German automaker Audi cuts 7,500 jobs

K. Nesan

Workers of the German automaker Audi protest the threat of massive layoffs in downtown Brussels, Belgium, Monday September 16, 2024 [AP Photo/Sylvain Plazy]

Audi announced last week it was cutting 7,500 jobs and would be implementing a medium-term “savings programme” of more than €1 billion per year. The IG Metall union describes the so-called “Agreement for the Future” as a “success” and is already working on the concrete implementation of the savings targets.

The Audi jobs are to be cut by 2029 at its Ingolstadt headquarters and in Neckarsulm in administration, sales and development.

Across Germany, the 55,000 employees of this Volkswagen subsidiary are worried about the future of their families. An Audi worker at the Neckarsulm plant told Südwest Rundfunk radio that today was “not a day to rejoice” after hearing about the savings package and job cuts.

Audi General Works Council Chairman Jörg Schlagbauer, who has no worries about his future, sees things differently. The destruction of 7,500 jobs was justifiable, he told business weekly Wirtschaftswoche. He even spoke of a success for IG Metall, as management had originally proposed cutting 12,000 jobs.

For months, IG Metall and its works council representatives had worked out the plan behind closed doors with Audi management. Similar to VW, where IG Metall agreed to cut 35,000 jobs and reduce wages, pay at Audi will also be cut in addition to the job losses. IG Metall and management stated that the profit-sharing scheme for employees would be reduced. In 2024, each employee received €8,840, which will now be reduced to €5,310. This is likely to be the start of a series of attacks on the workforce in the future.

However, in the face of intensifying competition, Audi’s profit margin, which has recently been well below 5 percent, is expected to return to double digits by 2029 at the latest once the current “Agreement for the Future” has been concluded. What other bad news awaits the autoworkers in addition to the current job cuts and reduction in profit sharing remains a secret.

According to the Audi Media Centre, “based on the key points, the next step will be to define the measures and the structure in the divisions in detail and the specific mix of personnel instruments and then implement them consistently.”

Profits fell by around a third last year. However, this was mainly due to the costs of the closure of the Belgian Audi plant. Despite massive protests by the workforce, Audi stopped production there in February and closed the plant, which was founded in 1949, destroying 3,000 jobs and hundreds more in the supplier industry.

In addition, the Audi Group, which also includes subsidiaries Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati, sold fewer vehicles in 2024 than in the previous year. Sales figures for the cars and motorbikes in the luxury segment produced by 87,000 employees at 21 locations in 12 countries fell sharply in some cases, from over 1.9 million to under 1.7 million.

Marco Schubert, management board member for sales and marketing at Audi, pointed to the discontinuation of some models as the reason for the cuts. He therefore categorised 2024 as a transition year: “We have strong models in the start-up phase, but these will only gradually impact volumes in the markets.”

In China, the German automotive industry as a whole is facing rapidly growing competition from Chinese manufacturers who are producing technologically advanced and affordable electric cars in one of the world’s most lucrative markets.

This also applies to the Audi Group, which delivered just under 650,000 vehicles in China last year, around 80,000 fewer than in the previous year. These were almost exclusively internal combustion engine vehicles; the group only sold 164,000 of its electric cars worldwide in 2024.

Comparatively, on the American market, Audi—just like Porsche, which is also part of the VW Group—is more affected by Trump’s punitive tariffs than other German manufacturers. Neither of them currently produces in the US and only supply imports to the auto market. Last year, Audi delivered to the US around 57,000 vehicles from Germany, 31,000 from Slovakia and almost 8,000 from the now closed plant in Belgium.

As a result of these developments, turnover fell from just under €70 billion in 2023 to €64.5 billion in 2024. As profits slumped, the return on investment fell from 9 percent to 6 percent. The uproar among investors was enormous. The job cuts and savings programme that have now been announced are intended to satisfy investors’ greed for profit.

CFO Jürgen Rittersberger assured that the Audi Group would deliver, promising that the 2025 financial year would exceed the 2024 result with turnover of between €67.5 billion and €72.5 billion. The operating margin should rise again to between 7 percent and 9 percent within a year, he said. “However, we still have a tough road ahead of us,” warned Rittersberger. “In order to achieve our sustained return targets, we will continue to consistently drive forward the transformation of the company.”

