EU Membership and the Class Nature of a United Europe.

 

L. David McAllister R. Marc Botenger

Richard, London UK

 

I was watching one of the news channels that come on when you press the wrong button after trying to get Al Jazeera and it was a European channel and the first thing I saw was an EU sponsored interview with the president of Montenegro, a very young very posh man who had studied in Japan and he was a quiet, class act advocating all manner of liberal stuff whilst trying to get his country into the EU. 

So far so dull but then there was a genuinely interesting programme after that, which reminded me of how different debate is in the UK and in the EU, in which German MEP David McAllister, the disconcertingly named CDU spokesperson and prominent European People's Party member, debated Marc Botenga of the European Left Party and Workers Party of Belgium.

The subject of the debate was European enlargement and whilst McAllister predictably promoted it energetically, Botenga was neither for it nor against it because he insisted that they focus on the social content of the enlargement. 

This continued until they got to the question of Ukraine. Botenga argued it would outrageous to admit them to the European union given the very obvious violation of the social conditions for EU membership by the Ukrainian government including repression of straight unions, banning strikes, martial law and postponement of elections. 

McAllister retained an even voice as he replied saying that no one should overlook the terrible difficulties that the Ukrainian government is facing, they are under attack, they are being invaded, they want to be in the EU. Botenga replied simply: how does attacking their own trade unions and their own social provision help them defend themselves? 

And then he countered: what's more, Russia is not the only power interfering in the region. Finland's Prime Minister (or was it Lithuania, I can't recall) had recently been visiting Georgia joining opposition demonstrations. Imagine if a Russian politician did that in Western Europe. But above all, Russia was not the only country threatening Ukraine's right of self-determination because in the peace discussions right now, Trump and Zelensky are discussing selling off Donbass to the Americans, clear violation of the right of the nation to self-determination and its social protections at the same time. 

Now and only now McAllister lost his temper, now we saw what lay beneath the cultivated "social" veneer of German Christian Democracy.

 

He exploded into rage, spitting out hatred of Russia, denouncing Russian and only Russian online propaganda, insisting that Europe needed to protect itself against Russia, demanding that the socialists and the left should fall in line and defend Europe. Here we saw the man himself, a bilingual German and UK citizen who grew up in West Berlin and who for his 17th birthday present in January 1990 asked his parents to allow him to join the CDU. 

 

And through his genuine rage, the only honest moment in his entire performance, we saw the real class essence of the international alignment here, with German and French and British imperialism really seriously determined on war, and spokesperson for a working class party doing something that the representatives of the publicly recognised British left more often than not fail to do and making a *class* argument in response and looking all the stronger and more stable and more reasoned and more enlightened as a result .