The European Union is a political and legal tool of domination that routinely condemns millions of poor and weak citizens to death. This supposedly benevolent institution is simply a large branch of neocapitalist economic power, consisting of large multinational corporations and financial entities. And the regulations necessary for protecting these big businesses are guaranteed by the EU’s bureaucratic and antidemocratic institutional structure.
The regulations of the EU have been forced upon the internal legal systems of the 27 member nations, to the extent that around 80% of national legislation is no longer determined by the national parliaments. Moreover, such European legislation favours the commercial and financial interests of the aforementioned economic powers, as is exemplified by the rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the European Central Bank (ECB).
The CAP, which receives 40% of the EU’s annual budget, is basically a public subsidy for certain agricultural and meat products produced in the EU (such as milk, sugar, and meat). These subsidies allow multinationals in the sector to sell products to poor nations at prices lower than those produced in their own countries. As a result, these nation’s agricultural subsistence economies are placed in crisis, provoking and perpetuating the hunger and poverty of millions of poor families.
The ECB, meanwhile, is at the service of large international financial entities, lending money straight to banks rather than to nations, which is in turn lent by these banks to EU nations (which becomes public debt). The interest paid by the banks to the ECB is much lower than the interest nations pay to these banks, thus clearly favouring the financial industry based on speculation with public money.
In order for the whole EU machinery to be greased in the favour of the economic and financial elites, pressure groups influence political and legislative decisions with thousands of millions of Euros each year and thousands of employees. At the same time, the European political class shamelessly collaborates, receiving numerous immoral privileges (like first class flights, a €300 a day food allowance, luxury chauffeur-driven cars, over €6,000 net wage every month, €4,200 monthly for expenses, €21,000 a month to contract their own staff, and €1,250 of pension a month for just five years in Parliament after 63 years of age). The politicians operate within an antidemocratic institutional structure, in which political decisions are moving further and further away from the citizens they are supposed to serve.
Ahead of the next European elections, on May 25th, we must raise our voices against an callous and corrupt Europe and demand justice for the most exploited and oppressed. Anything else is obscene.
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