Austria is to launch a legal challenge against the European Union’s (EU) decision to allow billions of pounds of subsidies for Hinkley Point C, casting fresh doubt over the UK’s first planned nuclear reactors in 20 years.

In October, the EU approved the controversial £17.6bn subsidy deal for the power station, which is expected to provide 7% of the UK’s electricity by 2023.

David Cameron had previously hailed the subsidy deal between the French state-owned EDF and the UK government as “a very big day for our country”. He also described the signing of the Hinkley deal as marking “the next generation of nuclear power in Britain“, for its ability to meet energy demand and contribute to long-term security of supply.

But the appeal by Austria, a non-nuclear nation, will be launched by April and could delay a final investment decision by the UK government for over two years.

The Guardian understands that Luxembourg is very likely to support the case in the European Court of Justice, arguing that the UK’s loan guarantees – over a 35-year period – constitute illegal state aid. Another EU country may follow suit.

“There has been a high-level decision by our Chancellor and Vice Chancellor to challenge the EU decision on Hinkley within two months of its publication in the EU’s official journal”, said Andreas Molin, the director of Austria’s environment ministry. The journal’s publication is expected in the next fortnight.

Stefan Pehringer, a foreign policy adviser to the Austrian federal chancellory said: “The Austrian government has announced its readiness to appeal against the EC’s [European Commission] decision concerning state aid for the Hinkley Point project, as it does not consider nuclear power to be a sustainable form of technology – neither in environmental nor in economic terms.”

Can Hinkley survive the 2015 election?

Work has already begun at the Hinkley site, which the UK government said will have a capacity of 3.3GW, with the electricity it generates bought at a strike-price of £92.50 per megawatt hour, around double the market rate.

EDF had planned to sign a long-awaited funding agreement with its Chinese investment partners in March, thought to be key to settling procurement plans for the £24.5bn build, and the precursor to a final investment decision.

But the lawsuit may delay such plans, and introduce uncertainty about the UK’s attitude towards Hinkley after elections in May.

The Austrian government’s analysis suggests that European court cases of this nature typically last for one and a half years. But “as this is going to be a more complicated and fundamental case, it will last a little bit longer”, Molin said. “Two years could be a rough guess.”

He added: “If you accept the argument that Hinkley constitutes a ‘market failure’ as put forward by the Commission, you could apply it to all other means of electricity production, probably all other forms of energy conversion, and it might even apply beyond the energy sector. We think that the single energy market itself is at stake in this case.”

The Commission’s hurried and paradoxical decision

The EU’s original decision last year surprised many observers, as the then-competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia had previously expressed scepticism about Hinkley’s’ conformity with an exhaustive list of strict state aid criteria.

These govern proportionality, decarbonisation, the potential for market distortion, the definition of ‘market failures’ and, crucially, whether the public monies advance an “objective of common interest” for the bloc.

No grounds for the Commission’s volte-face have yet been published, but the Guardian has seen a draft of the EU decision from last October, suggesting that one key decider had been advised that Hinkley advanced an EU ‘common interest’ around security of supply.

A Commission investigation declared itself “unsure” whether the reactor would resolve the UK’s security of supply issues, and was unconvinced that ‘diversification’ of supplies, on its own, would justify the monies involved.

“The Commission however accepted that the decision was in line with the Euratom treaty”, the draft ruling says. The Euratom treaty obliges member states to facilitate investments in nuclear power and encourage ventures that lead to the technology’s development.

Molin said that Austria would argue that the Euratom treaty could not be used in this way in state aid cases, but there would be other lines of dispute. “We will try to prove that the commission did not consider all the things which it should have considered and that there were some procedural flaws”, he said.

Minutes from the Commission’s internal discussion of the issue show that the EC’s president at the time, José Manuel Barroso, viewed the Hinkley decision as unprecedented, and said that it “touched on a politically sensitive topic”.

No contract for the Hinkley plant was put out to tender, and the ruling sparked outrage among environmentalists in the EU, that shows no signs of dying down.

“The Commission took a political decision disguised as a legal one”, said Mark Johnston, a senior adviser to the European Policy Centre. “Barroso thought it would be easier to bend over for Cameron than to defend the single energy market. The significance of the case for energy investments across Europe could not be greater.”

A ‘fatal blow’, claim the Greens

Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party MEP for the South West region, which includes Hinkley, said: “I think that this court case is certainly going to delay the signing and also the construction of Hinkley.”

“As one of the government’s main arguments for Hinkley was that it would solve the ‘energy gap’ before renewables could be brought onstream, it is a fatal blow to Hinkley as part of a future energy strategy for the UK.”

Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, said that such claims now seemed risible. “I think we have seen the final generation of nuclear power, I am very pleased to say. It’s gone, it’s dusted. Lets focus on evidence-based renewables and energy conservation futures.”

