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<font size="4"><b>The challenges of European social movements</b></font><div id="bigLeft">
<p class="byLine"><span id="date">October, 02 2008</span>
<br>
<br>
By <b>Josep Maria Antentas</b>
<br>
and <b>Esther Vivas</b><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/josep%20mariaantentas">Josep Maria Antentas's ZSpace Page</a>
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<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">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. <br>
<br>
>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).<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
<br>
*Josep Maria Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the
magazine Viento Sur, and teaches sociology at the Autonomous University
of Barcelona.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
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/"><span style="">www.vientosur.info</span></a>).
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.</span></p>
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<table border="0">
<tbody><tr>
<th align="left">From:</th>
<td>Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="left">URL:</th>
<td><a target="znet" href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18999">http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18999</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
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