EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
MANIFESTO 2024

We condemn Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, which is a crime under international humanitarian law. The immediate steps to stop the war must be a return to the negotiation table, a ceasefire, and a withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine. We are in favour of peace negotiations. We are in favour of sanctions against the Russian military-industrial complex. We call for sanctions against the US military-industrial complex for supporting the aggression by the government of the state of Israel.

Israel must end this barbaric war and the violence in the West Bank. We have condemned the Hamas massacre of 7 October. We call for an immediate ceasefire, the provision of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza and Israel’s immediate withdrawal from all the territories it occupies.

Israel must implement the judgement of the International Court of Justice, which obliges it to refrain from any action that could lead to genocide in Gaza. For this reason, the EU must apply effective economic and political sanctions to put pressure on the Israeli government.

The world can no longer tolerate the systematic oppression of the Palestinians. The Palestinian people must be granted the right to self-determination in an independent, viable state alongside Israel within the 1967 borders.

Alongside the suffering in Ukraine and Palestine, we must not lose sight of the 22 other wars that are being waged around the world: in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Western Sahara, against the Kurdish people and elsewhere. We are living through a ‘world war in instalments’, which could rapidly escalate into a worldwide nuclear disaster. Preventing this is the most important task.

We do not want Europe to become the arena of a new Cold War and an arms race. We want Europe to take responsibility for its security autonomously and independently of the USA, based on multilateralism and respect for international law. We are working for a Europe of peace and solidarity, constantly advocating diplomatic solutions for international conflicts. We need a new approach to security, based on the recognition that no state or community can be secure unless others share the same level of security. Instead of militarising the EU, Europe needs a political agenda for peace, security, and disarmament.

The European Left recognises the climate crisis as an emergency and is committed to transforming the economy away from unlimited growth and dependence on fossil fuels, thus creating the conditions for a just green transition that ensures job creation, fair distribution of wealth, sound and universal public services and public ownership of the commons.

We need to undergo significant social and economic transformations to reach the Paris Agreement targets and thus guarantee that the next generation will still have the right to a sustainable future on a healthy planet. We need to promote a new green social contract based on justice and respect. Justice is about the inalienable right of every citizen to live in a clean and healthy environment. Respect is about our minimum duty towards nature and towards future generations.

The Left have a clear concept of this ecological, energy, and industrial transformation. While technology will play an important role, this transition relates above all to a societal transformation of how we produce and consume, adapted to the real needs of the population and to the limits of the planet. Radical environmental change goes hand-in-hand with the fight for social justice and the fight to combat market domination for a just transition towards green economies.

The creative capacities of the working classes are the key to tackling the ecological and social crisis. We support the trade unions’ concepts of a democratically conceived just transition to a new digitalised and ecological economy that leaves no-one behind.

No worker should end up unemployed because of the ecological and energy transition which, alongside a reduction in environmentally harmful jobs, must bring the expansion of other, green forms of employment. We therefore demand massive European investment plans so that companies and public services can create new jobs and train the people for them. Achieving the Paris climate goals is imperative.

We are seeking to change the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy with the aim of gradually abolishing the system of allocating funds according to area and redirecting them towards environmentally friendly, sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture should contribute to the attractiveness of rural areas, while labour-intensive agriculture must directly benefit those who work the land, promoting a model of small, sustainable farms and healthy food in which products have a short commercial circuit.

Public control and ownership of common goods and services with democratic and participatory planning of the economy are essential to save humanity and the planet and to end social inequality.
Women’s empowerment and leadership, together with their access to decision-making on equal terms, is an essential key factor in a just transition.

We will not resign ourselves to the increase in poverty in Europe. We call for the adoption of an integrated anti-poverty strategy that tackles the multidimensional problem of poverty and social exclusion.
The rise of gentrification and the rapid expansion of the platform economy in real estate and tourism deprive citizens, and especially young people, of their right to decent and affordable housing. Moreover, the current number of homeless people is alarmingly high, while thousands of buildings stand vacant, particularly in metropolitan areas.
Decent, affordable, and climate friendly housing must become a right and not be viewed as a commodity.

