Four observations on the 2024 elections to the “European Parliament”
In the last days we have published several important analysis about the results of the elections to the so-called “European Parliament” (which is not the Parliament of Europe but only of the “European Union” which is not the same as Europe). Comrades from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Spain, have, to different extent, provided important insights in the particular situation in their respective countries. Brazilian, Turkish and Peruvian comrades have also contributed with valuable in-put. We think this fact alone, that so many different Maoist forces contribute to an all around analysis of one political event, is a notable sign of how the revolutionary movement is advancing in the Old World, hand in hand with advanced forces of the Third World. This, complementing the Boycott Campaign developed jointly by Maoist from eight countries, can not be seen as anything other that an indication of the progress of the process of maturing of the subjective forces of the world proletarian revolution in the European context. That even more forces, in six countries (Galicia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and the UK), in different manners converged with the Boycott Campaign, of course with their respective particular approach, shows the broadness of the developing movement. Without doubt, the forces organized in the International Communist League (ICL), play a propulsive role in the current panorama. We consider this to be the most important observation to make in connection with the analysis of the 2024 elections to the “European Parliament”, since without the guidance of the Maoist Parties and Organizations, the proletarian and popular movement, inside the borders of the EU as well as everywhere else, currently in increasing and massively growing development, will be led astray by social-chauvinist and social-imperialist demagogues. The key question is that the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Parties advance.
The second point we want to observe is the rejection of the “European Parliament” by the peoples of the oppressed nations inside the EU, of the whole hoax of the imperialist union being a “union of the peoples” and some sort of promoter of “welfare and prosperity”. A short comparison of the voters turn-out in the five most populated oppressing countries and the five most populated oppressed countries, in the EU, respectively, illustrates this:
Oppressing countries | Oppressed countries |
Netherlands 73% | Hungary 59.45% |
Germany 64.78% | Romania 52.42% |
France 51.50% | Greece 41.39% |
Spain 49.21% | Poland 40.65% |
Italy 48.31% | Czechia 36.45% |
The participation of the population in the oppressing countries are notably higher. This is not a question of size of the population and corresponding numbers of seats in the “European Parliament”, as proven by the simple fact that the population of Poland is more than twice the seize than that of the Netherlands. If we had focused on the smaller oppressed nations, the point would have been even clearer: Croatia 21.35%, Lithuania 28.35%, Bulgaria 33.79% and so on.
The majority of the population belonging to the oppressed nations in the EU clearly express that the EU is not for them, that it is an instrument in service of the imperialist oppression of their countries and they have no illusions that they have something to say about it inside the institutions of the EU. Here we do not attempt to examine the votes gained by the political Parties in the countries in question that openly rejects the “Union”, but anyone who looks into the issue will see that such an examine only would reinforce our affirmation.
The national subjugation of the oppressed Nations in Europe is a decisive element for the development of the revolutionary movement on the continent. It, once again, highlights the urgent need to advance in the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Parties in those countries particularly. The oppressed nations are the storm-centers of the Proletarian World Revolution. Hence, any Maoist that do not care to grasp the importance to do everything necessary to advance the positions of our class in Central and Eastern Europe in particular, have failed to grasp the very pillars of the communist outlook. This is a mandatory remark.
A third observation is that the elections to the “European Parliament” 2024 clearly reflects the general tendency of the popular rejection of the Governments currently in charge of affairs in the respective countries. The most significant expression of this, taken EU as a whole, is the political crisis in the two main imperialist countries dominating the “Union”, France and Germany. The pompous hero of the military defeats in the Sahel, Macron, have been forced to call new national elections and as a result, one way or another, will have to continue his vainglorious rule with a divided parliament, untied only in its rejection of his presidency. The German Godfather, the notorious trickster gangster Scholz, is not only the most popularly rejected Chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, but is also leading a government with a deteriorating social base, only keep together by the pressure imposed by the war in Ukraine, and must try to cut a deal with the Christian-Democrats to impede them ousting him with the willing assistance of the Hitler nostalgic AfD. This situation guarantees difficulties, obstruction and sabotages any aspirations of a (temporarily) united leadership of the imperialist alliance. The German imperialists though continue being the “top dog” holding the upper hand. With a German boss of the biggest political group in the “European Parliament” and a German president of the European Commission, being the dominant economic power rapidly increasing its military strength, the predominance of German imperialism within the European Union seems stable for now, but this will only spur on the contradiction the with French imperialists which never will be content playing the second fiddle.
A fourth observation is that in the “European Parliament”, now, the strongest faction is the European People’s Party (EPP), a grouping of Parties dominated by the Christian-Democrats. At the end of the day, it is up to the EPP to decide if they prefer to rely on the social-democrats and the Greens, or if they want to rely on the clumsily make-upped fascists a la Meloni. This issue is today of fundamental importance. “Christian-democracy” was set up after the Second World War in Germany and Italy as a corporative creature of US-imperialism to fight the Communist Parties, the proletarian and popular movement in general. One of its main task was to guarantee the stability of the imperialist State by incorporating the bulk of the fascist cadres into its bureaucratic-military machinery. The historical mission of “Christian-democracy” was never to fight fascism but to agglutinate it. In today’s EU, the mission of the EPP is similar. The alarmist cries of the “Defenders of Democracy” who center on the supposed imminent “fascist danger”, only serves the defense of the Old Order by logging for an imaginary status quo. The actual process we are witnessing is not an advancing “fascist takeover”, but an agglutination of the fascist by the bourgeois “democrats” in service of the further reactionaryzation of the imperialist States. This process can be seen very clearly in the experience in the Nordic countries, it is currently advancing rapidly in the Netherlands and it is the most probable perspective in Germany and France. Any attempt to portray the current political situation in Europe (or the world for that sake) as similar to the period between the First and Second World Wars, can not be but false. We are now in another historical moment and both revolution and counter-revolution has learned its lessons.
Among the comrades that have analyzed the elections to the “European Parliament”, the once who arrived at the most sweeping and generalized conclusion about it, was the Peruvian comrades, when they wrote:
“The situation is showing how the reactionarization of the State in the current situation of further development of the general crisis and of decomposition of imperialism and development of the revolutionary situation in an uneven way”
We believe that our observations confirm their thesis. We only add: in a context where the subjective forces of the revolution are advancing and the key question is to advance in the struggle of the reconstitution of the Communist Parties.