But the UKIP MEP and energy spokesman, Roger Helmer, offered strong support for nuclear energy, qualified only by a caveat that the government’s Hinkley deal had been “excessively expensive” because of regulatory uncertainty from Brussels.

“Given that Hinkley is a trailblazer for the new generation of nuclear and now looks like being held up for a long period of time, it will be extremely damaging – not just for nuclear but across the whole spectrum of industry”, he said.

No grounds for such state aid in EU treaties

Dr Dörte Fouquet, a lawyer for the Brussels-based law firm Becker Büttner Held, which specialises in energy and competition law, said Austria’s chances of success were “pretty high” because there were no grounds for giving such state aid under EU treaty law and Austria would question the common European interest in building a nuclear power plant in the UK.

She added that long delays now appeared inevitable: “A court process that kicks off in May would take a minimum of two years and if it goes into appeals, you’d then be looking at another two years. So it could be a minimum of three and a maximum of four years or longer.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change remained bullish. “The UK is confident that the state aid case for Hinkley Point C is legally robust and we vigorously support the European Commission’s defence of its decision last year”, a  spokesman told the Guardian.

“This brings us one step closer to seeing new nuclear as part of our future low carbon energy mix. We have no reason to believe that Austria, or any other party, is preparing a case which has any merit.”

But DECC did not respond to questions about the effect that a lengthy court case might have on cost over-runs or a final investment decision.

The renewables industry has bridled at what some see as double-standards in EU decisions last year denying state aid to renewable energy in Germany, while allowing it for nuclear in the UK.

“It’s puzzling why the European Commission has decided to have a set of rules for one energy source and entirely different set for another”, said European Wind Energy Association spokesman Oliver Joy.

“If we want a level playing field for all energy forms in the EU then we need common standards that allow all technologies to compete on an equal footing.”

Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity.

This article is a synthesis of two articles by Arthur Nelsen originally published on the Guardian: ‘Austria to launch lawsuit over Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidies‘ and ‘UK nuclear ambitions dealt fatal blow by Austrian legal challenge, say Greens‘. It is published on The Ecologist by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The Thai government has failed to clean up toxic lead in a stream in western Thailand, threatening hundreds of families with serious and irreversible health problems, says a new report from Human Rights Watch.

A Supreme Administrative Court’s order from nearly two years ago to clean up Klity Creek, the first of its kind in Thailand, was been ignored by the government while villagers remain exposed to lead in water, soil, vegetables, and fish.

The report, ‘Toxic Water, Tainted Justice‘ by Human Rights Watch, describes 16 years of failure by Thailand’s Pollution Control Department and public health authorities to prevent further exposure to lead among the village’s ethnic Karen residents, and highlights serious health and environmental damage caused by a now-defunct lead processing factory.

Despite the village’s idyllic setting, many residents of Lower Klity Creek suffer the symptoms of chronic lead poisoning, such as abdominal pain, headaches, fatigue, and mood changes. Some children have been born with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Authorities are ‘still studying’ the court order

“The Thai authorities apparently believe they can ignore a clear court order to clean up the toxic site”, said Richard Pearshouse, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

“This is one of the most heavily polluted industrial sites in all of Thailand, hundreds of people suffer harm, and it needs immediate government action.”

On January 10, 2013, Thailand’s highest administrative court ordered the government to clean up toxic lead in the creek until test results from the water, soil, vegetables, and aquatic animals in and around the creek fall below permissible levels.

Although clean-up activities should have begun by May 1, 2014, Thailand’s Pollution Control Department says it is “still studying” how to clean up the creek.

Lower Klity Creek villagers may be exposed to lead in their daily lives – by drinking water or eating fish and other aquatic animals, by eating food grown in lead-contaminated plots or cooked in lead-contaminated water, by contact with polluted soil around their houses, or breathing air contaminated by lead dust.

The Pollution Control Department’s environmental tests found unacceptably high levels of lead in soil along the creek bank, as well as in the water and creek sediment, and contaminating fish, shrimp, crabs, and vegetables at various locations along the creek.

More lead mines on the way?

Despite this catastrophe, in 2011, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment commissioned an environmental assessment of lead mines in Kanchanaburi province, raising the possibility of Thailand reopening and further developing lead mining and the lead industry.  

“The Thai government seems to be ignoring the lessons from the pollution of Klity Creek and the poisoning of villagers”, Pearshouse said. “Thailand should clean up Klity Creek and provide medical care to affected villagers before even thinking of expanding lead mining.”

The response by provincial and district public health authorities to the situation has been wholly inadequate, Human Rights Watch said. Many village residents who were tested did not receive the results of their blood tests. Others were told the lead levels in their blood were “safe” despite international guidance that there is no safe level of lead exposure.

