May Day Power: Workers Rise Against War and Austerity
STATEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN LEFT
EXPAND WORKERS RIGhTS. STOP MILITARISATION. FIGHT AUSTERITY.
In a world marked by war and militarisation, deepening inequality and an economic order that concentrates wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, the European Left reaffirms that peace, dialogue and diplomacy are the only dignified path in the face of those who fuel violence and trample international law.
On 1 May, workers of all nations, trade unions and left-wing political parties around the world, young people, pensioneers, men and women demonstrate for a world without war and for social justice.
A massive wave of rearmament and austerity is sweeping across Europe. The EL and its member parties are calling for resistance.
We call for a huge moment of gathering for the demonstration in Brussels on the 14th of June, WELFARE NOT WARFARE!
Confronted with a system that sacrifices lives to safeguard the privileges of the wealthiest 0.1%, we urgently need a new social contract that restores power to those whose labour keeps society standing. Workers across nations refuse to become the enemy of one another, while the military-industrial elite feast on conflict—lobbying for endless wars, selling weapons to all sides, and counting their billions in blood money. The powerful manufacture hatred to protect their profit margins; the real enemy of the worker is not a foreign worker in a distant land, but the war machine that would sacrifice them both for a quarterly bonus. Workers will not and must not uphold the wars of those in power.
In a hate cycle of violence, the far right advances due to the neoliberal politics and their devastating social consequences, as well to the ruling political class’s inability to solve structural problems like the ecological transformation. The far right is also strong if the left is weak and divided. Reactionary forces thrive on the neoliberal model that has normalised precarity and turned exploitation into an economic engine.
Only a united, coordinated and determined left can halt this authoritarian project that threatens rights, freedoms and lives. Real transformation is born in social movements, in the struggles organised in neighbourhoods, workplaces and community spaces. Parties must act as amplifiers. In this landscape, class‑based trade unions have proven themselves the backbone of resistance. Their presence in the streets, at negotiating tables and in everyday struggles has been decisive. They are the force that shields working people from a system intent on squeezing them dry.
The working class is written in the plural: diverse, complex, shaped by inequalities that are not incidental but structural. Women and racialised workers are part of the core exploited working class as patriarchy and racism are not accidents of contemporary capitalism; they are pillars that sustain it. Any emancipatory project must therefore be anti racist and feminist. Furthermore, young people across Europe refuse to accept the world as it is. They fill the streets, challenge what is presented as inevitable, and inherit the struggles of previous generations—first and foremost to say no to the return of military conscription in their countries, but also to save pensions. Without their energy, creativity, and courage, no victory will be possible.
In this struggle, the following are indispensable:
- Unity of the working class in fighting against militarism and the far right.
- A popular anti‑racism and feminism capable of confronting discrimination in all its forms.
- A constant, living connection with class‑based unions, ensuring that the defence of social rights becomes a militant, everyday practice.
Internationalism is the compass that makes sense of the present. The mass mobilisations in solidarity with Palestine, the strikes in Minneapolis against ICE policies, and the protests against imperialist wars across European cities all reveal that the struggle is fundamentally one, even if it takes different shapes. Each of these movements confronts a neoliberal, racist and patriarchal system that relies on permanent war and the rise of the far right to sustain itself.
This 1st of May, the Party of the European Left reaffirms that the workers’ struggle is alive. We refuse a present built on inequality, violence and exploitation. We hold the collective power to change it. And as long as organisation, solidarity and determination endure, no force will prevent us from advancing towards a fairer world.
