Editorial from Kommunistisk Politik, No. 1, January 5, 2002
From January 1, 2002, the European single currency, the euro, is a physical
reality. At the turn of the year, history's biggest currency reform was glamorously
celebrated with fireworks and party music in 12 European countries having a
total population of 300 million people - on the citizens' account.
Before this, the euro had created huge spending in certain circles who were
busy laundering black money in the national currencies, which were about to
become obsolete. Companies and shops have been busy converting prices in national
currency into prices in euro, always rounding up and thereby ensuring that the
physical euro results in a wave of price increases. And the whole currency reform
introducing the new currency, including everything, has cost billions upon billions
of euros.
In the midst of all the fuss, the real meaning of introducing the common currency,
which has political, economic as well as "symbolic" objectives, has
been carefully hidden: the euro and the economic union is bourgeois policy laid
down in a treaty; it is a tool in the hands of the European monopolies for consolidating
and increasing their profits at the expense of the working people inside and
outside the EU. The introduction of the euro is also a victory of neoliberalism,
which during these years, and all over the world, has been causing poverty,
misery, and death to the broad masses, Argentina being the latest victim.
The monetary union means a stronger EU. Because of its ambitions of becoming
a superpower, the EU still has the goal of placing the euro as an international
currency reserve, as the partner of and competitor to the dollar.
"It is a irreversible process that begins tomorrow," President of
the European Commission Romano Prodi said on December 31. This means that the
road to the EU superstate and superpower has become cemented through the euro,
and that the 12 countries, which have abandoned their currency, has become linked
together in one "indissoluble marriage" because a nation that does
not have its own currency is not a sovereign nation, but already part of a whole,
in this case, a state in the EU.
"The euro will ensure stable prices," Prodi also said. That is a misrepresentation
referring to the provision of the EU treaties on keeping the yearly inflation
below 2 percent.
Prices will rise and the great majority of the citizens in the EU will become
poorer as a result of the euro and the development of the EU. It is not the
European Central Bank, which fixes prices, but the monopolies and the multinationals.
On the contrary, the euro will lead to increased harmonization of all elements
of the policy of the EU member states, including the harmonization of tax, social
and labour market policies. The euro bears, right from its start, the signs
of a showdown with the Social Democratic welfare model, which once existed in
the Nordic countries, for instance.
Prodi expresses the "symbolic value" of the euro by saying that the
euro will bring the citizens in the EU "a greater identity". The common
currency is meant to contribute to develop good EU citizens. The euro is, in
itself, good propaganda for the EU. The fact that beer as well as milk will
be paid for in euro, and in twelve different languages, will create a type of
fellowship that the policy of the EU has not been able to do nor will be able
to do.
Danish pro-EU politicians are trying to exploit this effect when they say that
the Danes will become convinced of the practical value of the euro in the space
of a few years. And by then it will be the time to reverse the clear result
of the euro referendum on September 28, 2000, when the Danes voted against the
EU superstate and its currency. Sweden, as well as Great Britain, is preparing
to join the eurozone, and the Danes are going to be forced to join as well,
regardless of their previous "no", and despite the fact that the value
of the Danish krone is fixed to the euro, and that Denmark's economic policy,
as most of Danish policies, is no longer being decided in Denmark, but in Brussels.
However, Denmark has preserved its possibility of another course, of liberating
itself from the bonds to the euro. All countries participating in the eurozone
have renounced this possibility and are committed to the final integration into
the new superstate.
To small countries, this is national suicide. Being an economic tool, the euro
will not develop in order to serve their interests, but the interests of the
dominating great powers of the EU, first and foremost Germany.
The Danes have good reason to remember that they have said "no" to
the euro, and they must prepare themselves for the inevitable fight against
another reversal of their decision.
The fanfare for the euro is the tribute of the rulers and the monopolies to
themselves - at the expense of others.
January 1, 2002