[WSF-Discuss] The challenges of European social movements

[CACIM]

 *The challenges of European social movements*

October, 02 2008

By *Josep Maria Antentas*
and *Esther Vivas*


Josep Maria Antentas's ZSpace
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The 5th European Social Forum (ESF) that ended last 21st of September in
Malmö (Sweden) is a good occasion to reflect on the trajectory and
challenges of an initiative that has allowed activists and movements from
across the continent to meet and exchange.

>From its first meeting in November 2002 in Florence to today, the ESF has
simultaneously achieved a lot and very little. The social forums are not an
aim in themselves, but an instrument to serve discussion and joint campaigns
and mobilizations. They only have meaning if they help us to advance in this
direction. The forums have not themselves created lasting convergences or
the development of concrete struggles, but they have had a general positive
influence in this direction. The great merit of the ESF process has been to
affirm a space of convergence in the struggles against neoliberal policies
on a European scale. Although weak and without firm roots, they have been a
reference point for most of the social forces opposed to these policies.
Something that has not been the case, for example, with the European Trade
Union Confederation (ETUC), caught up in its policy of "critical support" to
the neoliberal logic of the European Union (EU).

The international context in which the ESF has been developed has changed
from its beginnings, during the growth of the global justice movement. The
latter grew rapidly until the mobilizations against the G8 in Genoa in July
2001 and the attacks of September 11 in New York. After some initial
hesitations, in which the movement seemed to lose ground, the new stage was
characterized by the centrality acquired by the fight against "permanent
global war", whose zenith was the protests of 2003 against the invasion of
Iraq. This was the scene in which the first ESF in November 2002 in Florence
took place.

Starting from its second meeting in Paris in November 2003, the ESF
developed in a phase characterized by the loss of centrality of the
international mobilizations for global justice and of its unifying capacity,
in a context of sharpening and multiplication of concrete struggles against
neoliberalism and of greater sectional dispersion and "nationalization" of
these struggles. A scene, really, marked by a crisis of perspective on the
part of the global justice movement and the World Social Forum in which the
ESF is framed. Later meetings in London in 2004 and Athens in 2006 showed
the continuity of the process and its rooting in new countries, but also its
difficulties in continuing to develop and move forward. After the novelty
effect and the initial impulse, in recent years the dynamic of the ESF shows
symptoms of decline, routinism and loss of concrete usefulness.

Today, the great challenge of the European social movements is to be able to
articulate an answer on a continental scale to the neoliberal logic of
European integration and to measures like the "Returns Directive"
[harmonizing EU procedures for the expulsion of "illegally staying"
immigrants] or the as yet unapproved Working Time Directive raising the
limit of the working week to 65 hours. The success of the first ESF
generated enormous expectations on its potential on this terrain. In fact
too many. After the international day against the war in Iraq, February 15.
2003, called by this first meeting of the forum, which brought millions of
people on the streets, the great challenge was to take a real step forward
in the continental articulation of the struggles. The propagandistic formula
used at the time was "to make February 15 social". But the subsequent
advances in this area have been limited, generating a certain sensation of
frustration and stagnation. The Iraq war had a centralizing effect that does
not exist in other areas.

The logic of governmental policies is the same across the EU and obeys the
agreements taken in this framework. But the rate and dynamics of application
of the reforms are different in each country. In recent years, the social
resistance to neoliberalism has been considerable. It is nevertheless still
very defensive (with some precise exceptions), and often ends in defeats or
precarious victories and are developed in an unfavourable context. All this
makes the initiation of coordinated initiatives on European scale difficult.
Nevertheless, there has been important progress in some areas, some linked
to the dynamic of the ESF and others not, like the harmonization of European
networks and campaigns on specific subjects like days (many still symbolic
and limited) of simultaneous mobilization in several countries, for example
that impelled by the student movement against the European Higher Education
Area [EHEA, the so-called "Bologna Process" that intends to reform the
European higher education system] or determined "Euro strikes" in some
companies.

We need to advance then in this "Europeanization" of the resistance. In
fact, the European social movements have the double challenge of deepening
their local roots and fortifying themselves "from below" and, in parallel,
creating forms of national and international articulation, that avoid the
isolation of social resistance through spaces like forums, concrete
campaigns and networks. Florence was a spectacular and promising start on a
road that has been difficult and complex, with advances and backward
movements, winding and not very linear: the road to the construction of a
Europe of the peoples opposed to the logic of the capital.



*Josep Maria Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the magazine
Viento Sur, and teaches sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.


Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements
(CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is author of the book in Spanish
"Stand up against external debt" and co-coordinator of the books also in
Spanish "Supermarkets, no thanks" and "Where is fair trade headed?". She is
also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur (www.vientosur.info).
This article first appeared in Spanish at the newspaper Público, on
21/09/2008.The English version was published originally at the online
magazine InternationalViewPoint.
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 From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives  URL:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18999
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