arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

ESF Assembly of the European Social Movement : introduction call

by esf (posted by lize) Wednesday, Nov. 06, 2002 at 10:45 AM

At the end of the ESF, on November 10th the Assembly of the European Social Movement a short but effective introductory part will be read, announcing the agenda of the initiatives, mobilizations and campaigns coming from the discussion in Florence and from the movements.

"We are militants from the social movements and citizens from all around Europe. We have come together for the first session of the European Social Forum on the 7th - 10th November 2002 as will, in a few weeks' time, our friends and comrades of America, Africa and Asia. Like them, we are directly involved in the WSF, we share its charter and we are the direct descendants of the "Social Movements' Appeal" drawn up in Porto Alegre in 2001 and 2002.

The Assembly of European social movements, like all the ESF's work, allows movements that emerged in Seattle to meet trade unions and movements militating for another Europe, a social and democratic Europe, but also movements against the war, ecology movements, feminist movements and those acting in solidarity with the Third World and in favour of development that's sustainable and based on solidarity.

We know that the European issues cannot be separated out from the great issues confronting the world and that is why we are committed to action at both these levels. We are militants against liberal globalisation and our priorities for action are the fight against neo-liberalism, racism, the war and militarism and the struggle for social and democratic right. At the global level we will join up with the campaigns against the war and with the campaigns against those who are putting the world up for sale and against the institutions which are organising this: the G8, WTO, IMF, World Bank etc.

Europe is organised around two dominant poles: the CIS, of which Russia is the leading power, and the EU which organises a substantial majority of western European nations and also serves as a reference standard for candidate countries. In both these groupings we seek to defend social and democratic rights and fight that these rights be extended across the continent. The EU is building itself and enlarging to the East without the real involvement of its citizens.

We believe that the only valid Europe is a Europe that respects and develops social and democratic rights, that builds a different kind of relationship with the nations of the South whilst refusing to be a "fortress Europe", a Europe that refuses war and that allows real equality between men and women and that commits itself to sustainable development.

We also need to develop the fight against the stranglehold of corporate power across the continent, which means organising to defend public services and developing practical solidarity with every workers' struggle. This change in course, this "other Europe", will not be achieved unless everyone is mobilised: that's one of the key stakes of this ESF!

Many struggles and campaigns are being organised for the coming year. Some of them concern each and every one of us because they federate our movements and our mobilisations. This is the case with the struggle against the war and militarism, the struggle for another Europe at the European Union summit meetings, in particular the next ones, im Copenhaguen and Thessaloniki, the mobilisations against putting the world up for sale at the WTO Cancun general assembly in September 2003, and the mobilisation for the G8 meeting which will be held in Evian, at the heart of Europe, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd June 2003. These rendezvous are just the start: to build the Europe we want we will have to develop our struggles into militant networks and social movements that cover the entire continent.

We will work together during these campaigns and the many initiatives that have been decided on in Florence, during this first ESF. We will come together again in these mobilisations, as we will in the next sessions of the ESF to develop the social and militant movements we need to build another Europe and another world!"