Children who had elevated lead levels did not receive follow-up medical care. Many villagers told Human Rights Watch that public health authorities simply stopped performing local blood tests for lead by 2008.

Lead is highly toxic and can interrupt the body’s neurological, biological, and cognitive functions. The ingestion of high levels of lead can cause brain, liver, kidney, nerve, and stomach damage as well as anemia, comas, convulsions, and even death.

Children and pregnant women are particularly susceptible, and high levels of lead exposure can cause permanent intellectual and developmental disabilities, including reading and learning disabilities, behavioral problems, attention problems, as well as hearing loss and disruption in the development of visual and motor functioning.

As Thailand pursues mineral wealth, legal obligations ignored

As a result of increasing industrialization and mineral extraction, Thailand faces rising concerns about health impacts from pollution in numerous sites around the country.

These include Na Nong Bong in Loei province (cyanide, mercury, and arsenic), Mao Tao in Tak province (cadmium), Pitchit province (manganese and arsenic), and near the Map Tha Phut industrial area in Rayong province (industrial chemicals).  

Thailand has ratified core international human rights conventions and a range of environmental treaties. These place obligations on governments to protect the environment, safe drinking water, and the health of its citizens, with a special emphasis on children and other vulnerable groups, including women, people with disabilities, and indigenous people.

Thailand’s National Health Act also provides that everyone has the right to a healthy environment. In international law, the rights to the highest attainable standard of health and to water also entail the right to an effective remedy for violations of these rights.

“The Thai government needs to stop ignoring the court order and set out a clear, defined plan with a specific timeline to comply”, Pearshouse said.

“A thorough clean-up of Klity Creek could help Thailand create a model for cleaning up the many places where extreme industrial pollution damages human health.”

The report: ‘Toxic Water, Tainted Justice – Thailand’s Delays in Cleaning Up Klity Creek‘ is by Human Rights Watch.

More information: Thailand’s Delays in Cleaning Up Klity Creek.

The energy market in Germany saw a spectacular change last year as renewable energy became the major source of its electricity supply – leaving lignite, coal and nuclear behind.

Wind, solar, hydropower and biomass reached a new record, producing 27.3% (157bn kilowatt hours) of Germany’s total electricity – and overtaking lignite (156bn kWh) – according to AGEB, a joint association of energy companies and research institutes.

This was an achievement that many energy experts could not have imagined just a few years ago.

Beyond that, Germany’s primary energy consumption – which includes the energy used in power generation, heating and transport – fell to its lowest level since reunification with East Germany in 1990, AGEB report: it shrank by 4.8% compared with 2013.

Estimates by AGEB indicate that Germany’s CO₂ emissions will have fallen in 2014 by around 5% compared with 2013, as consumption of all fossil fuels fell and the contribution from renewables rose. Half the CO₂ savings came from power generation.

Germany’s use of hard coal (aka black coal) was 7.9% lower in electricity generation than in 2013, while the use of the more carbon-polluting lignite (aka brown coal) fell 2.3%. The share of fossil fuels in the overall energy mix fell from 81.9% in 2013 to 80.8%.

Success? Yes, but …

At first sight, that looks like a big success story. But it comes after several years of rising emissions that have cast doubt on the ‘Energiewende’ – the ambitious German energy transition plan for a simultaneous phase-out of nuclear power and a move to a carbon-free economy.

And researchers calculate that – after allowing for the mild winter of 2014 – the cut in fossil fuel use in energy production meant CO₂ emissions fell by only 1%.

In July 2014, a group of NGOs published a study on the EU’s 30 worst CO₂-emitting thermal power plants. German power stations featured six times among the 10 dirtiest.

Never heard of Neurath, Niederausssem, Jänschwalde, Boxberg, Weisweiler and Lippendorf? These are the sites of Germany’s lignite-powered stations, which together emit more than 140 megatonnes of CO₂ annually – making Germany Europe’s worst coal polluter, followed by Poland and the UK.

And while all of Germany’s remaining nine nuclear power plants must by law be shut down no later than the end of 2022, there is no such legally-binding phase-out for the coal industry. So no one can tell how long Germany will go on burning the worst climate change contributors, lignite and hard coal.

How can Germany meet its emissions targets?

Germany has one of the most ambitious climate targets worldwide: by 2020, its CO₂ emissions are due to be 40% below their 1990 level, a cut of nearly 80 million tonnes. But how can it achieve this?

The latest Climate Protection Action Plan, adopted by the German Cabinet on 3 December last year, says that 22 million tonnes of CO₂ will be saved “by further measures, especially in the power sector”. Which is great – but well short of the target 80 million tonnes.

Does that mean less power from coal? The Greens pointed out that a coal-fired power plant such as Jänschwalde alone produces more than 22 million tonnes of CO₂ – and Jänschwalde is not even the biggest German polluter.

