Opening speech from the New Communist Party of the Netherlands

The communist of Europe against the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

Introductory speech of the New Communist Party of the Netherlands (NCPN) for the ECA Conference about the struggle of the communists of Europe against the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum.

 

Dear comrades,

Throughout Europe we see sharpening attacks on migrants, refugees and asylum rights, which is closely connected with the general attack on the rights of the workers in Europe. The EU Migration and Asylum pact undermines the Geneva Convention of 1951 for the rights of refugees and is enacted by the EU to facilitate the capitalists in their hunt for cheap workers without rights.This attack of the bourgeoisie on people that are uprooted in their lands by poverty, crises and war, is another proof of the barbarity of the capitalist system in its imperialist phase and the reactionary character of the imperialist EU.

 

The ‘migrant crisis’ created by the anti-immigrant policies

In the Netherlands, the most outspoken anti-immigrant government in modern history has recently been installed. The governingparties are trying to formally declare a migrant crisis, in order to bypass parliament and take various measures.

On the other hand,the bourgeois parties are actively creating this crisis with their anti-immigrant policies, by not building enough refugee centres and other facilities. The successive bourgeois governmentsactually closed several locations throughout the last years. This has led to many problems in the village of Ter Apel, where the application centre of the Immigration and Naturalisation Servicesis located, and next to it a refugee centre housing thousands of refugees.Tens and sometimes hundreds of refugees are forced to sleep outside – leading to the death of an infant some time ago. Accordingly, there are many problems in refugee centres throughout the country, where refugees and migrants are ‘stacked’ without the necessary facilities and support. This situation has led to adverse effects on refugees and migrants, as well as the people living in the surrounding area.

 

Xenophobia: the bourgeois policy of ‘divide and conquer’

The governing parties – together with many of their supporters of the so-called ‘opposition parties’ – are using this ‘crisis’, that they created themselves, in order to actively spur on their followers with anti-refugee sentiments to protest against any new centres being built, so they can then say there is no popular support for these locations.

In reality the people are sick of the housing crisis and their devalued wages. And they are told by the propaganda of the bourgeois class that migrants are the cause of this, instead of the capitalists themselves. The capitalists who have, in the face of declining profits, pushed for a further privatization of housing to generate extra rents, often robbing half or even more of the income of workers, self-employed, elderly and students.The capitalists hire migrant workers for lower salaries, pushing down wages in general, which is facilitated by reformist unions thatseek “social accords” between the capitalists and workers, at the expense of the working class

There are various industrial and agricultural sectors in the Netherlands where thousands of undocumented refugees and migrants are employed illegally. People that have practically no rights and are completely at the mercy of the capitalists.

The refugee issue is used to divide the working class and poison the people with xenophobia, racism and hatred towards their fellow workers. Reactionary and fascistoid parties try to divide the working class in the Netherlands into a ‘pro-refugee’ “camp” and a ‘anti-refugee’ “camp”. Workers in either “camp” are demonized using modern propaganda tools.

 

Imperialism is the root of the problem

We must first and foremost understand the question of refugees and migration in the context of imperialism. These streams of people are not generated out of nowhere. People leave their country, their homes and their loved ones behind with a reason.More often than not, the reason is the bombs that are thrown in the imperialist conflicts that destroy their homes. It is the desperate conditions of the workers and their families, created by brutal capitalist exploitation of domestic and foreign monopolies and the imperialist plunder. It is the persecution of people by oppressive regimes. The countries where most refugees come from are plagued by constant economic and political destabilization by the monopolies because of their “strategic” resources and geographical position.  It is extremely important for us as communists to continue to underline how these people are the victims of the imperialists, of the monopolies competing for their profits at the expense of the people.

Refugees and migrants are, from the capitalist viewpoint, a byproduct of their efforts to exploit the workers and to control markets, to gain resources or to weaken their strategic opponents. In the next phase, the capitalists seek to use this byproduct for their aims to the fullest extent as a cheap labour force. It is in this context that we must understand the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

 

EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: an end to the right of asylum

In general, the migration and asylum policy of the EU aims to facilitate the monopolies in their hunt for cheap workers without rights.On the one hand, the pact seeks to outsource the application process and make it easier to expel refugees.In this way, capital wants to ‘select’ and allow only those refugees and migrants that are ‘useful’ for capitalist exploitation, completely undermining the right of asylum and the Geneva Convention.On the other hand,the pact seeks to realign the bourgeoisie of Europe by establishing a mechanism that will distribute asylum seekers more easily over the EU states, or allow states to buy off their quota, depending on the needs of the bourgeoisie in each country for cheap labour.

This is packaged as a fair and equality driven pact, which will provide more clarity to the asylum seekers. The reactionary Dutch anti-immigrant government is, however, very much looking forward to this new legislation, which betrays that all is not well with this new pact.