This is to be ensured by the so-called “Agreement for the Future.” Audi CEO Gernot Döllner proudly explained at its announcement, “The Agreement for the Future is the basis for continuing to consistently implement the personnel transformation.” In times of upheaval, “company management and the Works Council are pulling together.”

The terms “Agreement for the Future” or “Future Contract” are regularly used by IG Metall to feign job security and maintain its stranglehold over the workforce. Under this guise, which always includes revision clauses and other hidden measures, IG Metall collaborates with management to develop and implement various methods of job cuts and austerity programmes.

In December, IG Metall glorified the “Future Agreement” at parent company Volkswagen, citing the reduction of 35,000 jobs and a 20 percent loss in real wages as the “Christmas miracle of Hanover.” Weeks later, employees had to face the fact that the agreement was a carte blanche for management to make unlimited job cuts and plant closures in the future.

At the beginning of March, automotive expert Constantin Gall from the consulting firm Ernst & Young stated in a press release: “The German automotive industry is in a massive and comprehensive crisis. We will therefore see car manufacturers massively cutting costs this year in order to increase their resilience. This will inevitably lead to significant job losses.”

The auto corporations can fully rely on the trade unions to implement the job cuts and savings programmes. Following the same pattern, firms first announce job and social cuts, whereupon the IG Metall works councils loudly threaten “resistance,” only then to implement exactly what the companies initially demanded—or even more, as in the case of VW.

The current agreement at Audi also followed this script. Even during the negotiations, Jörg Schlagbauer, who as chairman of the General Works Council is also deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board, invoked the alleged “fighting spirit” of IG Metall.

The “list of atrocities” initially presented by the company would be resolutely countered and the union was prepared for “all eventualities,” he boomed. “If the company does not give in quickly, there will be a rampage,” even during the so-called industrial peace period if necessary, he added. A few days after this bluster, Schlagbauer signed the current “future agreement” and praised the fact that compulsory redundancies would be ruled out until 2033. Audi and IG Metall will just implement the job cuts in other ways.

“With the reduction and structural reorganisation of profit-sharing, the Audi workforce is making an important contribution to making [Audi] as a whole weatherproof and future-proof again,” Schlagbauer added. “The Audi workforce is investing many, many millions of euros in its own future over the years.”

Wrong. The workforce is “investing” in increasing returns, i.e., putting more money in shareholders’ pockets.

The top management is rewarding this. In order to secure the dominance of IG Metall over the workforce, Audi management has agreed to pay an additional bonus for IG Metall members from 2026. In this way, the union and employer are trying to force the workforce to become members. IG Metall, currently Germany’s largest trade union with just under 2 million members, has lost around 280,000 members in the last 20 years.

Workers are increasingly turning their backs on the trade unions. Hardly any workers defend IG Metall when they speak frankly outside the factory gates.

Many criticise the fact that IG Metall is implementing company job cuts and is now also supporting the pro-war policy of the incoming federal government. This became clear on IG Metall’s March 15 “day of action.” What was declared to be a “wake-up call for secure work” turned out to be nationalist agitation by leading trade unionists in support of the war policy.

This “day of action” unmistakably showed the trade union bureaucracy to be an integral part of the state apparatus and its rearmament policy. The massive rearmament spending and preparation for war will intensify the attack on jobs and social achievements to an unprecedented degree. In order to defend jobs, workers must therefore also oppose the pro-war policy.

Australian intelligence review calls for “urgent” powers for crises, war and political unrest

Mike Head

On the eve of a looming federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last Friday released a redacted version of an official review that his Labor government initiated in 2023 of the country’s sprawling network of spy and surveillance agencies.

Cover of 2024 Independent Intelligence Review [Photo: Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet]

After sitting on the report without explanation for eight months since it was completed, the government chose to publish this carefully censored version just before the election, which must be held by May 17.

Starkly, the report demands greater powers and resources for the so-called National Intelligence Community (NIC) to deal with political crises triggered by what it calls the “collapse of the post-Cold War” global order.