Social protection cover for health, pensions, and unemployment must be universal for all people in the EU, wherever they come from.

We advocate universal and free access to health care and the strengthening of public health systems to reduce social inequalities. Public resources should be used only to create and strengthen public health systems.
We call for basic energy security, that is, the legal right of all people to have free access to the amount of energy they need for heating and household purposes.
This is a human right.

It is now time to address and fully recognise the role of unpaid and underpaid care work. Society must invest in public care systems and address the disproportionate responsibility for care work borne by women and girls, supporting its defamilialisation and tackling women’s poverty.

We want to build modern public services that are sufficiently staffed, de-bureaucratised, democratically and transparently managed and responsive to citizens’ needs.
The EU must promote investments in free and accessible healthcare, education, transport, and telecommunications.

In order to safeguard and develop public services and enable a just transition to a digitalised and green economy, we must first prevent the reintroduction of austerity. Our priority is a massive investment spending plan for the creation of green jobs, based on the revitalisation of SMEs and essential public services, the care economy, and the transformation of industry, transport and energy in line with the needs of the population and the limits of the planet.

This requires mobilising financial resources that exceed the EU budget and the NextGenerationEU development fund many times over. These funds could be made available if we manage to form a willing, progressive majority within European institutions.

We want to build a united left and progressive front in Europe capable of changing the current power relations by empowering workers and trade unions to shape the future EU. We want a new green social contract that meets the challenges of the 21^st century and aims to reduce inequalities. Together with left trade unionists, we have drawn up 16 demands that form a basis for common action.
Our political goal is to use the huge increase in global labour productivity to improve people’s lives by reducing working hours without loss of pay, and to redirect production towards social and environmental needs.

The EU must address the cost-of-living crisis by increasing wages and pensions above the rate of inflation, with particular emphasis on eliminating inequalities. The EU needs to increase wages and close the gender pay gap. This requires strong trade unions. We support the universal right to organise, to bargain collectively and to take industrial action, including strikes, at European level.
Wage earners, workers and the working class must be empowered to become protagonists in building the new socially just and ecologically responsible Europe through the creation of new rights. Economic democracy is the key to enabling working people to intervene in what and how they produce.

We need to address the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) in a socially just way. Workers have the right to be involved in defining the social and environmental goals of companies and public services.
Workers in the platform economy must be identified as workers.

We fight against precarious work and for the right of every worker to a stable, permanent contract and a full-time job.
The majority of workers in the care economy are women. The EL is committed to fighting, together with the trade unions and the feminist movement, for socially and financially decent work for women.

The Party of the European Left considers feminism fundamental to building a Europe of peace, self-determination, freedom, and equality, free from violence against women.

In war, we see the most extreme expression of patriarchal violence. The feminist ideal is therefore the logical antithesis to any kind of militarism and armament.

Left feminism offers a profound critique of capitalist and patriarchal society by proposing an alternative to the economy based on the exploitation of human beings and nature, namely an economy based on life.

The European Left demands equal opportunities for women. It wants to put an end to the inequality that women suffer in Europe simply because they are working women.
We denounce the persistent gender pay and pension gap and fight for the recognition and redistribution of care work, which still falls almost exclusively on women’s shoulders. We demand the promotion of public care systems.
We oppose all forms of oppression based on class, gender, ethnicity, colour, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability and age. It is this emancipatory perspective that distinguishes it from the liberal feminism currently dominant in the European institutions.

It demands that the right to universally accessible contraceptive services and safe abortion be guaranteed by the European Treaties throughout Europe.

Together with feminist movements, we fight against the sexist violence and machismo that women suffer throughout their lives and demand a comprehensive legal and political framework to deal with gender-based violence in all its forms.

The EL wants to make a feminist perspective the criterion for the EU’s economic, environmental and social policies, as well as in health, education and culture.

Today’s globalised world shows that national antagonisms and European isolationism are illusions. The Covid-19 pandemic, with 6 million deaths worldwide, has highlighted the importance of international action in the face of today’s crises. The EL, together with governments of the Global South, trade unions, NGOs and church organisations, has called for global cooperation in the fight against pandemics and for vaccines to be declared a common good of humanity.

