International

The leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has together with others brought out a manifesto, calling on all young people in Europe to sign up to it. That sounds like a good move from a former activist, but the document in question is full of hollow phrases and empty of social proposals. The EU member states have, according to Cohn-Bendit, made a real mess of things, and only Europe can help young people to move on. This is to stand the world on its head : it is precisely Brussels, with its fetishisism of austerity, which is exacerbating the crisis. Cohn-Bendit completely ignores this question. In my view, his manifesto is fit only for the waste-paper basket.

Cohn-Bendit wants his manifesto to put an end to the top-down culture in Europe. That’s fine, because it’s true that the European Union is primarily a project of the ‘happy few’: intellectuals and first and foremost major corporations have made Europe their plaything. What Cohn-Bendit wants to see is the establishment of a volunteer corps – and note that this would be supported by these same major corporations – which would help bring Europeans closer together. How else does he propose to do this? Apart from some references to cultural exchanges the manifesto contains nothing concrete. Many reactions to the website manifest-europa.eu point also to a fundamental error: if you want to start a grass roots movement, you should certainly not do this from the top down. It must come from the people themselves – otherwise it’s no grass-roots movement. And the average person living in Europe has nothing to say to Brussels with its grand ideas: they want to see solutions to growing social and economic problems developed as close to home as possible, and certainly not Brussels diktats which only make the situation worse.

Cohn-Bendit’s manifesto shows that the Greens in Europe are beginning to grow desperate. Their campaign to make the EU loved isn’t hitting home. On the contrary, ever more people are infuriated by Brussels, because first the EU authorities smashed up the rules on bank surveillance, then took too few measures to tackle the speculators and now propose to address the crisis through enforced austerity and downward pressure on the wages of people who bear no responsibility for causing this crisis.

There is certainly a need for a manifesto and a movement in Europe: a protest movement which will put an end to the diktats of speculators and of multinationals, break up the bonus culture, and ensure that social and humane measures return to our continent. That will be hard for Brussels to swallow, because it will mean also an end to the pocket-lining jobs and the golden threads which run between Brussels and the major corporations. A Europe which is ours, and which will make our lives not worse, but better, that is a Europe I’ll sign up to. For Cohn-Bendit’s manifesto, however, I wouldn’t give five eurocents.