The EU of imperialist wars, capitalist exploitation, anti-communism and Lenin’s timely work “On the slogan for a United States of Europe.”

Comrades,

On behalf of the CC of the NCPN we greet all parties present here today. We thank the KKE for hosting this important meeting. 

The European Union, as an imperialist union, expresses the interests of the most powerful monopoly groups in Europe.Our interventions and contributions are necessary to expose the reality of the EU to the peoples of Europe. The daily life of millions of Europeans is being subjected to the whims of the internal European markets and its external pushes to secure its interests, against the interests of the people. As European communists, we must organize the peoples of our countries together against the imperialist EU, against capitalism. 

Already more than a hundred years ago, Lenin stated: ‘a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary.’ And it appears it has become the latter of the two options. Of course, global power relations have shifted in contrast to Lenin’s times. The power thatEuropean capital boasted a century ago with its vast colonial territories, has waned. 

This decline in power, which was forced upon the bourgeoisie of various European countries, after the European, imperialist nations fought the destructive second World War and as a consequence were too weak to maintain the colonial world order,necessitated the creation of internal markets of a larger volume than the boundaries of the nation-states, an imperialist union. 

Those who would claim this development was a mission of peace and democracy, aiming to prevent another imperialist war, are merely covering up the true power dynamics of European capital with nicely sounding words. European capital has had no moral qualms about waging war abroad during the decades since the founding of the European Union and its predecessors. It merely lacked the relative strength to continue fighting each other. 

The European capitalists had no qualms about invading the MiddleEast, about bombing Yugoslavia, and now about fuelling a proxy-war with Russian capital at the cost of the lives of the Ukrainian and Russian people, risking the lives of the peoples of their own countries as well and making them a target for retaliation. We can see its discussions about ramping up the war economy live on the evening news, with reports about the numbers of grenades that ‘our’ warmachine is producing for the front. 

Today we also see within the EU the disastrous results of this unification of European capital interests. Wages are being suppressed, workers’ rights are being taken away and a housing crisis is forced upon the peoples of Europe. All of this happens under the guise of a free internal market. It is a game of divide and conquer that the European capitalists continue to play, hand in hand with the various national bourgeois governments. 

In the Netherlands, workers, students and others are struggling against these trends with strikes and protests, and are organizing a response against the warmongering of the reactionary Dutch government, of the EU and NATO, which sacrifice their lives on the altar of profit. Massive austerity cuts in, amongst others, education and other social rights, are being pushed through with the argument that now is the time to invest in our “defense” systems. Repression against the resistance and solidarity movements, amongst others with the Palestinian people, whom are being slaughtered by the murderous state of Israel, is increasing under various pretexts. 

The New Communist Party of the Netherlands is a steadfast part of the struggle, which the people of the Netherlands are fighting. We work within the students’ unions, the trade unions and through our party organizations to show the true face of the government and its backing capital. We work towards organizing the people where they work and live, knowing that only through the strength of the people can we halt these plans. 

The reactionary nature of the European Union is clear to anyone who bothers to look at its policies. It was formed to provide the capitalists with a shield against the possibility of workers drawing the power towards them and as such was quickly tied to NATO and the interests of the larger Euroatlantic (US-EU-NATO) imperialist bloc. Today we see its reactionary nature in the anti-communist rhetoric and attacks coming from the EU and its participant governments. They equate communism with Nazism, as if it wasn’t the communists who were amongst those that bore the brunt of fighting the Nazi threat, were fighting with the people against fascism, and as if the Red Army did not liberate the peoples of Europe from fascism. Under this guise the EU states ban communist symbols or even persecute communists, showing once again its so-called “democratic” character. 

It is clear that cooperation of the European peoples of the European working class and its allies, is more needed than ever. The European peoples will need to rise to the challenge that is put on their shoulders by the worsening exploitation by the European capitalists and the growing threat of the war-economy and its needs. We need to answer this challenge with the solidarity between working people, with the struggle against warmongering and for a stronger and better organized working class. The answer to capitalist barbarity, represented on our continent by the EU and the various bourgeois governments, is socialism-communism!