10 reasons to be against the EU

1) The EU serves capitalism and neoliberalism

There can be no doubt that the only reason the EU exists is to consolidate its political power and maximize the economic clout of its leading nations. In a world dominated by corporations, trade agreements, the stock market and speculative capital, the main impetus for all government action becomes creating fiscal policies which satisfy investors. In a world where people have less and less access to their own lands and are less able to compete in the production market on their own, investors and companies can blackmail whole countries into adopting the course most profitable for them.

2) The EU is one step further in taking decision making out of our hands

We believe in people taking direct control over their own lives. Representative democracy, characterised by unaccountable, unrecallable crooks with special interests robbing the public and acting against our will and interests, is certainly bad enough. Nobody voted for the European Commission and their wishes and decisions normally supercede even the sham representative governments’. Decisions which will affect millions and billions of people are made secretly by supranational commissions and organizations and people are at a loss as to how to stop it.

3) Competition between global blocs means an even more drastic form of capitalism

A long-standing strategy for consolidating economic and political power is to form blocs. These are sometimes formed for mutual benefit but may also include an element of empire; weaker countries no longer need be taken over militarily - they can be manipulated by economic deviced and eventually may willingly become client states of the bloc or lesser members.

As blocs absorb more and more countries into their field of influence, competition increases and normal citizens suffer from increased diversion of tax dollars and increasingly draconian austerity plans and economic strategies. Much of the Western world was once dominated by the Cold War; now it’s the Steel War and the war over subsidies.

Promoting the bosses’ trade wars means promoting unneccessary competition between workers.

4) Structural Unemployment to be Solved by Structural Underemployment

If you look at the EU, you can see that unemployment is high, especially when compared to he US. Part of this is due to the fact that high costs in terms of taxes and social benfits are a disincentive to Eurocapitalists who would prefer to hire a less expensive workforce.

This is one of the structural problems of the capitalist system which requires maximation of profits; the only way for greedy Eurocapitalists to both employ more people and to maintain profits is to use more flexible labour. This can be accomplished by outsourcing more work to the third world (or to EU candidate countries) or by imposing neoliberal structural reforms of labour in their own countries. As much as they can get away with it, they will try to do both.

This casualization of labour in EU countries is exactly what the Eurocrats would like to implement, especially in light of its competition with the much less worker-friendly US. Liberalization of the labour guarantees plus putting more of the costs of social benfits onto workers is one of the main objectives of EU economic policy.

In Poland, this will lead to fewer benefits, fewer guarantees, more part-time, temporary, casual labour and putting the cost of health care, pensions and vacations more and more onto the workers.

5) The Common Agricultural Policy and Agribusiness

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has come under a lot of criticism, not only from ecologists but also by economists. A system of high subsidies not only distorts the market but also amount to a taxpayer-funded boost to agribusiness. US and EU agribusinesses are now at war as the governments spend public money to wage a price war. Money is directed away from social programs such as medicine and education to support the export industry.

Agribusiness consolidates wealth and property. Its tendencies to intensive, monoculture farming, to export and transport over local production, not only destroy the environment - it puts smaller local farmers and family farmers into debt or out of business.

In Poland, eurocrats would like to see a dramatic reduction in the amount of people farming. In addition, as corporate hypermarkets working with big suppliers push out small shops and small farmers, more and more people will loose their land and will have to go from being their own bosses to being underpaid wage labourers on some corporate farm.

6) Monetary Policy

Monetary policy in the EU is an instrument of capital. Large investment banks, consortiums and even individuals make fortunes on EU-advised devaluations and on manipulations in interests rates, especially in countries like Poland. Fixing rates can largely determine the economy for the country, but almost never for the benefit of the ordinary person.

7) Eurocracy and the Increased Role of the State

We are against paying to maintain our usurpers. More and more money is diverted to support a growing Eurocracy.The most powerful eurocrats were not elected by popular vote, nor are we entitled to refuse to pay for them; tax refusal, which we think of as having a right to determine where your money goes, is strictly punished while billions vanish due to government corruption.

An increase in eurocracy guarantees an increased role of the state. The state can only see serving people as serving big business; people serving and organizing themselves undermines their role. All policy is made with an eye on increasing its predominance in the system and making social self-organization as difficult as possible.

8) EU Border Policy

Fortress Europe is already a household phrase. Everyday, the destructive nature of international business and monetary policy, couple with the lure of enjoying surplus value, send poor people towards Europe. Their labour is desperately sought after by the bosses - except the bosses want to keep them in the home countries where they can pay them less, where they can abuse them and the environment a little more intensively. The free movement of labour is not so much a burden on a countr’s infrastructure as it is the possible collapse of the capitalist infrastructure.

Border controls only promise to get more intense as new technology will allow for fingerprint scans and better methods of enforcement. The poor will be especially targeted. This will include not only racist assumptions, but political management as well. Border policy and import/export laws will be used to exert political pressure; the exclusion of political dissidents threatens to impose strict limits on political freedom.

9) The Schengen Information System

The ultimate computerized instrument of control, the Information System is already used to target political dissidents and keep them out of certain countries. It will track the movements of immigrants and refugees, greatly limiting their freedom. It may be implemented to track tax evaders, draft dodgers, the mentally ill and the poor.

10) Against the Privatization of Everyday Life

Big business wants to make money on everything. More and more, governments and supranational organizations play a role in mediating even the most banal forms of exchange and activity, extracting money from your pockets more efficiently with the aid of all-seeing technology.

The EU is making strong moves towards protecting “intellectual property”; this property rarely belongs to the intellects who produced it anymore but rather to the people who could afford to privatize it.

The EU also has implemented many privatization programs and plans further privatization of the public sector and businesses such as the post office. Although we don’t believe the State should run anything, we understand that privatization will lead to a much worse situation for workers and possibly for consumers. Further, we understand privatization as a way to cut taxes for the rich and allot additional taxes to eurocrats.

The corporations and tax collectors would like a piece of every transaction, would like a part of all wealth which isn’t controlled by them. The EU is sure to help them. How else can they achieve their imperatives of controlling markets if people have alternatives?

Laure Akai