Editorial: Where is Europe going?

European elections: our proposals

These elections should, however, be an opportunity to debate the future of a continent, its countries and its peoples. A time to decide together on the future we will leave to future generations and Europe’s place in a changing World. It will not be so! More than ever, the old continent bears its name well. Nothing new on the horizon, no ideas or vision other than the deepening of a destructive and unjust neoliberal system that has long shown its limits.

In this context, the retrograde, authoritarian and xenophobic political forces are doing well, feeding on fears, understandable and ultimately quite rational, in the face of an anxious future. Progressive political forces, on the other hand, are marginalized. They have little influence in the debate. From the point of view of election results, the awakening on May 27 may be difficult!

However, European society is moving, every day more and more. The youth who are mobilizing for the climate is the heartening expression of this. But also the millions of women who took the streets on March 8, and those workers on strike in factories, nursing homes and hospitals, hotels, trains or shops.

Or these yellow vests which have allowed a remarkable entry of the working classes into the public debate. They are undoubtedly a sign that the contradictions of the neoliberal model are reaching breaking points.

Rabies is roaring, movements are getting stronger, becoming more radical, innovating but the powers are not giving up, they are repressing. Our struggles do not make them bend yet.

The cracks in the neoliberal model and the crisis of political and institutional legitimacy could be an opportunity for progressive forces. We have to update our radicalism and clearly restate the need for an alternative society. People are ready to hear it.

This is a time for new ideas, new recipes, at all levels: from political philosophy to organizational issues. Ideas are not born in an abstract manner; they express the reality of our world and the experience of our everyday social and political practices. We must take the time to develop it, find spaces for debate (the Alter Summit is one of them), put the new lessons into practice. We need to rebuild this philosophy of praxis, which Antonio Gramsci spoke of almost 100 years ago.

Our task is to transform Europe; to give it an ecological and socially just future. This will require at least a generation because we have to take the time to build a popular power that will bring about this transformation! Let us therefore face these elections without fear, without illusions, knowing what our real objective is; and let us leave on the 27th with even more determination!