Europe

Last Monday, 7 July, an assembly of workers decided to put an end to the indefinite strike that the metalworkers in the province of Cadiz had been holding for a decent collective agreement. We have seen 13 days of strike, mobilisations and police repression, from 23 June to 6 July. What lessons can we learn from this extraordinary struggle?

With a total of almost 260 participants, the Pfingstseminar 2025 was the largest in our history and a great success. It was brimming with the spirit of proletarian internationalism, with guests from Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Italy and Great Britain.

On 20 June, an official document was circulated to EU embassies in Brussels. This ‘note on Israel’s compliance with Article Two of the EU-Israel Association Agreement’ is a damning summary of the genocidal war currently being conducted in Gaza. The significance of this document is that it is now the official opinion of the EU’s own legal body that Israel is committing the gravest war crimes. And yet, the EU, in violation of its own legal requirements, continues to back Israel to the hilt.

Since 23 June, thousands of metalworkers in the province of Cádiz, in southern Spain, have been on indefinite strike against their working conditions, in what is already the longest struggle in this industry in the province's history. The previous indefinite strike in November 2021, for wage increases, lasted nine days.

Saturday 28 June marked a new attempt by the masses to impose a solution to their eight-month-long confrontation with President Aleksandar Vučić. A mass demonstration of 150,000 people swept Belgrade. Chants of “Uhapsite Vučića!” (“Arrest Vučić!”) reverberated across streets and squares. Demands for early elections were also forcibly put forward. The struggle has been ongoing continuously since the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on 1 November, which killed 16 people, and which exposed the systemic failure and corruption of the regime.

Since December 2023, the right-wing Orpo-Purra coalition government of Finland has imposed a blanket ban on migration across its eastern border under the pretence of resisting Russian ‘hybrid warfare’. It maintains this brutal immigration policy with the collusion of the so-called Social Democratic Party (SDP), which has continued to expose its bankruptcy after it was booted from government in 2023 due to scandals and its implementation of austerity.

On 5 June, 14 tonnes of machine-gun parts were due to be loaded onto an Israeli cargo ship at the port of Fos-sur-Mer in southern France, bound for Haifa, Israel. The day before, however, the CGT general union of dockworkers and port handling personnel of the Gulf of Fos issued a press release announcing its categorical refusal to load the 19 pallets of military equipment.

After only 11 months, the Dutch government of prime-minister Dick Schoof has collapsed as notorious rightwing demagogue Geert Wilders decided to pull the plug on it. At a time when the ruling class needs a strong government that ramps up military spending and makes cuts to everything else, this brings more instability and uncertainty to Dutch politics.

While Polish presidents do not hold nearly as much power as their French or American counterparts, the recent Polish election attracted enormous attention both in the country and abroad. Now, as the dust settles, one can clearly identify the real loser of this election. As the fall of the złoty and the Warsaw stock market shows: the establishment is rattled.