Welcome letter, EU-in-crisis list

Dear friends and colleagues.

Welcome to the ‘EU in crisis network’.

As we agreed at the May 5-6 Conference, there is an urgent need for more cooperation across borders on EU policies, and this network is one of the ongoing efforts to build convergence.

So this network is set up as a follow-up and to ensure a stronger response of social movements to the wave of undemocratic and antisocial “reforms” at the EU-level.

If you want to join the network, please write to EUinCrisis@corporateeurope.org

The network will aim:

• To share information and research on the adopted as well as upcoming “reforms”  on ‘economic governance’, including  the fiscal compact, the six-pack, the two-pack, the ESM treaty, the Europluspact and other related issues.
• To develop a joint pan-European political response, both in terms of critique and alternative policies
• To help organise political initiatives on the EU policies and ‘reforms’
• and finally, to contritbute to stimulate and qualify the debate on economic governance and on the alternatives to the EU response to the crisis at the Altersummit and Florence + 10 events.

We feel that at the moment, there are two urgent tasks the coming month: the first is to work on the fiscal compact, and the second to discuss the so called ‘growth strategy’ to be adopted at the EU summit in late June. A strategy which appears to become little more than a new way of packaging austerity and attacks on social rights. We suggest this network could do a statement to be released at the time of the Summit.

We also intend to follow-up on the Conference debate on ‘alternatives and strategy’ as well. That debate will be based on the discussions we had at the ‘EU in Crisis’ conference on the 4-5th of May. The intention with that debate is to feed into discussions at the Altersummit (www.altersummit.eu). Since that will not happen this side of November, we propose to wait for a while before we go into that.

We see this mailing list as a first start. Later on other forms of communication can be developed, and if needed we could consider a meeting. But this depends also on dynamics in other social movements. For instance, we hope very much that we will see big European events for social movements to reach an even higher degree of cooperation.

Both Corporate Europe Observatory and Transnational Institute will contribute to all of this. But in the end it all depends on the energy we all put into it.

Sorry for the delay in setting up this.

Looking forward to working with you all!!

All the best,

CEO & TNI