[E-rundbrief] Info 1322 - Peoples Tribunal on EU-crisis - from austerity to solidarity

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1322 - People’s Tribunal on EU Economic Governance 
and the Troika: The EU and the crisis: from austerity to solidarity - 
the verdict of the other voices and a call for another Europe

Bad Ischl, 17.5.2014

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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People’s Tribunal on EU Economic Governance and the Troika

PRESS RELEASE

Brussels, 15-16 May 2014

The EU and the crisis: from austerity to solidarity - the verdict of 
the other voices and a call for another Europe

Brussels – A Tribunal on EU economic governance and the Troika took 
place in Brussels on 15-16 May. Eleven witnesses from ten countries in 
Southern, Eastern and Western Europe gave testimony to the failure of 
the EU and Troika policies to address the crisis. In fact many 
testified that the strategy of the austerity policy measures is a 
deliberate attack on working people’s standards of living. Indeed, 
people’s lives and livelihoods have been devastated by the austerity 
and other policy measures – whether via the Troika (European 
Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) 
or by direct imposition on national governments of straitjacket fiscal 
policies, the restructuring of labour and social policies that favour 
the financial markets, the big banks, and corporations. According to 
Christos Giovanopoulos (Solidarity4All, Greece), “with the financial 
and political dictatorship of the Troika, we are confronted with an 
(un)constitutional ‘coup d’état’ that has brought the loss of national 
and popular sovereignty and the demise of democracy”.

Witness after witness testified to increasing inequality, unemployment 
(affecting women and men, across generations, but is especially high 
among the youth), homelessness, and impoverishment. According to Georg 
Rammer (Attac Germany), “the most recent statistics from the OECD 
indicate that around 20% of the population in Germany is affected by 
poverty or social exclusion. Children are particularly affected. The 
IAB (German Labour Market Institute) has calculated that one in four 
children lives in a family affected by poverty”. In Slovenia, 
according to Kira Cerjak (Iniciative for Democratic Socialism), “the 
labour force is increasingly forced into precarious work which does 
not suffice for decent livelihood”.
Across the EU, according to Gabriele Michalitsch (Vienna University), 
“we have an enormous increase in female poverty and of unpaid work in 
the home. We also see the privatization of child care and elderly care 
being transferred informally, particularly to women migrants who are 
deprived of their basic rights and expected to work for very low wages”.

Europe-wide reports from rapporteurs on debt, democracy, poverty, 
public services, wages and feminist perspectives collaborated the 
narratives presented on the national situations indicating alarming 
developments, including intensifying racism and neo-fascism. Since the 
beginning of the crisis, a restructuring has occurred that takes 
Europe on a track to social and political regression, violations of 
labour, social and migrant rights, attacks on women’s reproductive 
rights and increased violence against women and an unprecedented 
roll-back of democratic achievements. All the testimonies pinpoint to 
similar trends across the EU – giving a strong message that this is 
not the crisis of one country, it is a Europe-wide crisis and a crisis 
of the economic model.

However the dominant message from the Tribunal is that resistance 
continues in large and small mobilizations and in many creative 
experiments of grassroots democracy. Ana Maria Jimenez of the PAH 
(Platform of People affected by Mortgages in Spain) reported that: 
“Today we are more than 200 nodes in the state. We have stopped over 
1.000 evictions, we have relocated over 1.000 people through our Obra 
Social campaign”.

Despite great difficulties, people are organizing to demonstrate that 
water is a public commons and cannot be privatized as in the 
Thessaloniki and Italy initiatives involving citizens and local 
government; stopping evictions in Spain; trade unions defending their 
right to organize and defeating attempts of social dumping as in the 
Dockers strike in Portugal; confronting racism and neo-fascism in many 
countries; building several forms of people’s self-organisation to 
counter the effects of austerity and constructing a different paradigm 
of socially managed public services and an economy of commons.

The outstanding challenges for social movements in the next years 
include: the roll-back of austerity laws imposed by the European 
institutions; the cancellation of illegitimate and unsustainable debt; 
redistributive measures to reverse inequality and enforcement of 
taxation on corporations and wealthy individuals; the full recognition 
at the European level of the right to housing, water, food, education 
and health services; the closure of the camps where migrants and 
refugees are imprisoned and the full recognition of the right to 
collective bargaining and an end to precarious work.

Social movements in Europe are already in a necessary process to 
re-invent ways of doing politics. But to be able to counter the 
policies of EU economic governance and the Troika, the greatest 
challenge is to converge and strengthen forces and set another agenda 
for another Europe.

Further information

Supporting organisations and full program:
http://www.tni.org/events/eu-crisis-policies-put-trial

The Tribunal took place in the context of the European Week of Action 
- 3 of our witnesses even were among the 281 arrested during a 
peaceful protest against the European Business Summit on the 15th:
http://www.d19-20.be/en/
http://mayofsolidarity.org/

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
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IBAN: AT922031400600970305 BIC: SKBIAT21XXX

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