How can we rejoice at the G7 meeting in Biarritz? How do you rejoice at the arrival of the lords? How do you applaud the visit of a crazy leader like Trump who denies climate change, who develops a racist discourse, promotes trade war and stimulates international tensions? Believing that the G7 Biarritz can be a showcase for the people is a shameful lie. What this summit brings is well known: situation of militarisation and siege, limitation of the influx of citizenship, temporary restriction of rights (e.g. the right to demonstrate). All this in the last weekend of the summer season, at the time when the return operation begins and unlike in recent years, in an urban area not isolated. G7 Those who have accepted and praised the meeting in Biarritz will surely regret it.

G7 brings together the peoples that have historically been the source of imperialism. It's a closed, exclusive group. Only the major economic powers of the West can participate. Informally, it was created to influence the global agenda but from the outset it has been to preserve and protect the interests of the dominant classes and the multinationals.

Since its birth it has been pessimistic: to bet on the richest, to ignore the criticisms, to promote the same ideological options. Social and economic dependencies in the world have increased. It has driven and developed the ideology and policies of neoliberalism.

In 2005, it pledged to mobilize $50 million to help poor countries. It has never done so far. What it could do for tax justice, for example to put an end to tax havens, to act against financial criminals, to create a tax on financial transactions, has ensured tax competition between peoples.

The cost of collecting G7 is excessive: In 2018 in Quebec, 5/600 million dollars, according to official sources. Seeing their concrete results, their social and ecological needs are crude, it is healthy and urgent to call for the end of this summit.

Can't stand idly by

There is no doubt that lifting the world’s top leaders is just as necessary, seeing increasing inequalities, international tensions and serious environmental challenges.

One of the main functions of civil society is to make the voice of the people heard outside the elections, to denounce what governments, although democratically elected, do or do not do wrong, to claim what they should do.

In addition, next year’s G7 will have the particularity that it will pass in a people that claims its sovereignty, denied, divided, in the Basque Country. In this territory they continue to experience the desire for struggle, resistance to the system and solidarity and experiences to create alternatives.

This summit therefore asks us intentionally, beyond the local political agenda, as citizens, as leftists, as abertzales, as ecologists, as anticapitalists…

There is an option.

I couldn't stand idly by. We will have to mobilise vigorously. Denounce the policies of these states and demand immediate measures to address the sectoral problems: social inequalities, climate change, ecological problems, tax havens, policies against migrants…

And beyond capitalism, to reclaim other logics, priorities and alternatives and to defend the right of peoples to self-determination.

Popular movements, unions and leftist parties from all over Euskal Herria have much to think and do to make the G7 an opportunity to reclaim and show the urgency of another world in Euskal Herria.

This review was posted by Zuzeu and we brought it to ARGIA thanks to the CC-by-sa license.