The Ninety-Five Theses on the Ills of Europe
- November 11, 2011
People & Protest
A group of researchers interrupted a lecture by EU President Van Rompuy and tagged 95 theses onto the door of the Church where he was speaking.
- Author
This list of theses was pinned to the door of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, while EU President Herman Van Rompuy was delivering a lecture on the political and economic crisis. It was prepared by a group of concerned PhD researchers associated with the Collettivo Prezzemolo. These are just some issues we came up with — the list is obviously not meant to be exhaustive. For more theses, consult the peoples of Europe!
1. No to austerity!
2. Forgive the debt!
3. Strengthen the welfare state!
4. Redistribute wealth – tax the rich!
5. Defend social rights!
6. End labor market precarity!
7. Combat wage stagnation!
8. Establish a minimum income scheme!
9. Invest in free, high-quality public health!
10. This is not a clash of generations – defend pension rights!
11. End the privatization of public goods and state assets!
12. No to bankocracy – too big to fail is too big to exist!
13. People before profits – bail out the people not the banks!
14. No to the rule of the rating agency oligopoly!
15. End the ECB’s obsession with inflation control!
16. Troika out of Greece!
17. IMF and ECB out of Italy, Ireland and Portugal!
18. Institute a common European debt!
19. Institute capital controls!
20. Institute a financial transaction tax!
21. Regulate the financial sector!
22. Outlaw over-the-counter commodity speculation!
23. Nationalize failing banks and restructure them into cooperatives!
24. Break up investment and retail banks!
25. Crack down on offshore tax havens!
26. If corporations are legal persons, why aren’t they paying taxes?
27. Curtail corporate lobbying in Brussels!
28. No common currency without a common democracy!
29. You can’t balance the budget with a democratic deficit!
30. Elect the President!
31. Allow us to remove the President!
32. Elect the Commission!
33. Allow us to dismiss the Commission!
34. Empower and downscale the European Parliament!
35. Bring EU bureaucrat pay back in line with common standards (and tax it)!
36. What about the Irish referendums?
37. What about the Dutch referendum?
38. What about the French referendum?
39. Why were we so afraid of a Greek referendum?
40. Stop coddling up to corrupt national elites at the expense of the people!
41. Don’t play us apart – defend cross-national solidarity!
42. Don’t blame the lack of a public sphere – the peoples of Europe exist!
43. Define our borders inclusively, not exclusively!
44. End the illegal war on terror!
45. Stop coddling up to dictators!
46. Prosecute all war criminals!
47. End the EU-condoned oppression of the Palestinian people!
48. Ban arms sales to Greece and authoritarian regimes outside of Europe!
49. Stop cracking down on pro-democracy protests at home while encouraging them abroad!
50. Develop our own democracy, don’t just export this flawed system as if it were perfect!
51. Don’t produce elitist expat multiculturalism – aim for a multicultural society on all levels!
52. No to Fortress Europe! No to FRONTEX!
53. End the internment and criminalization of immigrants on Europe’s margins!
54. Free and high-quality public education for all!
55. Promote socially-relevant research!
56. Stop the hypocrisy of the Lisbon Agenda!
57. Expand the Erasmus program – it is the only European policy that actually works!
58. Live up to article 2 of the TEU – respect human dignity, freedom, democracy and equality!
59. Defend immigrants’ rights at home!
60. End institutionalized xenophobia – stop the crackdown on immigration!
61. No more detention centers!
62. Enact visa reciprocity for non-EU countries!
63. The Polish plumber is not taking away our jobs!
64. Europe has gone cold turkey!
65. Crack down on human and sex slavery!
66. Asylum is a basic human right!
67. Stop the racism of Italian and Hungarian parliaments!
68. End the oppression and criminalization of Roma citizens and all other minorities!
69. End the reproduction of homophobia through state institutions!
70. Promote gender equality in politics and the working place!
71. Create free public kindergartens across the EU!
72. Abolish the EU Carbon Trading Scheme!
73. Institute an EU-wide carbon tax!
74. Pursue massive public investments in renewable energy!
75. End our continued dependence on nuclear energy!
76. Invest in high-quality and sustainable public transport!
77. End our overdependence on air travel – create a continental public transport system!
78. Stop promoting unrestrained and mindless consumption!
79. Subsidize small organic farms – not large industrial conglomerates!
80. Promote food sovereignty – not WTO principles!
81. Stop plundering fish stocks off the Western Saharan coast!
82. Protect oceanic ecosystems – ban bottom trawling!
83. Institute a pan-European ban on GMOs!
84. Defend Europe’s most beautiful regions from the destructive forces of mass tourism!
85. More internal welfare transfers to end regional disparities!
86. It takes a couple of Zimbabwean welfare states to build a Scandinavian one!
87. Live up to our Millennium Promises – raise the Official Development Assistance budget!
88. End the obsession with free trade – promote fair trade practices!
89. No to intellectual property rights!
90. Defend the right to peaceful protest!
91. End police militarization!
92. Long live the occupations!
93. Power to the people’s assemblies!
94. The revolution will not be privatized!
95. For more theses, consult the peoples of Europe.
REAL DEMOCRACY NOW!
Source URL — https://roarmag.org/essays/the-ninety-five-theses-on-the-ills-of-europe/
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