Some inconvenient truths

national | anti-capitalism | press release Sunday March 25, 2007 13:24 by Eugene Mc Cartan - Communist Party of Ireland cpoi at eircom dot net James Connolly House, 43 East Essex St,Temple Bar, Dublin 2: 087 9733414

Fiftieth aniversary of the founding of the EEC

As representatives of the twenty-seven EU member-states gather to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the EEC, the Communist Party of Ireland reasserts its continued opposition to the strategy of these elites in their continued drive to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of a bureaucratic caste and to undermine national democracy.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND
James Connolly House, 43 East Essex St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2:

25th march 2007

PRESS RELEASE
SOME INCONVENIENT TRUTH'S
Fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the EEC

As representatives of the twenty-seven EU member-states gather to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the EEC, the Communist Party of Ireland reasserts its continued opposition to the strategy of these elites in their continued drive to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of a bureaucratic caste and to undermine national democracy.

It was the existence of the Soviet Union that sustained peace in Europe, and not the existence of the EEC. The creation of the EEC was the brainchild of leading political representatives of European monopoly corporations, who believed in the need to build an economic and political power to compete with the United States and to protect themselves from the onward advance of the worker's movement across Europe after the Second World War. They also needed to secure their global interests while at the same time being dependent on the US-dominated military alliance of NATO.

The CPI's analysis of the nature of the EEC and the impact it would have on working people throughout its member-states has been borne out by experience. More and more of the rights and conditions secured by workers, such as the age of retirement, a shorter working week and equal pay for women, are now under sustained attack throughout the European Union.

Our opposition to the series of treaties, from the Maastricht Treaty and Single European Act, which were aimed at the concentration of power and economic decision-making in the hands of an anti-democratic elite, has been shown to have been correct.

With the end of the Cold War we are witnessing the growing militarisation of the European Union, in close partnership with NATO,
and the deployment of EU forces in many conflict zones. Irish neutrality is virtually gone. The European Union is imposing
neo-liberalist economic policies, through the "Economic Partnership Agreements," on some of the poorest countries of Africa and the Caribbean and forcing them into a neo-colonialist political relationship.

The CPI calls for greater co-operation between progressive and democratic opinion and communist parties throughout the European Union to step up united campaigns to defend the interests of working people and to oppose the draft "Constitutional Treaty" that the elites are attempting to foist on the peoples of Europe, despite its democratic rejection by the French and Dutch peoples. The struggle for democracy and democratic accountability needs to be stepped up and to gain new momentum throughout the European Union. Statement ends

Eugene Mc Cartan
General Secretary
087 9733414