So, right now, the Energiewende seems a story both of success and of failure. Mojib Latif, the German meteorologist and oceanographer who co-authored the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, says:

“The only way of countering the rise in CO₂ is to expand renewables. The technology is there – it just has to be used. My most urgent wish for the energy future is that Germany must stop using coal. Otherwise we have no chance of achieving our climate targets.”

Henner Weithöner is a Berlin-based freelance journalist specialising in renewable energy and climate change. He is also a tutor for advanced journalism training, focusing on environmental reporting and online journalism, especially in developing countries. LinkedIn: de.linkedin.com/pub/henner-weithöner/48/5/151/; Twitter: @weithoener

This article is an edited version of one first published by Climate News Network.

I have recently been listening to the bad news about the price of milk while actually milking cows, as my herdsman took a break over Christmas and the New Year.

Experiencing at first hand the economic impact of the climate in which dairy farmers are operating gives the issue a whole different meaning.

It seems to me that nothing could better illustrate the institutionalised madness that prevails in the world of globalised, industrialised, commodity-style food production than its impact on the price of milk and dairy farmers in Britain.

As with so many matters connected with food, the root of the problem lies in the distorted economic system.

I’ve just been down to my local Tesco store in Bristol, which, along with most of the major British supermarkets, is now selling milk very cheaply, in this case four pints of conventional whole milk for 89 pence (£0.89).

Apologies for dancing between pints and litres, but four pints of milk is 2.27 litres, so divide that into 89 pence and you get just over 39.2 ppl (pence per litre). This is theoretically the total amount of money that has to be divided between the farmer, processor and retailer.

The conventional milk did not appeal to me, so I purchased two pints of organic milk for £1.14 instead. Doing the same maths, that makes the retail price of the organic milk almost exactly £1 per litre, more than twice the price of the conventional product.

Down on the farm, things are getting desperate

That is what’s happening in the shops, but what about back on the farm? Well, for conventional milk production at least, it’s a pretty horrible story. About a year ago the farm gate milk price was around 37 ppl – the best for years and good enough to make a reasonable profit.

Farmers responded by vastly increasing their milk production, mostly by expanding their herd sizes and further intensifying production, with the very large industrialised farms getting even bigger.

The phrase ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ comes to mind. Now imagine this happening all over the world, combined with a good growing season for dairying weather-wise. The inevitable consequence has been a serious over-supply of the milk market.

To cap it all, Russia then banned imports of dairy products from the European Union in response to EU sanctions over Ukraine, which precipitated a catastrophic downward slide in farm gate milk prices. Ironically there are a number of parallels with the dramatic fall in the price of oil.

As a result, most producers are only receiving just over half the price they received about a year ago; currently as little as 22 ppl for conventional milk, which is well below the cost of production.

There is only so long that any farmer can lose serious money on every litre of milk, and needless to say it is the small, so-called ‘inefficient’ family dairy farms (which represent the backbone of rural culture in England, Wales and Scotland) that are being forced out of business the fastest.

With support from their banks the biggest farms will survive by intensifying further and growing bigger still – something that has negative implications for the environment, animal welfare, rural communities and milk quality.

Last week, the total number of dairy farms in England and Wales dropped below 10,000 for the first time and all the signs suggest that the exodus will continue.

This is a kind of cultural cleansing by price, with the farmers giving up quietly without fuss as their bank managers politely tell them that they have nowhere to go and had better quit milking while they still have some equity in their business.

Are there any rays of hope on the horizon of this bleak landscape?

Well, it is slightly better for organic producers. At the time of writing this, the West Wales farmers co-op that supplies organic milk to Rachel’s Dairy, now owned by Lactalys, a French company with a tradition of looking after its producers, are paying a base price of 40 ppl. That’s double the conventional price, though I suspect this too will drop in the near future.

Otherwise, the prospects for non-organic dairy farmers are bleak indeed, with the leaders of the farming industry still advocating that we have no choice but to continue to ride the roller-coaster of global prices, as they foolishly believe that this is the most efficient means of regulating supply and demand.

In practical terms, this means that only when a sufficient number of dairy farms have gone out of business will the market turn and prices pick up again. A jargon label has even been invented to make the phenomenon more legitimate: it’s called ‘price volatility’! Prices will go up, there will be another surge of intensification, prices will slump, and so on and so forth.

As a result, there will be ever-fewer dairy farmers, with the industrial-style survivors producing vast quantities of commodity milk from permanently housed cows that are fed on genetically modified grains and never allowed out to pasture. This is a story that, if you knew it, would probably discourage you from wanting to buy milk at all.

A solution: fair trade milk!

The BBC’s Today Programme has covered this twice over the last few days. In the first discussion I heard Meurig Raymond, President of the National Farmers Union, and David Handley, Chairman of Farmers for Action (a French-style blockade-the-supermarkets group), bemoaning this bleak situation.

