BLOCO DE ESQUERDA | MANIFESTO ELEITORALRESOLUTION OF THE NATIONAL BOARD OF THE PORTUGUESE LEFT BLOC
JULY 26TH, 2015

DEMOCRACY
against financial
colonialism
1. In the European Summit of July 12, the the Greek democratic referendum was responded withthe financial occupation of Greece. National humiliation, imposed against the will of the people,
and three more years of social punishment, cannot end well. The European Union has shownto millions of citizens, that it is ready for anything to impose the austerity plan, even runningover democracy. So, in Greece and all over Europe, the answer will be built against this Union.
2. These last months draw two essential conclusions. First, there is a great conservative-socialist coalition, led by the German gouvernment, that rules the European Union and imposes thedictatorship of the markets and the policy of austerity, unemployment, poverty and inequality.
Secondly, this Union will not allow the existance of any government with an alternative policy
and, facing a left wing government, will not hesitate to try to destroy it by all means.
3. While easily accepting the construction of a new and shameful wall by the far right government of Hungary, the European Union didn’t hesitate to put the Monetary Union at risk inthe move to crush Syriza’s government. Proposing the hostile expulsion of Greece from theEurozone, Schauble broke the myth of Euro stability as the common currency of several states.
Cutting off the cashflow to Greek banks for political purposes, the ECB underlined the urgent
need for mechanisms of national control on the banking system, independent from ECB.
4. Through 25 years, the European Union, defined by its treaties, has been an undemocratic device to institutionalize the neoliberal order: deregulation, concentration of capital, diminuishingof social protection, pressure on salaries. The single currency was a crucial step in the consolidation of this project. Firstly, the removal of exchange risk is an essential condition for financial
power and free circulation of capital. Secondly, the single currency defines austerity and labour
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and monetary policies, leaving them to a single institution - the ECB - exempted of democratic
control and dominated by the German government and the major world financial institutions;it diminishes budgetary independence and blocks progressive industrial policies. The imposed
goals are impossible to fulfill, but non-compliance legitimates European institutions to determine national budgets. Above all, this bureaucracy holds every meaningful decision and has
proven immune to direct popular pressure or to the correlation of political and social forces
within each country. Brutality against Greece is the proof of this immunity to democracy.
5. Our left has always been opposed to this European integration and the creation of a single currency. However, upon its completion, we admitted that it could be refounded under a better relation of forces and we never gave up fighting for it, both on national and European levels. A decadeago, the alter-globalization movement seemed to give credibility to that hypothesis. However,since then, the left focused on proposals for a European democratic refoundation and on correction mechanisms for existing macroeconomic unbalances: a European Senate with equality
among states, reform of ECB rules, reinforcing Union budget, eurobonds. All these proposals wereinvalidated or abandoned by the social-democracy, that engaged in federalist authoritarianism,
unable to stand up to financial interests, ending up as a fierce partner of Greece’s punishment.
6. The austerity programmes imposed by Berlin and Brussels were based in a lie. The reason forthe crisis would be the people living beyond their possibilities. This lie, repeated by the Portuguese rightwing government, was an attempt to obliterate the real origin of the crisis: financial
speculation and the burst of the USA real estate bubble. The 2007-08 crisis, amplified by theLehman Brothers crash, was followed by the bailout of the banking system and the socializationof its losses. Speculation then turned to the public debts of peripheral European countries. The
ECB financed commercial banks at 1% to buy sovereign bonds at much higher rates. This riskfree capital income turned public debts into the greatest global financial market. Through harshausterity measures, labour income was directly transfered to debt payment.
7. In the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties and in the Fiscal Pact, in 2012, Europe had already constitutionalized austerity and the prohibition of policies for workers rights or welfare extension.
With the election of the first anti-austerity government, the total logic of this European treaties
was taken into practice. The German “great coalition” imposed its law on 18 countries and theGerman-French directory was reduced to the figure of the Chanceler. The German governmentis today the all-mighty centre of political decision and budget control.
8. The Left must learn the recent history lessons to take clear positions. During the last sixmonths of dispute, the Greek government made itself open to a viable agreement amongst
equal states. In the outcome, it clashed with the extremism and vindictiveness of the “European partners”, turned creditors. The Left that commits to refuse austerity and the Fiscal Pact
must be empowered and ready to restore sovereignity on essential options in order to respectnational democracy.

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9. The Left Bloc refuses any more sacrifices for the euro. To express this alternative is, morethan ever, a battle for democracy; taking the Fiscal Pact to referendum and start the restructuring of public debt are essential steps in that path. With this clear mandate – that may result ina break up with the Monetary Union, as we underlined in the party’s last National Convention– the elected representatives of the Left Bloc fight for an alternative to European authoritarianism.
10. The internationalist left sets upon a new European alliance, inheritor of the struggles against
fascism and militarism and of the social achievements of the post-war period. That democratic
and cooperative project embodies the lessons of today’s authoritarian attack and aims for new
common goals in social, environmental, cultural and human rights standards. When xenophobic and nationalist parties rise as alternatives to the disfunctional European Union, the resistance and insubmission movement can’t wait. Recognising this fact and the huge difficulties, theLeft Bloc reiterates its compromise with the widest possible alternative, gathering all the forces
fighting for democracy, against austerity.

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