Rocker is a member of the Public and Commercial Services union and of the Civil Service Rank and File Network

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/14/why-we-striking-against-austerity-europe

No wonder the protesters are back. They are angry at the backdoor rewriting of the social contract

• Ha-Joon Chang

Rioters beat a policeman during a rally against government austerity measures in Athens. Photograph: John Kolesidis/REUTERS

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those countries became known as the “IMF riots”. They were so called because they were sparked by the fund’s structural adjustment programmes, which imposed austerity, privatisation and deregulation.

The IMF complained that calling these riots thus was unfair, as it had not caused the crises and was only prescribing a medicine, but this was largely self-serving. Many of the crises had actually been caused by the asset bubbles built up following IMF-recommended financial deregulation. Moreover, those rioters were not just expressing general discontent but reacting against the austerity measures that directly threatened their livelihoods, such as cuts in subsidies to basic commodities such as food and water, and cuts in already meagre welfare payments.

The IMF programme, in other words, met such resistance because its designers had forgotten that behind the numbers they were crunching were real people. These criticisms, as well as the ineffectiveness of its economic programme, became so damaging that the IMF has made a lot of changes in the past decade or so. It has become more cautious in pushing for financial deregulation and austerity programmes, renamed its structural adjustment programmes as poverty reduction programmes, and has even (marginally) increased the voting shares of the developing countries in its decision-making.

Given these recent changes in the IMF, it is ironic to see the European governments inflicting an old-IMF-style programme on their own populations. It is one thing to tell the citizens of some faraway country to go to hell but it is another to do the same to your own citizens, who are supposedly your ultimate sovereigns. Indeed, the European governments are out-IMF-ing the IMF in its austerity drive so much that now the fund itself frequently issues the warning that Europe is going too far, too fast.

The threat to livelihoods has reached such a dimension that renewed bouts of rioting are now rocking Greece, Spain and even the usually quieter Portugal. In the case of Spain, its national integrity is threatened by the separatist demand made by the Catalan nationalists, who think the austerity policy is unfairly reducing the region’s autonomy.

Even if these and other European countries (for other countries have not been free of protests against austerity programmes, such as Britain’s university fees riot and the protests by Italy’s “recession widows”) survive this social unrest through a mixture of heavy-handed policing and political delaying tactics, recent events raise a very serious question about the nature of European politics.

What has been happening in Europe – and indeed the US in a more muted and dispersed form – is nothing short of a complete rewriting of the implicit social contracts that have existed since the end of the second world war. In these contracts, renewed legitimacy was bestowed on the capitalist system, once totally discredited following the great depression. In return it provided a welfare state that guarantees minimum provision for all those burdens that most citizens have to contend with throughout their lives – childcare, education, health, unemployment, disability and old age.

Of course there is nothing sacrosanct about any of the details of these social contracts. Indeed, the contracts have been modified on the margins all the time. However, the rewriting in many European countries is an unprecedented one. It is not simply that the scope and the speed of the cuts are unusually large. It is more that the rewriting is being done through the back door.

Instead of it being explicitly cast as a rewriting of the social contract, changing people’s entitlements and changing the way the society establishes its legitimacy, the dismembering of the welfare state is presented as a technocratic exercise of “balancing the books”. Democracy is neutered in the process and the protests against the cuts are dismissed. The description of the externally imposed Greek and Italian governments as “technocratic” is the ultimate proof of the attempt to make the radical rewriting of the social contract more acceptable by pretending that it isn’t really a political change.

The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies – not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract. Especially if they are going to have to go through long tunnels of economic difficulties in coming years, and in the context of global shifts in economic power balance and of severe environmental challenges, European countries can ill afford to have the legitimacy of their political systems damaged in this way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/28/europe-riots-root-imf-austerity?CMP=twt_gu

Revolt against austerity is sweeping Europe. The election of François Hollande has not only opened up the chance of a change of direction in France, but even in the citadels of fiscal orthodoxy in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. In Greece, Sunday’s electoral earthquake has all but destroyed the political establishment that dominated the country for 40 years.