“It is not yet clear what will take its place, but for the foreseeable future Australia faces a world shaped by competition between nation-states and global geopolitical and economic fragmentation,” the review states.

Written by two former intelligence chiefs, Heather Smith and Richard Maude, the report speaks of the possibility of catastrophic wars. It says “major-power conflict is no longer unimaginable.”

The report declares the necessity for the 10 NIC agencies, headed by the US-style Office of National Intelligence (ONI), to be bolstered and prepared for rising global conflicts, especially a potential US war with China, and threats to “social cohesion” within Australia.

The report unequivocally aligns the Australian intelligence apparatus behind the US drive, now escalated by the Trump administration’s trade war measures, to reassert its global post-World War II hegemony against the perceived threat of China.

Turning the world situation on its head, the review blames China, not the US, for the aggression. It centrally targets China, accusing it of working with Russia “to weaken the global influence of the United States and the West more broadly.”

The report was released amid mounting calls in the corporate, political and media establishment for a vast expansion of military spending, combined with alarm that high levels of domestic political disaffection are likely to produce an unstable hung parliament in the election, with neither Labor nor the Liberal-National Coalition able to form a majority government.

At the same time, the report voices underlying concerns about the historic crisis confronting the Australian ruling class, which has depended since World War II on the US military alliance to pursue its own predatory activities across the Indo-Pacific, but has also become reliant on raw material exports to China.

This is a new era, the report proclaims. “Competition between nation-states, especially between China and the United States, is deeply rooted and structural in nature,” it states. “It is a feature of the era, not a passing moment.”

In this context, the review warns that “risks to prosperity, security and sovereignty are increasingly complex to manage and pose difficult choices and trade-offs for Australia.”

Although written before the accession of the fascistic Trump administration, the report sounds an alarm about the impact of the international political and geo-strategic instability:

The election of more nationalist or populist governments in Europe and the United States, for example, could introduce considerable uncertainty in global affairs and alter some of Australia’s current foreign and economic policy planning assumptions.

Under these conditions, the report underscores the Australian ruling class’s commitment to the US. It emphasises Australia’s increasingly pivotal position for the US-led Five Eyes global intelligence system, which also includes the UK, Canada and New Zealand.

“Australia and its geography are becoming more important to efforts to improve the collective resilience of the Five Eyes enterprise in the event of a crisis or conflict,” it states.

The review reinforces the reliance on “the alliance with the United States and the Five Eyes partnership,” describing them as “national assets for Australia, providing access to information, expertise and technology that would not otherwise be obtainable.”

The report continues the shift away from the alleged threat of terrorism as the main pretext for the vast expansion of police-state surveillance powers since the US declaration of the “war on terror” in 2001.

While “terrorism remains a persistent threat,” the review lists “Australia’s principal security concerns” as “systemic state competition, cyber threats, espionage and foreign interference.”

There is also an intensified internal focus on “fraying social cohesion.” This is code language for the rising social and political discontent among workers and young people fueled by the soaring cost-of-living and social inequality, the bipartisan support for the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and the pro-war drumbeating in ruling circles. According to the report:

The sources of internal fragmentation are varied but often amplify each other. They include the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, political polarisation, inequality, declining faith in democracy, large-scale misinformation and disinformation powered by the internet, and deliberate attempts by some countries (notably Russia and China) to stoke internal divides in democracies.

Significantly, the review urges the government to help overcome public distrust in the “intelligence community.” It notes that the prominence of the agencies in “supporting government” has “not been without controversy.” It insists: “Building public understanding of, and support for, a strong Australian intelligence enterprise is essential.”

Among its 67 recommendations, the report demands a further increase in the powers of the intelligence agencies, starting with an “urgent” extension of their legal capacity to access the computers and telecommunications of “particular groups,” rather than just named individuals.

It also calls for related amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Act to officially permit ASIO, the domestic political surveillance agency, to share its “raw foreign intelligence information” with the central ONI, which could then share it with US and other agencies.

Without providing any detail, another recommendation stresses “the need for deeper integration of intelligence with other arms of government.”

In releasing the report, Albanese said the intelligence agencies were crucial to the country’s security “and we have full confidence in their capacity.” He vowed to “continue to invest in capability to ensure Australia’s intelligence community can deal with emerging threats and challenges.”

