By PDAC,  CORRIENTE ROJA, EM LUTA*

The European Union (EU), the unified apparatus of big capital in European countries created in a world where U.S. supremacy was unchallenged, is the product of a world order in crisis—one that no longer exists as we knew it after World War II. In this turbulent context, the EU has entered an existential crisis, with its economy in decline relative to those of the U.S. and China and doomed by Trump’s new foreign policy, which explicitly aims to dismantle it.

The word that defines the EU’s relationship with Trump is submission. This stance was evident in its acquiescence to the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, its acceptance of Trump’s imposition of tariffs, and its complicity with U.S. intervention in Venezuela. The merely superficial opposition of the major European governments and the European Commission itself to the imperialist aggression by the U.S. and Israel against Iran stems from the economic consequences of this war for Europe and from mass rejection of Trump’s policies and Zionism, but it does not alter the nature of the EU’s strategic relations with the U.S.

The EU is facing an existential crisis

The EU emerged in 1993 following the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe and German reunification, under the initiative of German capitalism in alliance with French capitalism. Both sought to advance the assimilation of Eastern European countries, take a leap forward in the continent’s economic integration centered on their monopoly corporations, and strengthen themselves as an imperialist bloc on the international stage, without challenging U.S. strategic dominance over the continent. The EU never sought to create a unified state structure. On the contrary, the national bourgeoisies—allied yet competing with one another—never at any point considered doing away with their own national states. The EU’s institutions, moreover, facilitated the dominance of German and French capitalism over the others.

The existential crisis the EU is currently facing stems from the intertwining of two main factors: the economic and geostrategic decline of Germany and France relative to the U.S. and China, on the one hand, and Trump’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), which includes the dismantling of the EU, on the other.

Trump wants to reduce the EU to a mere free-trade zone, so that he can conduct relations with each European state separately, without an institution like the EU interfering or aspiring to a certain strategic autonomy rooted in the old European imperialisms.

Trump wants a submissive bloc that pays tariffs to the U.S., maintains its military bases, and preserves the unimpeded dominance of its technological, financial, arms, and energy oligopolies. In the official NSS document, the Trump administration explicitly supports the European far right—the so-called patriotic parties that are anti-European, such as Germany’s AfD or Spain’s Vox. In the “unofficial” version of the NSS leaked to the American press, they even go so far as to discuss encouraging Hungary, Austria, Poland, and Italy to leave the EU.

Trump has even threatened to seize Greenland, the large Arctic island annexed three centuries ago by Denmark, a member of both the EU and NATO. The U.S.’s tactical retreat from its annexation plans has prevented the EU’s internal divisions from coming to light. Trump has completely sidelined the EU from his negotiations with Putin to agree on ending the war and dividing up Ukraine. He has also hinted that he might withhold military support from European NATO countries in the event of a Russian intervention, thereby questioning NATO itself.

Trump has forced NATO to commit to increasing military budgets to 5% of GDP (3.5% directly on weapons and 1.5% on related infrastructure), which will be a major windfall for U.S. defense contractors and companies in war-related technologies, such as Palantir.

The subordination of various European national armies to the U.S. through NATO and their dependence on major U.S. defense contractors is (with the relative exception of France) structural and colossal. The Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program is in deep crisis due to industrial and strategic rivalry between France and Germany, which prefers to rely militarily on the U.S. rather than yield to France. The purchases of the U.S. F-35 fighter jet and systems, such as the Patriot missile system, by Germany and the vast majority of EU countries entail operational and technological dependence on the U.S.

Outlook

The EU project, which already revealed all its limitations following the debt crisis of 2010–2011, is a total failure in a world of inter-imperialist conflict. The rivalry among the three major imperialist powers (the U.S., China, and Russia) affects the differing interests of European countries, making it increasingly difficult to find common ground and, in turn, widening the rift among European powers.

But it is important to make clear that despite the many crises and challenges it faces, both internally and externally, the EU is attempting to fully or partially reverse the current process.

The EU is not a stone rolling toward the abyss; rather, it possesses powerful social, economic, and political forces, a robust internal market, a strong currency, a skilled workforce, its own capital, and retains a core of large corporations. It also has a military tradition and the tools to confront the economic war proposed by Trump, including through tariffs imposed on U.S. financial firms and technology companies.

There is an effort by the European imperialist powers to overcome their dependence on the U.S. for military production. One example is the joint project between the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet by 2035 (which faces opposition from France but which Germany might join) and the project for a tank to be produced by a joint venture between Germany’s Rheinmetall and Italy’s Leonardo, two of the world’s largest arms manufacturers.

We cannot say at this point what the outcome of this process will be. The EU may remain as it is today, even as several of its countries continue their decline as a link in the global imperialist hierarchy, or the EU may even implode, with countries like France and Germany attempting to reposition themselves and halt their decline. What is certain is that the EU, as it has been for the past forty years, cannot guarantee the interests of the European imperialist countries as a whole.

