Europe

2025 marked the 500th anniversary of the peak of the German Peasants' War of 1524-26. In the course of the war, the oppressed masses in both the towns and the countryside rose up against the decaying feudal order. The defeat of the rebels in May-June 1525 would leave an indelible mark on the history of Germany, and of Europe as a whole.

Economically devastating and politically destabilising, Trump’s war against Iran has catastrophic implications for Europe. It is a disaster that the declining and deindustrialising powers of the continent absolutely cannot afford.

The 24 March general election was nothing short of a disaster for the political centre and liberal democracy. In the 2022 general election, the SVM government, a coalition of the Social Democrats, Venstre, and the Moderates, secured a combined 50.1 percent of the vote. In this election, their overall support fell to 39.6 percent: evidence of a historically unpopular government.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, suffered a humiliating defeat in the referendum she had promoted on a constitutional reform held on 22-23 March. The referendum turned into a vote of no confidence in her government, with around 54 percent voting ‘No’ and 46 percent voting ‘Yes’. This has enormously weakened her standing in Italian politics.

On the weekend of 13-15 March the Organización Comunista Revolucionaria (OCR), the Spanish section of the Revolutionary Communist International, held its second national congress in Madrid. With 100 comrades and visitors in attendance, it was a truly inspiring event that many commented marked a personal turning point in their political development.

In 2015, the politics of reformism were put to the test in Greece in a dramatic showdown with the institutions of European finance capital. In this article, Arturo Rodriguez looks back at this period to explain the causes of the crisis, how the masses mobilised to defeat the austerity packages imposed on the country, and how this inspiring movement was betrayed by the Syriza leadership.

The most significant fact of the first round of the local elections in France was the very high level of abstention (42.4 percent). The politicians who congratulate themselves on an ‘increase in turnout’ compared to the March 2020 election ‘forget’ to mention that the latter was held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In reality, for several decades we have been witnessing a systematic rise in abstention rates: 21.6 percent in 1983, 30.6 percent in 1995, 36.4 percent in 2014 and 42.4 percent this time around.

At a time of new wars, instability in the global market, and an upcoming general election in Denmark, hundreds of young people and workers across the country gathered on International Working Women’s Day for ‘Communist 8 March’. For the first time, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP) held events in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, and Aalborg.

While analysts discuss oil prices and geopolitical calculations, the reality of war in the Middle East is measured not in charts but in human lives. In just a few days, more than a thousand people have been killed. Among them were 165 schoolgirls and staff who died in strikes on civilian infrastructure in Iran.

“The rich want war – young people want a future!” was the central slogan of over 50,000 school students, who went on strike during school hours in over 140 German cities on 5 March against the German government's reintroduction of compulsory military service. In Berlin, there were just under 10,000, in Hamburg 5,000, and in Munich over 800. This follows a similar movement on 5 December last year, in which over 55,000 took to the streets.

Spain has garnered much attention amid the imperialist war waged by the US and Israel against Iran. Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish government have emphatically opposed the criminal military campaign. Sánchez is presented by international public opinion as the most courageous and daring western leader in openly opposing Trump and Netanyahu’s war. What does this mean and what position should we communists defend?