International

Foto: Bloco (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Last Saturday the Spanish people took to the streets en masse to show their support for our sister party Podemos. This movement has grown from the indignados protests against the corruption and mismanagement of the financial institutions. Following the success of Syriza in Greece, Podemos are likely to be the second big winners from the modern left in southern Europe. The SP is tremendously pleased about this, and we hope that we can see something similar occur in the Netherlands, but we have to keep a cool head. While there are a great many areas of agreement between us, there are also differences of outlook.

You can only push people so far. Troikas and budget fetishism enable you to grind people down for a while, but at a given moment they’ll have had enough. There was a danger, especially in Greece, that people would seek their salvation in extreme right-wing parties, but luckily they have not done so. Instead, the modern left in the form of Syriza has defeated the established order. The social democrats of Pasok have all but disappeared from the scene and the right too took a pounding. Syriza has already reversed some privatisations, raised the minimum wage and improved the position of the poorest Greeks. So it can indeed be done!

That they could also achieve this in Spain is incorporated into Podemos’ very name, which, after all, means ‘We can’. And even if Brussels is already acting differently, the situation in Spain is tragic. Just as in Greece, corruption is rampant and unemployment and poverty beyond what can be borne. That calls for radical change, which is what Podemos offers.

The end of social democracy appears in sight. It’s very far from clear just what this political current now stands for. That goes for the PvdA – the Dutch Labour Party – and for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the political group in which it participates in the European Parliament. Not long ago this group voted in favour of a report in praise of the internal market without a single amendment being carried on the need to respect social rights or protect public services.

For the SP also it is therefore a relief to see people pricking the bubble of the political establishment’s diversionary tactics, which have gone on for years. Yet we shouldn’t get carried away. Podemos and Syriza are standing up for Spanish and Greek interests. As long as these countries remain in the eurozone, they won’t be able to compete with other member states. This will mean that they need money from the richer member states, and the transfer of resources from north to south will stand higher on the agenda. This is, however, exceptionally difficult. Even in a country like the Netherlands everything has been subject to cuts, and unemployment and poverty have increased. That’s why we need, together with our sister parties, to look for solutions, for example from within the existing EU funds, which will give them breathing space without making people in our own country, who have already had things difficult enough, suffering as a consequence.