💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › politics › SPUNK › sp001129.txt captured on 2022-04-29 at 02:45:59.

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2022-03-01)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-


                    & Maastricht treaty
                           from Workers Solidarity No 35
                                                  (1992)

On the 18th of June, we are going to be 
asked to vote on a 234 page document 
that most of us won't have seen, and 
they call this democracy.  If you've 
been reading the papers about the 
Maastricht Treaty you'll know it deals 
with Economic Monetary Union and a 
common defence policy.  Maastricht is 
about closer European integration.  And 
if you've been reading the papers, 
that's about all you will know about the 
referendum.  Those three phrases keep 
getting thrown up, with no explanation, 
no elaboration and then an occasional 
mention of ?6 billion is chucked in to 
clinch the argument.  The impression 
left in many minds is that Maastricht is 
very important, very confusing and very 
boring.

Maastricht is the next step towards closer European 
integration.  Closer European integration is a code for 
protectionism.  If the rules of the 'free market' were 
applied the EC would be out-competed by the US and 
Japan.  European capitalist economies are heavily 
dependant on agriculture and traditional manufacturing 
industries.  Through CAP (the Common Agricultural 
Policy) subsidies and guaranteed price levels Europe's 
farmers are protected against US and Third World 
competition.  Similarly EC subsidies prop up the EC 
coal, shipbuilding and steel industries.  

The main force driving the EC to Maastricht is the 
decline of EC competitiveness on the world economy and 
the need therefore for tougher measures to insulate the 
EC from more dynamic capitalist economies.  The 
reduction in internal border controls, the 
standardisation of VAT rates, and so on isn't occuring 
in the interests of 'European harmony', but in the hope 
that EC countries will increase trade among themselves.  
They also hope that a unified Euro-economy would be 
better able to withstand the worst effects of 
competition from Japan and North America.

Instinctively, many people support the idea of 
integration, they see it as a move towards a world 
community, a 'brotherhood of man'.  However, the 
European Community is in many ways a bit of a misnomer, 
as the EC creates as many divisions as it dissolves.  
Other economies, particularly those of the Japanese and 
the Third World are seen as a threat.  

"Fortress Europe" seeks to unite the European bosses and 
workers against the peoples of the rest of the  world.  
Integration means a tightening of immigration controls.  
Euro-racism is not seen only in the far right parties 
but also in the rhetoric of many European governments, a 
la Edith Cresson (the ex-French prime minister who 
suggested that planes should be chartered to fly 
immigrants home).  Add to this division the internal 
conflicts within the EC as each country competes against 
each other for European contracts and foreign investors.  
Germany, the richest country is viewed with suspicion by 
the others.  Cheaper labour in Greece, Spain and 
Southern Italy is blamed for loss of jobs in Britain and 
the northern countries.

Many of the EC's supporters in Ireland point to the 
liberalisation of social attitudes that has occured 
through membership.  Part of the Maastricht treaty 
prepares the way for European Monetary Union (EMU).  
Before this can occur states have to bring their 
spending, debt and inflation to common levels by cutting 
public spending.  The sugar coating to this bitter pill 
is the EC Social Charter also contained in the treaty.  
What is most notable about the Social Charter is that 
unlike the economic and defence agreements it is mostly 
optional.  

Industry (but not the workers) is protected by clauses 
that state the Social Charter directives must avoid 
imposing administrative, financial and legal burdens on 
small and medium-sized enterprises in such a way as 
would hold back their creation and development.  So this 
only applies if it costs little.  As it won't be the 
workers who decide if it's affordable, the Social 
Charter amounts to little more than an aspiration, which 
can be easily be ignored.

Those arguing for a YES vote have being trying to do it 
in such a way as to avoid discussing the mechanisms 
behind the EC.  The line is "if you're not in you can't 
win".  On the most basic level this is a 
misrepresentation of the case.  If any country votes 
against the treaty, it falls for every country.  On 
another level this argument implies a level of unity or 
consensus that simply does not exist.  

Most countries are looking for exceptions to different 
bits, for example France and Luxembourg are unhappy 
about the provision giving all EC citizens the right to 
vote or stand as candidates in local and European 
Community elections across the community.  England is 
split on the EMU and has opted out of the Social 
Charter.  More importantly, EMU is dependant on German 
support, on a German government report due in 1996 on 
the fitness of countries to enter union.  The EC is more 
like a cattle mart than one big happy family.