But when the presenter asked them what could be done about it, neither of them really had an answer, apart from blaming the supermarkets for the ongoing price wars. But is there the slightest chance that the supermarkets will change their practices when they too are engaged in a struggle for the survival of the ‘fittest’ – in this case currently Aldi and Lidl?

I thought not, so after the programme I rang up the editor and suggested that the only way to improve the financial fortunes of dairy farmers will be through the emergence of some kind of public contract, perhaps based on the principles of fair trade, where consumers can buy milk and dairy products knowing the price the farmer has been paid is equitable and fair.

Interestingly they ran another piece on the Today Programme in which fair trade was mentioned, but there was no clear call for action. So here’s what I think could be done: why not introduce a fair trade label for milk?

I’d be very interested to know what the UK Fairtrade Foundation thinks about this idea. Since about 10 years ago, when I was at the Soil Association, we did try to develop a fair trade organic label, but when we approached the Fairtrade Foundation we received a clear message which I can roughly summarise as:

“Fairtrade is about tea, coffee and bananas produced by peasant farmers in developing countries, not featherbedded, heavily subsidised, rich European producers!”

At the time, we backed off – mistakenly in my view, with the benefit of hindsight – as we didn’t want to pick a public fight with those guys.

Fair trade should begin at home

But it still seems to me that fair trade should start at home and that means using our purchasing power right now to support all those beleaguered small family dairy farms on the edge of a precipice, through the introduction of a fair trade milk scheme which gives them a guaranteed fair price, providing their production systems are ethical.

If we don’t do this the family farms will disappear simply to be replaced by ever-larger industrialised farms where the cows are put under ever-more pressure to produce milk yields beyond their metabolic limits. So, let’s challenge the various certification organisations to introduce a fair trade milk label, with some conditions for entry!

In my opinion the scheme should be restricted to farmers with herds of fewer than 400 cows. That’s because the cows should be required to graze pastures during the summer season and larger herds need more land to graze, which means the distances they have to walk night and morning become excessive. There would also be other restrictions that would ensure the story behind the fair-trade mark met with customer expectations.

In parallel with the introduction of such a label, there needs to be a proper investigation into the true cost of environmentally and socially sustainable dairy farming.

That way we can come up with an objective price for milk production that avoids damaging environmental and human health consequences, while at the same time preserving natural capital, avoiding pollution and promoting public health.

This is a project that the Sustainable Food Trust will champion as part of our True Cost Accounting initiative.

But in the meantime, it should be relatively simple to come up with a minimum price based on existing research on the cost of production and linking this to any agreed ethical, welfare and environmental criteria.

Patrick Holden is the founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust, working internationally to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable food systems. He is also Patron of the UK Biodynamic Association and was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.

This article was originally published by the Sustainable Food Trust.

Photo: Steph French.

As a young person in Greece, I have been hit especially hard by the crisis. Like many others my age, I feel that Syriza is the only party that represents people like me.

Greek legislative elections are due to take place on 25 January. All evidence points to a victory by the Coalition of the Radical Left party, Syriza, which before the economic crisis received 4% of the vote, but is now backed by a large part of the Greek people, especially the young.

Last year Syriza emerged as a clear winner in the 2014 European elections with more than 26% of the vote, thanks to a remarkable upswing of almost 22%.

Its rise can be attributed to how the crisis was used as a means to unleash a neoliberal attack on citizens’ rights, based on pre-existing divisions in society. Young people were among the first victims.

As a young person myself, I am a victim of the crisis too. As architects, my parents were among the first to take a hit. The situation got even worse, as Greece entered the IMF and Memoranda period.

An education in neoliberalism

I got into Athens Law School in 2011, at a time when an extended university reform had been voted in, that would begin the privatisation of Greek higher education. This reform would make it harder for poorer students to continue their studies, especially during this economic crisis.

With the Greek state becoming more conservative under the New Democracy – PASOK government, the de facto abolition of democracy and stories of activists’ torture, arbitrary police acts and immigrants’ murders, I turned to Syriza.

I became a member of the Organization of the Youth of Syriza, the autonomous organization of young supporters. In my view Syriza presents the best alternative to the problems young people in Greece are faced with.

Young workers were the ones hit hardest by unemployment – youth unemployment is over 50%. Those ‘lucky’ enough to find a job, even university graduates, will work for €250-300 a month or even unpaid to ‘gain experience’ or are tied to ‘voucher’ programs.

Young men and women remain financially dependent on their parents, cannot afford a household of their own or to start a family and are often forced to emigrate abroad.

At the same time, students have seen their universities collapse. Under recent governments, free higher education stopped being entirely free, as some of the costs are transferred to students, who often cannot shoulder them.