The war in Ukraine and the European Union

The EU’s crisis is also clearly evident in Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. It is worth recalling that in the early days of the invasion, all European governments advised Zelensky to leave Kyiv, which would have led to the annexation of the Donbas by Russia and the establishment of a pro-Putin government in the rest of Ukraine. The European Union was prepared to yield to the interests of Russian imperialism, making the Ukrainian masses pay the price. However, Putin’s plan was thwarted by popular resistance in Ukraine, which forced him to wage more than four years of war that are undermining the very foundations of his regime.

The countries of the European Union were forced—against their will—to support the Zelensky government’s war effort to prevent the Ukrainian popular resistance from slipping out of the bourgeoisie’s control. They limited themselves to sending some outdated weapons to support Ukraine, seizing the opportunity to justify increases in military spending that had nothing to do with supporting the resistance. The intention of the European imperialist countries, after Trump significantly curtailed the already insufficient support for Ukraine, was to convince the Ukrainian government to accept a negotiated settlement to the conflict, essentially ceding Donbas and Crimea to Putin. Zelensky would be open to this solution if it did not seriously endanger the bourgeois order in Ukraine due to opposition from those who took up arms against the invading forces.

The European sections of the IWL-FI support the Ukrainian resistance and Ukraine’s right to independence, regardless of which government is in power. We advocate for the defeat—without any excuses—of the Russian imperialist invasion and oppose increased military spending in EU countries. However, we warn the Ukrainian working and popular masses that the EU countries are not their allies, since they intend to replace Putin’s occupation in order to impose their own economic domination (including through future reconstruction). The Zelensky government is also willing to hand Ukraine over to Western imperialism.

For all these reasons, Ukrainian workers and the resistance must fight against the Russian invasion while seeking to develop their own class-based organizations—democratic in their functioning and independent of the government—in which all forces fighting for Ukraine’s true independence from imperialist predators are represented.

The EU and its member states against workers and peoples

The arms issue is a clear reflection of the underlying problem plaguing the European powers—namely, national rivalries among the major imperialist powers that make up the EU, particularly between Germany and France. This rivalry of interests prevents the implementation of the measures outlined in the famous Draghi Report, which are intended to halt and reverse the accelerated decline of the EU as a global imperialist power—a decline that, according to its author, is inevitable unless the EU makes a qualitative leap in its political, economic, and financial integration.

This rivalry of interests makes it very difficult to take substantial steps toward genuine unification, which could only occur if there were qualitative advances in state unification between Germany and France that would, in turn, draw in the rest of the European countries. Only by becoming a unified imperialist power could the European powers hold their own in a world order marked by rivalry between U.S. and Chinese imperialism.

Despite the propaganda about a “democratic Europe” or claims of international law—with Spanish President Pedro Sánchez at the helm—the EU is a grouping of capitalist states, several of which are imperialist, whose aim is to secure the best conditions for exploiting the working class in Europe and the rest of the world.

The struggle for a truly united Europe—which the working class and the peoples need—can only be achieved through the fight to establish a Socialist United States of Europe, based on the dismantling of the current imperialist states and the establishment of an internationalist and solidarity-based socialist power.

Under the current EU, we can only expect further attacks, to which the response of the major European oligopolies and the governments serving them is a combination of:

1: a strategic offensive, with Germany and France at the forefront, against the economic and social gains of the working class—particularly those associated with the welfare state, such as public pensions, healthcare, education, and unemployment benefits—accompanied by a wave of tens of thousands of layoffs.

2: attacks on democratic rights, recently highlighted by the repression of protest movements against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, with states taking on increasingly authoritarian characteristics.

3: An unchecked drive toward rearmament and the militarization of countries, using the war in Ukraine as a pretext, when the truth is that European governments never provided Ukraine with sufficient military support to effectively repel the invasion. These plans, which include the reintroduction of military service led by Germany and France, are carried out in the name of European security and the pursuit of a false strategic autonomy, while at the same time being presented as the ultimate remedy for productive modernization and a response to the crisis.

4: A substantial worsening of the treatment of immigrants, with the far right dragging the right wing along—both within the European Parliament itself and in member states—by approving cuts to fees, extendable detention periods, or non-EU deportation centers in countries as “democratic” as Egypt or Tunisia.

5: A rollback of Europe’s meager and limited environmental restrictions, alongside agreements such as the one with Mercosur, which increase the plundering and environmental destruction of other countries, while accelerating unprecedented climate change that further fuels the crisis.

* PDAC — IWL Section in Italy; Corriente Roja — IWL section in Eastern Spain; Em Luta — IWL Section in Portugal

The post EU crisis: How to confront the upcoming attacks (Part 1) first appeared on Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

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