We can see some aspects of this pact in action in the deal Italy and Albania have recently made. The aim of the European bourgeoisie is to outsource the asylum process and the accompanying detention camps to other nations on its periphery, ensuring cheap, inhumane treatment for refugees. Here they will allow the asylum seekers to be detained while they go through a ‘quick’ 12-week screening before they are either evicted right away or allowed to go to the next bureaucratic hurdle.

It is clear that many abuses against refugees will be the inevitable result of this policy, detaining children and subjecting people to dehumanization. Refugees are enclosed in modern concentration camps, where human trafficking, sexual abuse and violence isthe order of the day, especially against women. The new legislation demands the collection of biometric data, even for children of only 6 years old, and allows for the use of so-called ‘proportionate degree of coercion’, even against minors.With the lack of facilities, lack of rights, repression and even dehumanization, capital seeks to convert refugees into a workforce without rights.

Another horrible new idea in this Pact is the possibility to offload refugees onto so-called ‘safe third countries.’ This is a reaction of the EU bourgeoisie against the pushback of countries who are affected by conflict or are in the vicinity of direct conflict and no longer accept extradition of asylum seekers to their countries. Instead, the EU states will try to offload refugees on any country they spent time in along the road. In fact, it is an explicit aim of the pact to leverage the EU’s position in the international imperialist system to force those bourgeoisie that are reliant on EU bourgeois interests to accept these refugees or lose out on business deals. In short, the EU seeks instrumentalize this problem, using it as leverage in the imperialist contradictions, while undermining the rights of refugees.

 

Contradictions within the bourgeoisie

The internal contradictions between different sectors of the EU bourgeoisies comes to the forward in the long discussion about the division of asylum seekers among the EU states. Each bourgeoisie tried to push the burden onto the other bourgeoisie. A sort of compromise was forced by an alliance of German, Italian and Greek bourgeoisies, who bear the brunt of the burden of asylum applicants. The compromise is however so watered down that most of the burden will remain with the main states of entry, i.e. the southern European states where refugees are already packed together in horrible and inhumane situations.

We should note that the Dutch government intends to negotiate in the European Union about an opt-out for the Netherlands on migration policy, framing their stance on migration as a ‘resistance’ to the EU policies. This stance is connected to intentions of the government to declare a ‘migrant crisis’, supposedly so they can stop taking in new asylum seekers. However, if we look at the measures that they seek to implement, we can see that these are not directed at a stop of new asylum seekers, but at dismantling their rights. Dutch capital wants to keep the influx of cheap labour force on the one hand. But on the other hand, it wants to further reduce the costs for the state, in the context of the general shift towards austerity measures and stricter fiscal policy. From that point of view, the Dutch bourgeoisie wants more control on the influx of refugees and migrants. Hence the measures of the Dutch government are completely in agreement with the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. The negotiations in the EU about an optout for the Netherlands, are not related to the content of EU policy, but only an expression of the contradictions within the EU about the distribution of the issue as it was settled by the Pact.

 

Solidarity is our strength in the struggle against barbarism,for socialism

The great tragedy of this situation is that all these crises, all this human suffering in detention camps, in life threatening journeys is completely avoidable and unnecessary. There were 380.000 asylum applicants in 2023, which totals around a million people with all the backlog. This amounts to a whopping 0,2% of the total population of the EU. Good and clean living conditions, an efficient process of asylum and safe refuge for refugees can be accomplished quite easily. Also the housing of those refugees who are allowed to stay, is an actual possibility. Even with the inefficient production relations of the market almost 2 million houses are constructed in the EU annually. Imagine if we actually planned the production according to the needs of the people, then we would actually be able to reach much higher numbers.

But, then again, if there was central planning and a communist mode of production, there would not be a need for the imperialist conflicts that cause people to flee their countries to begin with. As European communists it is important to highlight these truths to the working classes of Europe and to expose the reactionary character of the EU. That this ‘refugee crisis’ is an intentional creation of the capitalists, that them not being able to solve it is their explicit choice, and most importantly, that these refugees are created by the very system that is unwilling to provide shelter to them.

Furthermore, the people that are uprooted by imperialist wars, exploitation and repression, are victims of the same system and the same class that is oppressing and exploiting domestic workers. From that point of view, we must combat all forms of xenophobia and racism. Against the hatred, discrimination and rotten morals of the bourgeoisie, we posit the values of international solidarity and proletarian internationalism.

At the same time, it is important to expose the hypocrisy of some social-democratic parties, that seek to hide their own responsibilities– with their support for imperialist wars, the capitalism system and policies of the EU that dismantle the rights of refugeesand migrants – behind shallow ethicalcatchphrases about ‘love’ and ‘welcome refugees’. Catchphrases that remain empty when they do not point to the real causes of these problems and to those that are responsible.

Solidarity and knowledge about the underlying causes of the problem constitute the strength of the working class in the fight for the rights of refugees and migrants;for the unity of the working class in the class struggle for the overthrow of the system of barbarity and the construction of a world without wars, exploitation and poverty, for socialism.

Long live proletarian internationalism!