Europe and the Left by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030545413
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Within this framing, concrete policies concerning Social Europe are the demands for a European minimum wage; European regulations for increasing co-determination for employees; equal wages for women and men, and real prospects for Europe’s youth with more education and work. In short, the SPD called for a European Union against ‘social dumping’ and for good working conditions. The main pillar of economic integration, which should help to finance all this, is a European minimum tax: ‘Every café, every bookstore, every retailer pays taxes—Starbucks, Amazon and Co do not, despite billions in profits. That must be the end’. The political dimension of Europe on the contrary refers entirely to freedom and democracy against tendencies of re-nationalisation forwarded by right-wing populist parties. The SPD uses Germany’s past experience of Nazi dictatorship and the GDR to reiterate the importance of peace and free elections, which are consolidated through the European project and should not be taken for granted.

Party leader Andrea Nahles spoke about Europe in 6 of her 11 Facebook posts during this period. She also focused entirely on freedom and democracy and the populist threat to the EU. While she clearly positions the SPD against an unravelling of European integration, she used the corruption scandal in Austria1 to emphasise that right-wing populist parties are part and parcel of the corrupt elite against which they are mobilising the electorate. For her, only a social Europe was the answer to the increasing threat of the radical right:#EuropeForAll is not a Europe of the nation-states in which everyone fights against everyone. We already had that; the result is known. A Europe for all is a social Europe that holds together. Especially against the right. That’s what we stand for in the election. (SPD 2019b)

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