The European Union must define its place in the emerging multipolar world and promote the non-use of force in international relations. It must promote cooperation between sovereign states based on equality and the renunciation of hegemony.

the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and, above all, the United Nations, which must be re-founded in order to abandon the current model, which has been a response to the Cold War of the 20^th century, and make way for a multilateral model which, among other things, extends the powers of the General Assembly to the benefit of the majority of states, allows for greater participation by civil society and strengthens the agencies of the UN by enhancing the powers of the General Assembly in the interest of the majority of states. EU trade policy must reject the neoliberal system of free trade agreements and the privatisation of services.

We call on the EU to break with its neocolonial style of domination and relaunch its trade and financial relations with the Global South on a new basis; specifically, we propose that relations with Latin America abandon the neoliberal logic and obscurantism of FTAs in order to establish a cooperation among equals that is transparent, sustainable and, above all, of mutual benefit. We want the EU to oppose the misuse of the international financial system as a weapon in the new Cold War and instead uphold multilateralism in the EU’s economic and trade relations, supporting the de-dollarisation of international trade and the creation of a common world currency to put an end to the unilateral domination of the US dollar and a transformation of the IMF.

Fortress Europe has been waging a war against migrants and refugees for decades, causing violence, suffering and torture, with thousands of victims in the Mediterranean and along the Balkan route, and thousands of deportations. We want to stop Frontex, the externalisation of borders, the relocation of detention centres to non-EU countries, the funding of bloodthirsty regimes, and the administrative detention of those deemed unfit to remain in the EU. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum, signed on 20 December 2023, must be cancelled because it condemns refugees to detention and, in most cases, deportation. We are working for a Europe without cages and barbed wire, one that acts not as a wall but as a bridge to other continents and the people who live there.

We call on the EU to base its international policy exclusively on the UN Charter and UN resolutions instead of building up military capacities for worldwide interventions following NATO’s instructions and resolutions.

The EU’s migration policy must respect international law. We support the creation of safe, legal and regular migration channels and improved protection, rights and assistance for migrants and asylum seekers. If the EU wants to reduce the number of refugees and migrants then it needs to promote peace, stability and sustainable development in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia instead of participating in military interventions, fuelling civil wars and exploiting natural resources.

The recent ‘Conference on the Future of Europe’ concluded its work with a call for a revision of the European Treaty in the direction of democratic participation, transparency, accountability and social cohesion.

We are fighting for a new EU that prioritises an ecologically sustainable economy, employment, and the welfare state, overcoming economic and social disparities between Europe’s regions and advocating equality between men and women – instead of the single market and so-called ‘monetary stability’.

We continue our struggle to overcome the crisis of the EU and to build a truly democratic union of the European people.

Although we are fighting for reforms within the legal framework of the EU, we believe that it is the current EU treaties that stand in the way of radical social and ecological transformation and the effective and democratic sovereignty of the people. We therefore call for an independent, solidarity-based, participatory and democratic re-founding of the EU.

We likewise defend the right of the parliaments and governments of Member States to reject anti-social, neoliberal measures when they are imposed.

The new EU must respect the sovereign self-determination of the European peoples, who cooperate with each other as equals. Policy areas of shared competence must be democratised, with the directly-elected European Parliament and the national parliaments playing the central role. We also recognize the existence and the rights of peoples without states.
Europe is more than the EU. European security and cooperation require the strengthening of pan-European institutions such as the Council of Europe and the OSCE.

The EU has set clear criteria for its enlargement policy, which must not be watered down: States can only become members of the EU if they respect human rights, the rule of law and the social and political rights of their populations, including minorities. Enlargement must not be an instrument for deepening rifts within Europe and increasing military tensions. It must not assign the accession countries the role of suppliers of cheap raw materials, agricultural products, and cheap labour as it is doing already now. This is good neither for the working people of the accession countries nor for those of Member States. In contrast, it must focus on safeguarding democracy and the rule of law and boosting social cohesion in candidate and Member States.