University degrees are becoming equated with those of private colleges, which teach half of the classes universities do, but have been boosted by the government. Pupils have in turn seen their free time shrink, as high schools increasingly resemble examination centres, with private tutoring thriving at the expense of knowledge and learning.

For these reasons, young students and workers have in the present circumstances no option but to support the only party that takes them into account, aiming at a productive reconstruction of the country, based on them, their strengths and ideas.

Rebuilding democracy in the mother of democracies

Syriza wants to reshape the way the Greek state functions, towards democratization and against the corruption of previous governments.

It wants to provide the necessary room for self-organization initiatives and attempts at a solidaristic and cooperative economy, which we saw spring up during the crisis as a response to unemployment, misery and desperation.

Besides, Syriza is the only party that lent passionate support to every movement and resistance that developed in society during these years, by actively participating in their causes and giving them a voice in parliament, while always respecting their autonomy.

From the 2008 uprising after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, to the Greek ‘indignados‘ movement in 2011, to the locals’ resistance to the environmentally catastrophic gold mining in Chalkidiki, Syriza was there. It was there in the protests against the authoritarian closure of the country’s public broadcaster and in the protests against educational reform pushed by the government.

As Greece’s expected next government, Syriza will seek to realise these movements’ causes and offer protection to vulnerable social groups.

Syriza alone stands against austerity, racism and fascism

Syriza is also alone in advocating a Europe of the people and not a Europe of austerity. The EU seems to currently only care about protecting the powerful at the expense of the working class and young people, who are forced to accept constant work with no right to free time and a decent life, fully subjected to the neoliberal dogma of individualism and competition.

Only Syriza, among Greek parties, wants to move Europe towards real democracy and respect of human rights and away from a ‘fortress Europe’ with drowning immigrants in the Mediterranean, away from bigotry, islamophobia, racism and fascism.

The other political parties in Greece disregard young people, some of them blatantly. Why would young voters trust the outgoing New Democracy government, which led them to unrecorded labour or migration? The same party that now denies them the right to vote, excluding them from the upcoming election: 18 year olds won’t vote, because it is supposedly logistically impossible to add them to the electoral  lists in time for the election; citizens living and working abroad won’t be allowed to vote in Greek consulates around the world.

Why would young people vote for PASOK, the junior partner of the governing coalition, which along with New Democracy represents the old and corrupt political establishment and which sent the country to the IMF?

Why should we vote for To Potami, the party that first appeared in European elections last year? It claims to bring new ideas to the table and targets young people, but in reality is funded by and consists of the corrupt political establishment and aligns itself with the neoliberal bloc.

Young people have no reason to support any of these parties, who are responsible for having destroyed their lives, whose sole concern is to implement the European elites’ and markets’ inhumane orders, only selectively altering them to suit their own and their political clientele.

Because the crisis doesn’t only deprive us of our dreams, but also affects us in our everyday lives, seeing our parents’ desperation, who after years of work don’t know if they’ll be able to pay the bills the next day.

This weekend, young people can vote for their dreams

Faced with this social collapse and desperation, young people shouldn’t give in to inaction and misery by abstaining from the election. Equating all political parties without having tried a different alternative is the wrong mentality.

On the contrary we need to seize the opportunity to back a party that wants to give us a platform to participate in decision-making.

Nor should we succumb to violent reaction, as expressed by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which advertises itself as an anti-system party in order to attract the indignant youth, but at the same time backs the government’s selling off of public property.

A Syriza victory, on the other hand, can give back hope both to the youth and to broader society. It can give us the hope which will enable us to raise our voices and actively take part in the country’s political life, from the local level to the unions, from the workplace to the universities.

Syriza can give us back what the previous governments systematically denied us: the ability to fight for our dreams.

Elati Pontikopoulou-Venieri is a senior student at the University of Athens, where she studies Law. She is a also a member of the Organization for the Youth of SYRIZA.

Thanks to Yannis Paradeisiadis for the translation.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Even a tyrant might baulk at effecting a policy which 97% of people oppose. But the European Commission is moving forward with the US-EU trade deal (known as TTIP), despite getting just that result from its largest consultation in history. Nonetheless, corporate plans for this huge trade deal have been badly damaged.

Last year, in response public criticism, the Commission issued a consultation on so-called ‘investor protection’. That’s the bit of trade deals which gives corporations the right to sue governments for implementing policies that damage their profits. So for Investor protection read corporate privilege.

Not surprisingly it’s hugely unpopular. Over 97% all of the 150,000 respondents to the Commission’s consultation – that’s more than 100 times that of any previous trade consultation – rejected investor protection outright.

Where’s the ‘I don’t want this’ box?

Unfortunately, the Commission insists that they were answering a question that hadn’t been asked. At no point in the whole dense, legalistic consultation document were participants given an option to say ‘we don’t want this’.

