Economic recovery and social-ecological transformation
As an immediate measure, we need more investment in public services.
Firstly, we need to put an end to the austerity policies by completely abolishing the Stability and Growth Pact. Europe must leave this instrument behind, as it is used to impose austerity on public spending, thus undermining healthcare and other public services to the detriment of the population, who are now suffering the consequences of these policies in the coronavirus crisis.
The European Central Bank (ECB) should be the instrument to guarantee the huge resources necessary to face the immense social, economic and medical emergency underway. The ECB’s money should be used to help the people to emerge from the medical health emergency and to combat the consequences of the crisis, not to maintain the rate of return on capital. The ECB must assume its responsibility for economic development and must take all the measures necessary to avoid financial speculation. It is a precondition to ensure that national actions can be coordinated and that a strong solidarity-based system will be established to deal with the coronavirus crisis. Both the ECB and national banks should be used to increase spending on social services and protection of the population.
Furthermore, the ECB must finance a European investment plan, capable of boosting employment and guaranteeing a change in the environmental and social model of production and the economy. We need a programme of productive reconstruction including the relocation of strategic industries. We demand a European Recovery Fund, financed through bonds issued by the Fund itself or by the European Investment Bank and acquired by the ECB. At the same time, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which represents an unnecessary and harmful way of intervening in the public budgets of the various European countries, should be abolished.
The German Constitutional Court questioned the competencies of both the ECB and the court of Luxemburg, and ignores the economic requirements we need for the European development. Its decision for us represents no more than the flip side of austerity and of the neoliberal project. It is functional to discourage and avoid solidarity actions, and to undermine the path to any project for a social Europe.
We propose a general moratorium of the public debts. Furthermore, we propose a European conference about the public debt and an open discussion about the criteria for the classification of debt.
This crisis of the COVID-19 shows that the market does not take care of the needs of the citizens at all. It is not even able of ensuring the minimum necessary for life. We want a relaunch of the public role, lost during the period of privatization, in all sectors: the credit system, strategic productions, research system and services. We need an economic model focused on public welfare, and the immense accumulation of capital by the few must be stopped. For the many, not just for the few!
Financing the increase in social spending and in investing in the transformation of industry, requires a policy of fiscal justice: we demand a new tax collection model that taxes large sources of capital and wealth, based on tax progressivity criteria, and ends tax havens inside and outside the EU. A tax on GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) and on NATU (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla, Uber) is necessary.
The crisis provides sufficient reasons to question our socio-economic model and to radically change politics. A change is needed also because we face enormous ecological challenges such as climate change, which have a very wide-ranging social impact. For the Left, the connection between ecological requirements and social needs is crucial. We need a green transition in industry, but we must also protect the workers and employees affected by this process. A “Just transition”, as promoted by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), aims at combining ecological transition with social protection. We need a new industrial policy with new concepts of energy and mobility. We need a plan for the environmental and social reconversion of the economy that ensures full and good employment and protects everyone’s rights, starting from gender equality. From the point of view of the Left, a new industrial policy must include direct participation by the workers and, therefore, must be combined with economic democracy.