After the European elections: EU summit escalates war against Russia
After their devastating defeats in the European elections, European governments are intensifying their war policies. The EU summit on June 27 was dominated by the further escalation of the war in Ukraine against Russia. The greater the population’s rejection of the war, the more ruthlessly those in power are pushing it forward.
The governments suffered a particularly severe defeat in the two largest EU countries, Germany and France. In Germany, Chancellor Scholz’s SPD suffered its worst election result in 127 years. The other two governing parties, the Greens and the FDP, also suffered massive losses. In France, President Macron’s electoral coalition received less than 15 percent, not even half the votes of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).
Opposition to the war in Ukraine played an important role in these electoral defeats. Far-right parties were able to capitalize on the fact that many of the supposedly “left” parties supported the war.
The EU summit took a series of decisions designed to ensure that the war against Russia continues despite its unpopularity and the political crisis in the US – even if this would entail enormous costs, the deployment of troops from EU member states and the risk of nuclear escalation.
The most important topic of the summit was the appointment of the EU heads of state and government for the next five years. The heads of state and government agreed on this with only a few dissenting votes.
Ursula von der Leyen, the conservatives’ lead candidate in the European elections, is set to remain Commission President for another term. The German politician has campaigned for the EU’s military build-up and the strengthening of the European arms industry and played a key role in making the EU and its members the largest donors and military supporters of Ukraine, ahead of the USA.
The current Portuguese Prime Minister António da Costa is to replace the Belgian Charles Michel as President of the European Council. Political observers assume that the Social Democrat Costa will work “in partnership” with von der Leyen and will not compete with her like Michel does.
The most important personnel decision was the appointment of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. The daughter of a Stalinist official who became a champion of economic liberalization after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she is an ardent opponent of Russia. Estonia, a country with just 1.3 million inhabitants – a third of whom have Russian roots – is thus given extraordinary influence on European foreign policy and decisions on war and peace.
The three nominees still have to be confirmed by the European Parliament, where the Conservatives, Social Democrats and Liberals, who agreed on the personnel proposal, have a narrow majority. However, this is not guaranteed, as there is no mechanism in the European Parliament to enforce votes along party lines and is not possible due to competing national interests.
It is therefore notable that the Italian head of government, the fascist Giorgia Meloni, abstained from nominating von der Leyen, while voting against the other two candidates. Von der Leyen and the chairman of the conservative Bundestag faction, Manfred Weber, have long sought closer cooperation with the Italian neo-fascists. It is suspected that von der Leyen has promised Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) a key post in the EU Commission if this helps them gain a majority in Parliament.
One day before the EU summit, another important personnel decision was made. Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands for 14 years, was officially appointed NATO Secretary General. At the beginning of October, he will replace the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg. Rutte is one of the most active warmongers against Russia. Hungary, the only EU member state that still maintains close relations with Russia, had blocked Rutte’s appointment for months.
The escalation of the war in Ukraine also played a central role at the EU summit, which President Zelenskyj personally attended. The EU signed a security agreement with Ukraine that only individual states had previously concluded. In it, the EU committed itself to continuing to provide Ukraine with “all necessary political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support”, “for as long and as intensively as necessary”.
Official EU accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova also began at the beginning of the week. The pace is extraordinary. Normally, a country has to fulfill a long list of conditions for years before such negotiations can begin.
However, an EU representative stated that Ukraine had made “enormous progress in the areas of the rule of law, the fight against corruption and also freedom of the press.” And this despite the fact that Zelensky’s term in office has now expired and he rejects new elections, rules under a state of emergency, suppresses opposition media and imprisons political opponents such as the socialist Bogdan Syrotjuk.
The presidential debate in the US burst into the EU summit and showed the whole world that the battle for the most powerful office in the world was being fought between a brutal fascist and a senile warmonger. The disgusting spectacle on CNN was a blow to the mendacious propaganda that the US and its allies were defending “democracy” and “Western values” in Ukraine and on other battlefields around the world.
The EU summit was a crisis summit. Heads of government like Macron and Scholz, who are on the political brink and have lost all connection to the reality of people’s lives, are reacting with war and dictatorship.
The summit shows once again that the threat of war cannot be averted by putting pressure on those in power and the established parties. What is needed is an independent offensive by the international working class against the bankrupt capitalist system.
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