As an initial pre-election down-payment, the Labor government promised to plough another $45 million into the ONI, the peak agency, over four years. That is on top of the funding for the entire NIC network more than doubling since 2017, from just under $2 billion to $4.5 billion in 2023.

Much more is in the pipeline, including $1.25 billion over ten years for ASIO to “strengthen its capacity” and $469 million over four years to “modernise” the overseas spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). There is also $9.9 billion over ten years to boost the capacities of the electronic surveillance agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), especially its “defensive and offensive cyber capabilities.”

The review also covers the activities of the other six NIC agencies. They are the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the satellite mapping Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO), the police-linked Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), the financial tracking Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the military’s Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and the Department of Home Affairs.

The Labor government instructed the review to examine the performance of these agencies since the last similar report in 2017, when the then Turnbull Liberal-National government responded to the formation of the first Trump administration by restructuring the intelligence apparatus. It established the ONI, headed by a Director-General of National Intelligence, inside the prime minister’s office to establish centralised control over all 10 agencies.

At that time, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, surrounded by masked Special Forces commandos, also announced expedited measures to call out the military to suppress any outbreaks of “domestic violence” and outlined plans for a Home Affairs super-ministry to take direct command of seven surveillance and police agencies.

Today, the political fears and strategic calculations in ruling circles go far deeper. They are driven by the global turmoil and uncertainties produced by the second Trump administration and the rise of seething discontent in every country, including Australia.

Trump escalating US economic war with looming “reciprocal tariffs”

Nick Beams

At the beginning of next month US President Donald Trump’s economic war against the rest of the world will be intensified when he receives a report on the imposition of so-called “reciprocal tariffs.”

The designation creates the impression that US tariffs will be imposed on goods from countries that have higher tariffs than are applied to their exports to the US. Countries, such as India, along with others which have a higher tariff regime aimed at trying to protect their domestic markets, will be hit hard.

But they are not the central target.

The new regime is aimed at major economies, in particular the European Union but many others as well. The US is set to take action via tariffs in response to any domestic policies which are deemed to adversely impact on the profits of its corporations.

This includes measures such as the value added tax (VAT) in the EU, regulations in Europe and elsewhere covering the social media and high-tech giants, subsidies, state assistance and social services such as the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Prescription-only medication on the shelves of a pharmacy [AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh]

This means that the US tariffs so far—the 25 percent impost on steel and aluminium, the 20 percent tariff on Chinese goods and the 25 percent tariff on Mexican and Canadian goods—are just preliminary skirmishes, initial forays in the war to be unveiled when economic officials report back to Trump on April 2.

How extensive the escalation will be remains to be seen due to the vast set of calculations which have to be made, both of a technical and political character, but there is no doubt about the eventual intended scale of the operation. It is spelled out very clearly in the executive order issued by Trump on February 13 to set it up.

That document states that the administration will “work strenuously” to determine the “reciprocal tariff” to be imposed on any country in response to measures that are deemed to adversely impact the US.

This will include:

• Tariffs imposed on US goods.
• Unfair taxes imposed on US goods, including a VAT.
• Costs to the US arising from non-tariff barriers or measures and “harmful acts” such as subsidies and “burdensome regulatory requirements.”
• Policies that cause exchange rates to deviate from their market value to the detriment of the US.

Then, just to make sure that all bases are covered, the order says that action will be taken against “any other practice” that US officials deem to impose “any unfair limitation in market access or any structural impediment to fair competition with the market economy of the United States.”

The order says it will consider all measures that disadvantage the US, whatever they are called, and “regardless of whether they are written or unwritten.”

The Australian PBS, together with similar measures in a range of other countries which subsidise medicines for patients, could be one of the targets in the “reciprocal tariff” war following a submission to Trump by the major US drug companies on March 11.

The submission from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), representing the major drug firms, illustrates the wide range of polices which could be considered the subject of retaliation.

“Egregious and discriminatory pricing policies in several markets including Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan and Korea undervalue American innovation, threaten billions of dollars of lost sales and undermine American competitiveness, jobs and exports,” the submission said.