Rather they were asked questions almost impossible to understand by anyone who isn’t a trade lawyer. When campaign groups created an easy-to-follow online response action, they were accused of “hijacking” the process.

On Tuesday, the Commission released its findings in full. They show that an enormous number of EU citizens responded to the consultation, more than any consultation in history, as well as nearly 450 businesses, campaign organisations, think tanks and trade unions.

The analysis shows that this really is a battle between big business and the rest of us. The exclusion of public services is “strongly opposed by a significant number of business associations who want to see exceptions and limitations brought down to a minimum.”

Unsurprisingly, corporate giants like Chevron, Suez and Repsol, which have sued countries under similar investor protection, are fully supportive of those systems. Indeed some reject any weakening of a system which has allowed tobacco giant Philip Morris to sue Uruguay for putting health warnings on cigarette packets.

But even across the business world, there is no consensus. “[S]mall companies are more critical” – not surprising given small business is unlikely to have access to this world of corporate privilege.

UK: Cameron is all for it, we are all against it

The country generating most response to the EU (52,000 participants) is Britain. This is good, because the British government is pushing investor protection more than any other. Last year they intervened to make sure the Commission kept its nerve.

Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström admitted on Tuesday that the “consultation clearly shows that there is a huge scepticism against the ISDS [investor protection] instrument”, but she will continue to try to work out a compromise nonetheless. This is deeply worrying because the last compromise made in the Canada-EU treaty (CETA) actually risks giving corporations more power.

The deal has been welcomed by veteran investment arbitrator Todd Weiler: “I love it, the new Canadian-EU treaty … we used to have to argue about all of those [foreign investor rights] … And now we have this great list. I just love it when they try to explain things.”

The Commission now embarks on further ‘consultation’. But they have been dealt a serious blow by campaigners from across Europe, who now need to get even more active.

Will the European Parliament step up to the mark?

The European Parliament will adopt a position on TTIP in May. Early signs are that this will be a real showdown and vitally important to whether or not TTIP passes into law.

German Social Democrat Bernd Lange from the trade committee, one of the most important parliamentarians on TTIP, wrote last month that everything important “can be attained in TTIP without the inclusion of ISDS provisions”.

The Environment Committee has been even more critical, worrying “that the TTIP and other mega trade deals are likely to reshape global trade rules and set new standards, while also being discriminatory … risking sidelining important issues for developing countries such as food security, agricultural subsidies and climate change mitigation”

2015 is the make or break year for TTIP, and the coming months are vitally important. To have any hope of stopping this corporate juggernaut, we need to win critical votes in the EU Parliament on TTIP and CETA.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Even a tyrant might baulk at effecting a policy which 97% of people oppose. But the European Commission is moving forward with the US-EU trade deal (known as TTIP), despite getting just that result from its largest consultation in history. Nonetheless, corporate plans for this huge trade deal have been badly damaged.

Last year, in response public criticism, the Commission issued a consultation on so-called ‘investor protection’. That’s the bit of trade deals which gives corporations the right to sue governments for implementing policies that damage their profits. So for Investor protection read corporate privilege.

Not surprisingly it’s hugely unpopular. Over 97% all of the 150,000 respondents to the Commission’s consultation – that’s more than 100 times that of any previous trade consultation – rejected investor protection outright.

Where’s the ‘I don’t want this’ box?

Unfortunately, the Commission insists that they were answering a question that hadn’t been asked. At no point in the whole dense, legalistic consultation document were participants given an option to say ‘we don’t want this’.

Rather they were asked questions almost impossible to understand by anyone who isn’t a trade lawyer. When campaign groups created an easy-to-follow online response action, they were accused of “hijacking” the process.

On Tuesday, the Commission released its findings in full. They show that an enormous number of EU citizens responded to the consultation, more than any consultation in history, as well as nearly 450 businesses, campaign organisations, think tanks and trade unions.

The analysis shows that this really is a battle between big business and the rest of us. The exclusion of public services is “strongly opposed by a significant number of business associations who want to see exceptions and limitations brought down to a minimum.”

Unsurprisingly, corporate giants like Chevron, Suez and Repsol, which have sued countries under similar investor protection, are fully supportive of those systems. Indeed some reject any weakening of a system which has allowed tobacco giant Philip Morris to sue Uruguay for putting health warnings on cigarette packets.

But even across the business world, there is no consensus. “[S]mall companies are more critical” – not surprising given small business is unlikely to have access to this world of corporate privilege.

UK: Cameron is all for it, we are all against it

The country generating most response to the EU (52,000 participants) is Britain. This is good, because the British government is pushing investor protection more than any other. Last year they intervened to make sure the Commission kept its nerve.

Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström admitted on Tuesday that the “consultation clearly shows that there is a huge scepticism against the ISDS [investor protection] instrument”, but she will continue to try to work out a compromise nonetheless. This is deeply worrying because the last compromise made in the Canada-EU treaty (CETA) actually risks giving corporations more power.

The deal has been welcomed by veteran investment arbitrator Todd Weiler: “I love it, the new Canadian-EU treaty … we used to have to argue about all of those [foreign investor rights] … And now we have this great list. I just love it when they try to explain things.”

The Commission now embarks on further ‘consultation’. But they have been dealt a serious blow by campaigners from across Europe, who now need to get even more active.

Will the European Parliament step up to the mark?

The European Parliament will adopt a position on TTIP in May. Early signs are that this will be a real showdown and vitally important to whether or not TTIP passes into law.

German Social Democrat Bernd Lange from the trade committee, one of the most important parliamentarians on TTIP, wrote last month that everything important “can be attained in TTIP without the inclusion of ISDS provisions”.

The Environment Committee has been even more critical, worrying “that the TTIP and other mega trade deals are likely to reshape global trade rules and set new standards, while also being discriminatory … risking sidelining important issues for developing countries such as food security, agricultural subsidies and climate change mitigation”

2015 is the make or break year for TTIP, and the coming months are vitally important. To have any hope of stopping this corporate juggernaut, we need to win critical votes in the EU Parliament on TTIP and CETA.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Even a tyrant might baulk at effecting a policy which 97% of people oppose. But the European Commission is moving forward with the US-EU trade deal (known as TTIP), despite getting just that result from its largest consultation in history. Nonetheless, corporate plans for this huge trade deal have been badly damaged.

Last year, in response public criticism, the Commission issued a consultation on so-called ‘investor protection’. That’s the bit of trade deals which gives corporations the right to sue governments for implementing policies that damage their profits. So for Investor protection read corporate privilege.

Not surprisingly it’s hugely unpopular. Over 97% all of the 150,000 respondents to the Commission’s consultation – that’s more than 100 times that of any previous trade consultation – rejected investor protection outright.

Where’s the ‘I don’t want this’ box?

Unfortunately, the Commission insists that they were answering a question that hadn’t been asked. At no point in the whole dense, legalistic consultation document were participants given an option to say ‘we don’t want this’.

Rather they were asked questions almost impossible to understand by anyone who isn’t a trade lawyer. When campaign groups created an easy-to-follow online response action, they were accused of “hijacking” the process.

On Tuesday, the Commission released its findings in full. They show that an enormous number of EU citizens responded to the consultation, more than any consultation in history, as well as nearly 450 businesses, campaign organisations, think tanks and trade unions.

The analysis shows that this really is a battle between big business and the rest of us. The exclusion of public services is “strongly opposed by a significant number of business associations who want to see exceptions and limitations brought down to a minimum.”

Unsurprisingly, corporate giants like Chevron, Suez and Repsol, which have sued countries under similar investor protection, are fully supportive of those systems. Indeed some reject any weakening of a system which has allowed tobacco giant Philip Morris to sue Uruguay for putting health warnings on cigarette packets.

But even across the business world, there is no consensus. “[S]mall companies are more critical” – not surprising given small business is unlikely to have access to this world of corporate privilege.

UK: Cameron is all for it, we are all against it

The country generating most response to the EU (52,000 participants) is Britain. This is good, because the British government is pushing investor protection more than any other. Last year they intervened to make sure the Commission kept its nerve.

Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström admitted on Tuesday that the “consultation clearly shows that there is a huge scepticism against the ISDS [investor protection] instrument”, but she will continue to try to work out a compromise nonetheless. This is deeply worrying because the last compromise made in the Canada-EU treaty (CETA) actually risks giving corporations more power.

The deal has been welcomed by veteran investment arbitrator Todd Weiler: “I love it, the new Canadian-EU treaty … we used to have to argue about all of those [foreign investor rights] … And now we have this great list. I just love it when they try to explain things.”

The Commission now embarks on further ‘consultation’. But they have been dealt a serious blow by campaigners from across Europe, who now need to get even more active.

Will the European Parliament step up to the mark?

The European Parliament will adopt a position on TTIP in May. Early signs are that this will be a real showdown and vitally important to whether or not TTIP passes into law.

German Social Democrat Bernd Lange from the trade committee, one of the most important parliamentarians on TTIP, wrote last month that everything important “can be attained in TTIP without the inclusion of ISDS provisions”.

The Environment Committee has been even more critical, worrying “that the TTIP and other mega trade deals are likely to reshape global trade rules and set new standards, while also being discriminatory … risking sidelining important issues for developing countries such as food security, agricultural subsidies and climate change mitigation”

2015 is the make or break year for TTIP, and the coming months are vitally important. To have any hope of stopping this corporate juggernaut, we need to win critical votes in the EU Parliament on TTIP and CETA.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.