On the ?6 billion it should be noted that it is depended 
on two things.  Firstly, that on applying, we are 
actually OKed to receive the money (which is quite 
likely).  Secondly, that the money is there in the first 
place to give to us.  The ?6 billion depends on the EC 
getting agreement on proposals, which involves 
increasing the overall EC budget by a third, a proposal 
already rejected by Britain.  Finally, and most 
importantly, its extremely unlikely that this carrot 
will ever be given to workers.  It will go on road 
building, grants for rich businesspeople and probably to 
some of their golf clubs - just as lottery money has.

So what we are being asked is how best to run European 
capitalism.  This is a strange position for socialists 
to be in.  We are opposed to capitalism because it is 
unfair, authoritarian, unproductive and prone to 
continual crisis.  It is a very uncaring and inefficient 
way to run society.  Yet within this framework we are 
being asked which way the bosses should go.

If this was all we were being asked, our response would 
be to ignore the question as irrelevant to us.  If 
somebody is opposed to capital punishment, it is 
meaningless to ask them should executions be carried out 
by gun or guillotine.  We support solidarity between the 
international working class.  We don't want to tell the 
bosses how to run capitalism, we want to shut it down.

However the Maastricht treaty in particular covers two 
other things besides monetary union.  It is these that 
determine how we will vote.  These are the questions of 
European defence and the Protocol.

Armies don't exist to defend populations but rather to 
defend governments, to defend capital and to defend 
markets.  Wars have an economic base to them, the Gulf 
War being the most recent example.  That Kuwait was 
involved was a handy coincidence as it helped sell the 
war as liberation to the populations at home.  Much the 
same situation is occuring in Yugoslavia, with rival 
armies invading neighbouring regions.  

Yet the UN isn't likely to invade because Yugoslavia 
doesn't contain oil or any necessary commodity.  We 
oppose any country forming a military alliance because 
we know from what we've seen before that military power 
is used to protect markets, not a very good reason for 
dying.  Because we oppose any military alliances of 
capitalist governments we will be voting NO to 
Maastricht.

The Protocol is an extra addition to the Maastricht 
Treaty.  It simply forbids Irish citizens to appeal to 
Europe on issues surrounding the Eighth Amendment to the 
Constitution. When the clinics and the student unions 
were taken to court for providing abortion information 
they both appealed to Europe in order to try to reverse 
the decision that was made in Ireland.  If this protocol 
is passed the door to Europe will be closed to us on 
anything to do with the Eighth Amendment.  

Remember it is the Eighth Amendment that bans 
information on abortion.  It is the Eighth Amendment 
that was used to grant an injunction preventing a 14 
year old from travelling to Britain.  It is because of 
the Eighth Amendment that Dublin Corporation banned 
Womens Health books from the libraries.  It is because 
of the Eighth Amendment that Cosmopolitan, Company and 
other womens' magazines censor the ads. for abortion 
clinics in their Irish editions.  The Maastricht 
Protocol ensures that none of these issues can be dealt 
with by Europe.

In a practical sense, this is little loss, as the EC in 
the past tended not to solve our problems for us.  An 
appeal to Europe rarely results in a positive change for 
the better on the ground here.  The EC does not want to 
rock the economic boat by enforcing extremely 
contentious decisions on a conservative country.  It is 
very clear that if we are to win on the abortion issue, 
we must win it in Ireland.  However, that said, in moral 
terms, the Maastricht Protocol is an addition to all the 
defeats we have suffered in the last 10 years.  It may 
not be a very important addition, it's not a very major 
defeat, but every time we loose it makes it more 
difficult for people to keep on fighting to  change 
Irish society.  For this reason we will be voting NO to 
Maastricht.

Of course, in many ways the most interesting things 
about the Protocol is its existence at all.  When the 
treaty was first negotiated, no mention of this protocol 
was made in the Irish media, no discussion, no nothing.  
If the case of the 14 year old had not arisen it is 
questionable whether we would be aware of it at all.  
Yet this was negotiated 'in our interests' by a 
government which was responding to pressure from 
someone.  And they call this democracy!