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IV Online magazine
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IV404 - September 2008
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<h2>European Social Forum</h2>
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<h1> European social movement faces challenges</h1>
<p> After the 5th ESF in Malmö<br>
<a href="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur340" title="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)." class="rcol"> <em>Esther Vivas</em></a>,
<a href="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur35" title="Josep María Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the magazine Viento Sur, and a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona." class="rcol"> <em>Josep María Antentas</em></a>
</p><p>@ <a href="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1529">http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1529</a> <br></p>
<p><strong>The
5th European Social Forum (ESF) which has just ended 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. </strong></p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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).</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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.</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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.</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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.</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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 or
determined "Euro strikes" in some companies.</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify">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.</p>
<p class="spip" align="justify"><i class="spip">*This article first appeared in the newspaper "Público", on 21/09/2008.</i></p>
<p><img src="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/puce.gif" alt="-" height="11" width="8"><em>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
(<a href="http://www.vientosur.info">www.vientosur.info</a>).</em></p>
<p><img src="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/puce.gif" alt="-" height="11" width="8"><em>Josep
María Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the magazine
Viento Sur, and a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University
of Barcelona.</em></p><br>
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