Italian
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Bologna 3 June 2016
Photo:
Francesco Pierantoni (Flickr / Wikimedia Commons)
By
Johannes Stern and Alex Lantier
Amid
escalating tensions inside the European Union (EU) and between the EU
and the United States, the heads of the 27 EU member states, minus
Britain, met for their first post-Brexit summit in the Slovak
capital, Bratislava.
The
summit reaffirmed proposals by top EU, German, and French officials
to react to Britain’s exit from the EU by reorganizing the union as
a military alliance with broad police powers at home. Beyond the
broad lines of this reactionary program outlined in the so-called
“Bratislava declaration” issued by the European Council, however,
the remaining EU countries failed to agree on any concrete proposals.
Explosive conflicts erupted over the economic crisis in Europe and
the millions of refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa.
Italian
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the leader of the euro zone’s
third-largest economy, refused to join the final press conference
with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François
Hollande. Only weeks ago, Renzi stood together with Merkel and
Hollande on an aircraft carrier off the Italian island of Ventotene
to call for EU unity after Brexit and revive longstanding plans,
blocked until now by Britain with the support of the United States,
to turn the EU into a military alliance. Yesterday, however, he
attacked the summit and openly stated his disagreement with German
and French policies.
“I
cannot take part in a joint press conference with Merkel and Hollande
if I don’t share their conclusions on economy and migration,”
Renzi told reporters after the meeting in the Bratislava Castle. He
added, “It’s not a controversy, Italy doesn’t see it in the
same way as the others.”
Renzi,
whose government is deeply unpopular due to its austerity measures,
lashed out in particular at Berlin for demanding harsh spending cuts
in response to Italy’s banking crisis. “In the same way countries
must respect rules on deficit, they also have to respect other rules,
like on the trade surplus,” Renzi said. “And there are some
countries who don’t respect them; the main one is Germany.”
Hundreds
of thousands of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean have
arrived in Italy and Greece, which have demanded that other EU
countries take in or help fund the accommodation of refugees. Renzi
attacked the summit for failing to produce any meaningful agreement
on this issue.
“Describing
today’s document on migrants as a step forward requires an
imagination [worthy of] word jugglers,” he declared. “The usual
things were said again.”
Hungary’s
anti-immigrant premier, Viktor Orban, who has built a fence on the
Hungarian border in a reactionary attempt to keep out all refugees,
publicly attacked EU quotas requiring Hungary to take in migrants.
“During
my conversation with Martin Schultz, the president of the European
parliament, I asked him to show respect for the Hungarian people,”
Orban said. “I asked him to stop using their law-creating tricks,
deceiving the sovereign decisions and the will of the national
states.”
Effectively
acknowledging the deep divisions inside the EU, Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker declared that it would have been “inappropriate”
to issue written conclusions after the summit.
As
the Bratislava summit made clear, the UK’s vote to leave the union
reflected divisions and conflicts that extend throughout Europe and
threaten to bring down the total dissolution of the European Union.
Since its formation in 1992, a year after the Stalinist dissolution
of the Soviet Union, the EU has aligned itself with US-led wars,
implemented pro-business restructuring measures and carried out
attacks on workers’ living standards. Especially since the outbreak
of the 2008 economic crisis and the 2011 wars in Libya and Syria,
however, these class and international conflicts have undermined
attempts to fashion common EU policies.
In
response to the Brexit vote, which was organized amid deepening
misgivings in the British ruling class over a German-led EU, Germany
and France are moving ahead with attempts to unify the EU as a
military alliance that Britain had previously blocked, at
Washington’s request.
European-American
tensions are also erupting to the surface, after EU powers called for
an end to trade talks with the United States and imposed a €13
billion fine on Apple, the largest US corporation, for not paying
taxes in Ireland. Yesterday, as EU heads of state met in Bratislava,
US authorities imposed a $14 billion fine on Germany’s leading
bank, Deutsche Bank, on fraud charges related to US mortgage-backed
securities in the lead-up to the 2008 Wall Street crash. Deutsche
Bank responded by vowing to fight the fine.
“Deutsche
Bank has no intent to settle these potential civil claims anywhere
near the number cited,” the bank said in a statement. “The
negotiations are only just beginning. The bank expects that they will
lead to an outcome similar to those of peer banks which have settled
at materially lower amounts.”
Financial
disputes are becoming intertwined with strategic conflicts between
Washington and the EU over European attempts to formulate military
policy independently of the United States. In the lead-up to the
summit, Paris and especially Berlin led a reactionary push for
military build up, austerity, and authoritarian forms of rule
exemplified by the ongoing state of emergency in France.
A
six-page proposal, drafted by German Defense Minister Ursula von der
Leyen and her French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, was leaked to
the press. “It is high time to reinforce our solidarity and
European defense capabilities in order to more effectively protect
our borders and EU citizens,” it declared. “Given that the United
Kingdom has decided to leave the EU, we will now have to act with
[the remaining] 27 member states.” It called for a sharp expansion
of military spending to develop aerial refueling capacities,
satellite surveillance, cyber warfare, and drones.
At
their joint press conference yesterday in Bratislava, Merkel and
Hollande confirmed that post-Brexit internal and external rearmament
were the center of discussions at the summit. Themes discussed
included “security, migration and border protection,” Merkel
said. EU leaders also agreed to reduce flows of refugees and on “more
cooperation on security,” she added.
Hollande
stressed the main message from Bratislava was the need to “secure
control of the EU’s external borders.”
The
bullet points in the brief “Bratislava declaration” issued by the
European Council give a glimpse of the reactionary plans being worked
out by EU leaders. The section titled “Migration and external
borders” calls for strengthening Fortress Europe, denying the right
of asylum to refugees fleeing war, and for mass deportations of
refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. The paper demanded
that the EU “Never allow a return to uncontrolled flows [of
refugees] of last year and further bring down the number of irregular
migrants. Ensure full control of our external borders.”
On
“internal security,” it envisages the building of an integrated
EU police state, modelled on the policies of the American ruling
class implemented under cover of the “war on terror” after the
September 11 attacks. It calls for “Intensified cooperation and
information-exchange among security services of the Member States”
and the “adoption of the necessary measures to ensure that all
persons, including nationals from EU Member States, crossing the
Union’s external borders will be checked against the relevant
databases, which must be interconnected.”
It
also demands “concrete measures” to prepare to defend Europe’s
geopolitical and economic interests militarily against its rivals.
“In a challenging geopolitical environment,” the “December
European Council [should] decide on a concrete implementation plan on
security and defence,” declares the paper.
This
echoes European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s State of
the European Union address Wednesday. “Soft power is not enough in
our increasingly dangerous neighbourhood,” he said, stressing that
Europe can “no longer afford to piggy-back on the military might”
of the United States and should “take responsibility for protecting
our interests.”
These
proposals underscore the falseness and hypocrisy of the EU’s claims
to represent freedom, peace, and civilization against the
anti-immigrant chauvinism and nationalism of British political
parties that campaigned for Brexit. As the EU seeks to convert itself
into a military and police regime pursuing a reactionary
anti-immigrant policy, the only constituency for peace and democratic
rights to be found on either side of the English Channel is the
working class.
This
article first appeared on World
Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
on
17
September
2016, and was republished with permission.
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