hydrarchist writes:

Mayday Dublin 2004
For An Alternative Europe

Irish
people have generally seen the European Union as a
good thing, for reasons that include investment in
infrastructure and farm subsidies.

But
increasingly the EU is an excuse for privatisation,
for shifting the burden of taxation onto you and
for Ireland's increasing involvement in military
adventures.

We are
struggling with others across Europe for a
different type of Europe, one that puts people
before profit and does away with top-down decision
making. Join these protests in the struggle for an
alternative Europe.

Fortress
Europe

In
advance of joining the EU, the 10 accession
countries have had to open their borders to the
flow of money, but the movement of the peoples of
these countries is to be limited for up to seven
years. We welcome the admission of the people of
these countries, but the governments of the EU want
to keep them out as long as possible, all the while
using them as cheap labour. - profit before people.

Beyond
Europe, many countries have been forced to open
their markets to European capital and to low-wage,
European-owned factories. European corporations
want to use the EU as a common front to force these
harsh neo-liberal policies on the third world. Yet
the people of these countries face fences and walls
if they try to enter Europe. Many are forced to
make desperate boat journeys around these barriers.

The
EU's repressive anti-immigrant policies claimed the
lives of at least 3,000 people between 1993 and
June 2003, people drowned in the Mediterranean,
electrocuted at the Channel Tunnel or suffocated in
Wexford. This is 10 times as many as were killed at
the Berlin Wall during its 30-year history. These
policies are designed to make immigrants illegal
and force them to survive in a precarious, hunted
position, or live on short-term visas, dependent on
work permits held by their employers. In both cases
they are vulnerable and open to extreme
exploitation as cheap labour. They have little
access to heath and safety enforcement, as shown by
the tragic deaths of 19 Chinese people at Morecambe
Bay this year.

Militarisation

The
foreign policy of the European Union is based on
satisfying the interests of Big Business,
irrespective of social cost. The militarisation of
the EU is evidenced in the Common Foreign and
Security Policy and the Rapid Reaction Force (the
European Army). These are the EU's tools to promote
the global interests of European multinationals.
Again profit before people.

Bertie
has waffled on about protecting Irish neutrality,
yet he ignored 100,000 protestors when he allowed
the US to use Shannon Airport as its major air
stopover for US troops on their way to Iraq. In
2003, 125,000 US troops passed through Shannon en
route to the Iraq war. Munitions of war, including
Tomahawk, Cruise, and Patriot missile components,
as well as napalm, passed through 'neutral
Ireland'. Considering this support for the war
effort of a country that is not even an EU member,
can we believe one word Bertie says about defending
Irish neutrality within the EU?

Unfair
Taxation

The
Irish government has used EU policy to transfer the
cost of public services from the rich to the poor.
Chief amongst the methods used has been the
introduction of high levels of local taxation,
disguised as the bin tax. Environment Minister
Martin Cullen has indicated that he hopes to get
the bin charge up to _700 a year and the Government
plans to introduce other new charges, such as a
water tax. In 10 years, such local charges are
expected to total _1000, which would mean people on
low incomes paying 5% of their income on service
charges and the very wealthy paying 0.5%.

Between
1987 and 2001 the proportion of GDP going to Irish
workers (measured as wages) fell and the proportion
going to Irish bosses (measured as rents and
profits) shot up.

Privatisation
and the Lisbon Agenda

The
Irish government's official EU website declares
that "the Lisbon strategy is a major priority for
the Irish Presidency". The Lisbon Agenda
specifically targets "gas, electricity, postal
services and transport" for privatisation. Water,
health, education and social services will be next.

The
first step in privatisation is forcing people to
pay for public services to make them profitable and
attractive to investors. We can see this here with
the bin charges, the back-door reintroduction of
third level fees and the threatened privatisation
of Dublin Bus and other public services.
Privatisation invariably results in worse working
conditions, greater inequality of services,
lay-offs and wage cuts as bosses seek to cut
corners to maintain profits.

So who
set the Lisbon Agenda? Who decided that this is how
the European economy should be run?

It is
estimated that Brussels hosts some 500 industry
lobby groups, employing some 10,000 professional
lobbyists. Corporations that spend millions
'lobbying' the EU make no secret of the influence
this brings. One of the most powerful is the
European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), which
brings together more than 40 "European industrial
leaders." Ireland is represented by Michael
Smurfit, while most of the other corporations are
household names across Europe, such as BP,
Unilever, Carlsberg, Fiat, Vodafone, Volvo,
Philips, Nokia, Renault and Shell.

The
ERT has boasted that "at European level, the ERT
has contacts with the Commission, the Council of
Ministers and the European Parliament... Every six
months the ERT meets with the government that holds
the EU presidency to discuss priorities... At
national level, each member has personal contacts
with his own national government and parliament,
business colleagues and industrial federations,
other opinion-formers and the press."

Baron
Daniel Janssen of the ERT boasted that it was "very
much involved in the preparation of the [Lisbon]
Summit." In Lisbon EU policy was shaped by the 40
"industrial leaders" of the ERT and not by the
50,000 demonstrators outside the summit building or
by the needs of the people of Europe. Now we are
all required to dance to the ERT tune.

What
Sort of Europe do we want?

The
groups and individuals involved in this Grassroots
Network are united by a vision of a better future,
one without bosses or governments, be they in
Dublin or Brussels; one in which all local
communities are directly run by the people living
in them and all workplaces by the people working in
them; a future in which everyone has control over
their own lives and an equal say in the decisions
that affect them.

We are
talking not just about receiving an equal share of
what is produced, but also transforming the quality
of life, doing away with long working hours and
increasing free time. We struggle for a genuinely
sustainable economy and an end to environmental
policies in which every 'solution' must be
corporate-led and profit-driven.

People
like you all over Europe are fighting for the same
things. We are taking to the streets not only to
build our resistance in Ireland but to forge links
throughout Europe. Tens of thousands of people in
Ireland have already been involved in resisting the
race for wealth that is capitalism, which robs so
many of us of our voice, our dreams and our
aspirations.

Dublin
Grassroots Network - Who we are

Dublin
Grassroots Network is a network of activists who
come together to fight for a better future, based
on the Grassroots Principles (see over). We are
part of the Grassroots Gathering and the Grassroots
Network Against War. We operate in an open and
democratic way, where everybody has an equal say.
If you want to get involved, get in touch.

Phone:
087-2820906 Email: grassrootsdublin@yahoo.com Web:
http://grassrootsgathering.freeservers.com and
http://struggle.ws/eufortress"