European expansion
More wealth for bosses, more misery for workers
By John Catalinotto
Brussels, Belgium
There was a lot of excitement here at the
European Parliament building in the days before May 1. Workers
were looking forward to their holiday. The European ruling
class and its officialdom were looking forward to the so-called
Eastern Expansion.
Ten mostly Central and East European countries joined the
European Union on May 1, bringing its membership to 25. The new
EU member states are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia,
Hungary, Lat via, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and
Slovenia.
This expands the EU population from 350 million to 455
million, and its area by over 30 percent.
The expansion has different impacts on the European
imperialist ruling class, the workers of Western Europe and all
of formerly socialist Eastern Europe that is now brought in to
the imperialist world as subject states.
The European ruling class made sure to celebrate the
expansion. Tables with infor mation on Slovenia and Slovakia
attracted visitors in one section of the vast halls of the EU
Parliament building. At night you could hear fireworks. One
German leftist complained to Workers World later in the week
that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder should be punished for
wasting 1.5 million Euros on fireworks over the Oder River on
Germany's eastern border with Poland.
The EU countries are in full economic competition with U.S.
imperialism. Wash ington expanded its market with NAFTA in
1994. It has been trying, without success, to subjugate all of
Latin America with the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Now the
EU has jumped ahead by absorbing Eastern Europe.
European industry is building its own rocket and satellite
system, Galileo, to compete with the Global Positioning System
used now around the world and based in the United States. The
bosses here in Europe don't want to depend on the United States
for their communications.
The Bush administration has made it easy for the ruling
classes of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls "old
Europe" to look good in comparison. The mass of European
workers are revolted by the Bush gang's aggression in Iraq, its
arrogance regarding every area of international treaty and law,
its attempts to bully everywhere in the world. In the coalition
of the unwilling to serve U.S. interests--that is, in France,
Germany and Belgium--even the establishment media give free
play to anti-U.S. sentiment.
And for the workers?
This reaches deep into the population. A day or two before
May 1, a Brussels worker won some thousands of Euros on a
television quiz show. Asked what he would do with the money, he
answered: "A few years ago I'd have take a vacation in the
United States. I always dreamed of visiting there. But now,
with Bush as president, I wouldn't even dream of visiting."
Despite these sentiments, many workers realize that European
expansion is not meant to help them. It will make it even
easier for the Western European bosses to find lower-wage
workers and drive down wages.
Even now people tell the story of the West German textile
firm that first moved into Eastern Germany after the 1989
counter-revolution overthrew socialism there. After a few
years, the owner found he could operate with lower labor costs
in Romania. Then the factory was relocated again to the
Ukraine, leaving people unemployed in western and eastern
Germany and Romania.
Workers in Western Europe had won tremendous social
benefits--free health care, high unemployment payments,
adequate pensions--over the decades when there was a
neighboring socialist block. Now they find all these benefits
under attack.
At a discussion forum during May Day celebrations of the
Workers Party of Belgium, this attack from the bosses was the
main topic. People called the cutbacks an attempt at
"Americanization," as the United States is widely known as
having miserable benefits.
Eastern colonies
The biggest losers are the workers in the Eastern European
countries. It's a setback especially when compared with life
for workers in a socialist system.
Many believed that the end of socialism and absorption by
the West would mean a Western high standard of living plus
holding on to most social benefits. They are now quite
disillusioned.
These workers have lost most of their health care, education
and pension benefits. For those who are working the pay doesn't
even keep up with inflation. For the many who have lost their
jobs, life has become miserable.
While the new EU will allow the free flow of capital to the
East, it is still restricting immigration to the West. Even the
Polish counter-revolutionary leader Lech Walesa complained
about this. As part of accession negotiations the EU's old
members secured the right to refuse work permits to Eastern
nationals for a transition period--up to seven years in Germany
and Austria.
"How can you come up with such an idea?" Walesa asked
reporters, rhetorically.
Eastern Europe has more or less the same relation to Western
Europe that Mexico and the Caribbean have to the United States:
that of a neocolony. The West, especially German firms, owns
all the monopolies of banking, major industry and the media
with an insecure labor force subject to difficult bargaining
conditions.
Perhaps the greatest irony is the fate of the Polish
farmers. Under socialism they were able to keep their
relatively small farms and survive. Now, in competition with
more efficient production in the West, they must sell their
lands, which many suspect will soon be owned by German
capital.
This would be a bleak picture if it did not also contain
another side: the potential to organize the working class on a
continent-wide basis for struggle against the capitalists. This
is no easy task, but it is the only way out for the workers
here.
Reprinted from the May 13, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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