From the Netherlands to Romania, governments are falling under the weight of cuts and tax rises required by the eurozone’s new permanent deflation treaty. In Ireland, the anti-austerity tide is swelling support for a no vote in this month’s treaty referendum.

By rejecting renegotiation of either the treaty or the impossible terms of Greece’s bailout, Angela Merkel has meanwhile turned the struggle over Europe’s economy into a battle for democracy. The Greeks and French have now unequivocally voted to reject a programme the German chancellor insists they will have to swallow regardless.

And it’s not difficult to see why they’re rejecting it. Austerity isn’t working, even in its own terms. Cutting jobs and pay while increasing taxes isn’t reducing borrowing and debt, let alone leading to economic recovery. It’s deepening recession, increasing debt and destroying jobs and squeezing living standards across the eurozone – in countries such as Spain and Greece, catastrophically – as well as in Britain.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg today took the opportunity of their defeat in last week’s local elections to insist there could be no “let-up” in their own austerity programme. That comes less than a fortnight after the country officially sank into a double-dip recession as cuts shrank the construction sector.

Of course they also insisted they would “go for growth”. But as voters across Europe are about to discover, growth policies come in all shapes and sizes, from deregulation to public investment, and the inclusion of plans to make it easier to sack workers in tomorrow’s Queen’s speech makes quite clear which kind Cameron and Clegg have in mind.

But the victory of Hollande, on a platform of jobs, investment, higher taxes on the rich and renegotiation of the eurozone fiscal pact, has already changed the political dynamic across Europe and weakened the German-led axis of austerity. Even the international finance mandarins are shifting ground: European Central Bank president Mario Draghi now talks about a “growth compact“, while IMF boss Christine Lagarde has just discovered that “fiscal austerity holds back growth and the effects are worse in downturns“.

The political upheaval in Greece, however, could have still more far-reaching consequences. Greece’s economic collapse, triggered by the crash of 2008 and deepened by EU and IMF-enforced austerity, is a social disaster on the level of the US depression of the 1930s. Real wages have fallen by 25% in two years, according to the OECD.

It’s hardly surprising that support for the governing parties which brought Greece to such a pass fell from 80% to 30%, while leftwing parties that reject the EU-IMF cuts, privatisations and unachievable debt repayments surged ahead of both the discredited establishment and the nationalist right.

While international attention has focused on the fascist Golden Dawn party’s 7% vote, by far the biggest beneficiary of Sunday’s election was the radical left Syriza coalition, which won 17%. Its leader Alexis Tsipras has been holding talks on the unlikely prospect of forming a government without new elections.

For the past four years, the crisis has culled incumbents without discrimination, from the Republican George Bush and conservative Nicolas Sarkozy to Labour’s Gordon Brown and the Spanish Socialist José Luis Zapatero, while the far right has advanced across Europe by preying on anti-migrant insecurities and posing as anti-establishment outsiders.

It is now being challenged by parties of the left that reject a failing neoliberal system and are retaking social territory which should never have abandoned. Marine Le Pen’s National Front outpolled Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Front in France’s presidential elections. But it’s not Geert Wilders’ Islamophobic Freedom party that has gained most from the collapse of the pro-austerity Dutch government, it’s the radical Socialist party, now coming first or second in opinion polls with up to 20% support.

As the cost of the establishment’s austerity deepens, the polarisation between left and right is portrayed in much of the media as the rise of “extremes”. But it’s both absurd and repugnant to equate racist or xenophobic nationalists, which have kept supposedly centrist governments in power from Denmark to Italy, with leftist parties rooted in social movements that stand for a progressive political and economic alternative.

