Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry. I am so used to the Labour Party not being here. I am sharing time Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett, who is at a committee meeting but who will, I hope, be here shortly.

A strong backdrop to the European Council on the 29 April will be the fallout from the first round of the French presidential election. I will focus my remarks on that election and the general situation in France because both serve to highlight the crises being faced by European capitalism. All the ingredients in the election are the result of a crisis in this system in the past few years. The election will be a historic one and in order to understand it, we must look at the context. The election comes after years of vicious austerity policies implemented by the outgoing Hollande Government and by the Sarkozy Government which preceded it. In the past year there have been huge attacks on the historic gains of the working class in France, on the retirement age and on the right of workers to enforce collective bargaining. There have been laws to create precarity and these have been combined with an attack on democratic rights, with protests and assembly being declared illegal.

The racist and thuggish policing of minority communities has continued and was given the green light by a French Government that has attacked the citizenship rights of migrant communities and the right to asylum and whipped up Islamophobia. The corruption of the French capitalist elite is also on graphic display, highlighted by the right-wing candidates, Fillon and Le Pen, dipping into state funds to enrich their families and close supporters. Hollande has pursued an aggressive interventionist foreign policy with the bombings of Mali, Syria, Niger and Libya. These policies gave rise to a massive reaction on the part of workers and young people last spring, with a wave of strikes, mass demonstrations and the Nuit Debout movement. The election is seeing the collapse of the Parti Socialiste, the members of which are in disarray. Like their co-thinkers across Europe, they are paying the price for their wholehearted implementation of the policies to which I refer.

Much of the commentary internationally has been on the potential breakthrough for the Front National, FN, a racist organisation which poses a real danger to workers and minorities in France. FN has tried to pose as a voice for ordinary French people and exploit the anger that exists to gain a foothold. Despite its rhetoric, however, the reality is that the FN is also a neo-liberal party. In every local authority area in which it holds power, there have been cuts to social programmes and to workers' rights. The FN is also deeply homophobic, opposes marriage equality and is against the right of women to choose. These are policies it shares with Fillon.

The most significant development of the election has been the rise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's campaign. He has electrified the election and attracted tens of thousands to his rallies across the country. Some 130,000 attended a rally in Paris and 70,000 another attended in Marseilles this week, while Macron could only muster 3,000. Mélenchon has stood against the neo-liberal status quo. In his programme, he calls for a reversal of the attacks against workers' rights and for workers to have the right to a democratic say in how their workplaces are run. He has called for €100 billion in state investment that would benefit the environment and society and he has challenged the logic of privatisation and the religious creed of neo-liberalism that beset EU bureaucrats by calling for state ownership and nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, such as banking, transport and energy production. He has also called for a ban on evictions, which our Government refused to entertain, and for free water and electricity, with a ban on cutting water from people's homes. He has called for free medical care and an end to two-tier medical treatment. He has also stood strong against racism, Islamophobia and division. He is currently in third place in the polls and is challenging for a place in the second round.

The idea of a President who stands against neo-liberalism and defends the rights of workers is petrifying the establishment in France and across Europe. It is no wonder that, in recent days, a French Project Fear has been launched and has been whipped up in the media. Mélenchon has been labelled as dangerous and a potential dictator and billionaires have been lining up to say how they will flee the country. His candidature shows the potential to build a left. It also shows how Le Pen and those on the far right can be defeated.

There have now been four solid weeks of general strikes in French Guiana in response to decades of exploitation, neglect, corruption and poverty. I would like to express our solidarity with the movement there. I also express solidarity with the campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Solidarity and the left in Ireland appeal to French workers and all those who have much to lose from the current system, and from the prospect of Le Pen coming to power, to come out in droves. We appeal to women, Muslims, young people and minorities to support the idea of a French President who would stand for complete change to the neo-liberal creed and to the policies of division and fear that have beset Europe.

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