TOWARDS THE 4TH EUROPEAN FORUM !

The Covid-19 pandemic challenges humanity
LET’S REFOUND A EUROPE OF SOLIDARITY

The Covid-19 pandemic challenges humanity to quickly initiate a new development model that prioritizes human security, emancipation, and the protection of the planet. Millions of women and men around the world are saying today: we want life to start again, but we want the world to change.

Europe is at the heart of this challenge.

It has been hit hard: tens of thousands of Europeans have died of Covid-19. The drastic austerity imposed on public health systems after the 2008 financial crisis has been paid with human lives this time. Today, millions of workers are threatened with poverty and unemployment by the economic crisis.

The European countries have reacted in a dispersed order, without solidarity. Now, the European Union and the ECB are putting hundreds of billions of euros on the table, but the envisaged “relaunch” is far from meeting the challenges to come. The time has come to change models.

We do not want yesterday’s liberal solutions, nor wars between nations, both of which will make the peoples of Europe pay for the crisis.

The competition system that dominates the European Union, the short-term capitalist and productivist profitability choices, destructive for civilization and the planet, are more than ever the opposite of the responses that are necessary to face the social, ecological, economic and political challenges that this crisis has revealed for the future.

The Covid-19 pandemic calls for a change of course to commit Europe with determination to a new model of social and ecological development, whose priorities are human security, common well-being, protection of the planet and biodiversity. It calls for a Europe which acts to change the course of globalization.

The Covid-19 crisis is now a global economic crisis and a crisis of the European Union’s past political responses. Nothing will change without the intervention in the action of millions of Europeans.

This calls for active convergence in the action of progressive, left green European forces, of trade unions, of associative and citizen forces, ready to build this new model of development.

We need debates, projects and joint actions to make a real difference. We need concrete proposals.
To restore priority to public health systems and public services.
To secure the lives of millions of European workers
To put Europe on the path to a new social, ecological and feminist model.
To successfully convert our productive models, to relocate a new industrialization geared towards human needs and the protection of the planet
To make the citizens of Europe regain their sovereignty on their common destiny today confiscated by the great interests of financial capital.
To think differently about the use of the immense wealth created by workers, and the enormous potential of money creation of Europe, so that the debt does not again become an unbearable burden again for the peoples of Europe
So that Europe can act for a fairer, more united, more peaceful and more cooperative world.

There are many challenges. To carry them out, we need common spaces.

We call on all available forces to participate in the European Forum online in November 2020. It will be a unique way which will bring together progressive, leftist and green political forces, trade unions, associative and citizen forces. It must be given a new and mobilizing impetus for the future.

Let’s all give the European Forum a mobilizing impetus for the future!

Signatories:

Andros Kyprianou, General Secretary CC AKEL, Member of Parliament
Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Member of the European Parliament, Syriza
Emmanuel Maurel, Member of the European Parliament, Gauche Républicaine et Socialiste
Ernest Urtasun, Member of the European Parliament, Vice-President of the Greens/EFA
Francis Wurtz, Honorary President of the GUE/NGL
Gabriele Zimmer, Honorary President of the GUE/NGL
Heinz Bierbaum, President of the Party of the European Left
Jose Luis Centella, President of the Communist Party of Spain
Maite Mola, First Vice-President of the Party of the European Left
Manon Aubry and Martin Schirdewan, GUE/NGL co-Presidents
Marisa Matias, Member of the European Parliament, Bloco de Esquerda
Mary Lou McDonald, President of the Sinn Féin
Nora Mebarek, Member of the European Parliament, French Socialist Party
Pierre Laurent, Vice-President of the Party of the European Left