17.05.2008 - 18.05.2008

What We Expect Today From The Left In Europe

GUE/NGL - Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left
Rue Wiertz
1047 Brussels
Phone: +32 2 284 2683/2686
Fax: +32 2 28 41774
Email: guengl@europarl.eu.int

Link to the organizer

Discussion / Debate / Lecture

European Integration, Institutions & Enlargement

Registration required

Cite des Sciences de La Villette.
Paris

France

The liberal globalization s'emballe. Financial Markets débridés, free exchange and widespread economic war are sowing the law of the strongest on the five continents, with incalculable damage. Inequalities are exploding everywhere. Democracy, social rights and cultural diversity retreat. Our ecosystem is seriously threatened. Tensions are growing between nations or continents and the war is becoming commonplace as a means always denied and claimed to resolve the problems of the world. We live accelerated the aggravation of a global disorder whose consequences are more and more tragic for humanity and the planet itself. Faced with these realities, the absence of policy responses convincing brings a malaise in most European countries as the EU itself. The feeling grows that it is time to no longer be content to sound the alarm, but to work urgently for a burst left. How to lead the fight for freedom, equality, solidarity, dignity and human progress in the world as it is now? We are convinced that both the diagnosis that the search for new avenues for reflection and action can not, in this case, be the work of substantive work genuinely pluralistic. Also we send us to launch this debate to a very large panel of progressive European personalities from the world's intellectual, cultural, trade union, associations, and meet a broad spectrum of political sensitivities. Thirty interventions may be imposed during the five round tables of this conference. Dozens of others will be video recordings on the spot during the two days of the conference. All these interventions will be posted on a website opened for this purpose. We hope that these first "hundred votes" will give many others the desire to intervene in order to turn left to begin a real debate on society.

Josep BORRELL, former President of European Parliament (2004-2007); FranK BSIRSKE, Secretary General of VER.DI union (DGB); Régis DEBRAY, writer; Jean-Pierre Dubois, President of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme; Susan GEORGE, writer, President of the Transnational Institute; Edgar Morin, a sociologist; Ricardo Petrella, Secretary General of the International Committee for a World Water; Aurélie situated, co-president of ATTAC; Jean Ziegler, former Special Rapporteur of the United Nations for the right to food, board member of Human Rights of the United Nations.