Nor is there anything “extreme” about an organisation such as Syriza that rejects a programme of social and economic destruction which is in every sense extreme – and calls for negotiation. Mainstream political choices and debates have become so narrow over the years of pro-market consensus that the reappearance of genuine alternatives is apparently too shocking to absorb.

The expectation is now that Merkel will block attempts by Hollande to renegotiate Europe’s austerity treaty, but instead agree to add a vaguely worded growth pact (as happened in the runup to the creation of the euro in the 90s) that would allow extra European Investment Bank lending and infrastructure projects.

If the French Socialist president were then to drive through the kind of cuts implied by his plans to balance the budget by 2017, in a context of continuing eurozone crisis and slump, the risk of fuelling a resurgent and toxic right on the back of social disillusionment is obvious. Either in that case – or of a clash with the financial markets – only a powerful social movement could provide the necessary counterweight.

The future of the eurozone now depends on what happens in Greece, and the risk of market contagion. Some on the Greek left hope to strengthen their bargaining hand with the EU and IMF in new elections. Others are sceptical, as the likelihood of default and exit from the euro looms ever larger.

Greece is a harsh case, where the political battle is now on between radical options of diametrically opposed kinds. But people across Europe are profoundly disillusioned with a market-driven order that has failed to deliver. If the left doesn’t offer a real alternative, others certainly will – with ugly consequences.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/08/left-revolt-austerity-far-right

Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thing.

Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace. He is “rather dangerous,” declared The Economist, which observed that he “genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society.” Quelle horreur!

What is true is that Mr. Hollande’s victory means the end of “Merkozy,” the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a “dangerous” development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn’t and doesn’t; it’s time to move on. Europe’s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent’s best and brightest.

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe’s policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover.

But it hasn’t. And although you’d never know it from much of the press coverage, Irish borrowing costs remain much higher than those of Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. So what are the alternatives?

One answer — an answer that makes more sense than almost anyone in Europe is willing to admit — would be to break up the euro, Europe’s common currency. Europe wouldn’t be in this fix if Greece still had its drachma, Spain its peseta, Ireland its punt, and so on, because Greece and Spain would have what they now lack: a quick way to restore cost-competitiveness and boost exports, namely devaluation.

As a counterpoint to Ireland’s sad story, consider the case of Iceland, which was ground zero for the financial crisis but was able to respond by devaluing its currency, the krona (and also had the courage to let its banks fail and default on their debts). Sure enough, Iceland is experiencing the recovery Ireland was supposed to have, but hasn’t.

Yet breaking up the euro would be highly disruptive, and would also represent a huge defeat for the “European project,” the long-run effort to promote peace and democracy through closer integration. Is there another way? Yes, there is — and the Germans have shown how that way can work. Unfortunately, they don’t understand the lessons of their own experience.

Talk to German opinion leaders about the euro crisis, and they like to point out that their own economy was in the doldrums in the early years of the last decade but managed to recover. What they don’t like to acknowledge is that this recovery was driven by the emergence of a huge German trade surplus vis-à-vis other European countries — in particular, vis-à-vis the nations now in crisis — which were booming, and experiencing above-normal inflation, thanks to low interest rates. Europe’s crisis countries might be able to emulate Germany’s success if they faced a comparably favorable environment — that is, if this time it was the rest of Europe, especially Germany, that was experiencing a bit of an inflationary boom.

So Germany’s experience isn’t, as the Germans imagine, an argument for unilateral austerity in Southern Europe; it’s an argument for much more expansionary policies elsewhere, and in particular for the European Central Bank to drop its obsession with inflation and focus on growth.

The Germans, needless to say, don’t like this conclusion, nor does the leadership of the central bank. They will cling to their fantasies of prosperity through pain, and will insist that continuing with their failed strategy is the only responsible thing to do. But it seems that they will no longer have unquestioning support from the Élysée Palace. And that, believe it or not, means that both the euro and the European project now have a better chance of surviving than they did a few days ago.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html