The Australian PBS was established in July 1948 as part of the post-war concessions made by governments in all the major capitalist countries, fearing an upsurge of struggles of the working class unless action were taken against a return to the conditions that had prevailed in the 1930s.

Under the scheme the government purchased drugs from the pharmaceutical companies and made them available to patients for whom they had been prescribed at a heavily subsidised rate.

There was only limited coverage at the beginning but with the vast expansion of medical science and pharmaceutical remedies in the past eight decades, the scheme has grown accordingly. In the 2023-24 financial year there were 930 medicines listed on the scheme with the government spending $17.7 billion on the cost, or 91.6 percent. The rest was supplied by patients charged a maximum of $31.60 for each script covered by the scheme.

The PBS has long been a target of the US pharmaceutical industry, which views it as inimical to its interests. The industry rakes in billions in profits, much of which is used for share buybacks that boost stock values on Wall Street as CEOs are richly rewarded through stock options and other mechanisms for increasing “shareholder value.”

In an article last week, the Australian Financial Review recalled the direct intervention by President Barack Obama on trans-Pacific trade negotiations in 2015 when he made two phone calls to then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, to push the demands of the US pharmaceutical giants.

In a separate section of its submission to Trump, the PhRMA sets out its objections to the Australian PBS, using language tailored to reflect that in the Trump executive order. It directs fire against the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), the group which advises the government on whether drugs should be included in the subsidised scheme.

“PBAC,” it said, “conducts biased health technology assessments that compare innovative medicines to the lowest comparator.” The PBS imposed “unreasonable patient access delays” on new medicines and “Australia creates unnecessary data requirements and other administrative hurdles to secure PBS listing, causing significant delays.”

According to the PhRMA, this amounts to a non-tariff barrier to US companies and a restriction on trade—the implication being that such action comes within the framework of Trump’s program for the imposition of “reciprocal tariffs.”

The emphasis placed on what the PhRMA called unnecessary delays is significant because it goes to the heart of the profit-making model of the pharmaceutical giants. They depend on the appropriation of the super-profits reaped from an innovative drug before the price falls because of the manufacture of generics, bringing a decline in returns. This is a never-ending race to sustain high profit margins.

It remains to be seen what action the Trump regime will initiate on April 2 and subsequently. Insofar as the PBS is concerned it could include tariffs on the export of pharmaceutical products to the US. The Australian blood plasma giant CSL is reported to be already considering what effect potential tariffs could have on its operations outside the US.

Australia has only been marginally impacted by the 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminium, despite pleading by the government for an exemption, but pharmaceuticals are among the top Australian exports to the US.

Moreover, the trade war agenda is so broad that retaliatory action may include imposts on other exports to the US such as wine and beef. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, representing 175,000 producers, has launched an offensive with a submission to the US Trade Representative, one of the departments charged with delivering the April 2 report.

“The US-Australia free trade agreement is by far the most lopsided and unfair trade deal for US cattle producers,” the submission said.

The Australian situation is not a special or exceptional case. Rather, it is indicative of the investigations and submissions taking place across the board involving all the so-called “trading partners” of the US, friend or foe alike, now regarded as having “ripped off” the US for decades and which must now be put in their place, if necessary, by punitive tariffs.

There is also a significant feature of the Australian case, likely to be replicated more broadly. The targeting of the PBS, a concession to the needs of the working class, restricted as it may be, is a warning that nothing is off limits as far as the US economic war is concerned. It will not only hit industries and jobs but will reach right down to seek to rip away any social concessions made in the past which are regarded as inimical to the insatiable thirst of giant corporations for profit.

Erdoğan tries to quell mass protests as 15 million turn out for CHP’s presidential primary

Barış Demir

The mass protests that began last Wednesday with the detention of İstanbul mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, on corruption and terror charges, expanded with his formal arrest on Sunday.

Mass protest against the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu in front of the building of Istanbul Municipality in Saraçhane, İstanbul, March 23, 2025 [Photo: herkesicinCHP/X]

Millions defied governorates’ bans on demonstrations in the most populous cities of İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir, and a nationwide police crackdown, to protest against the attack on their basic democratic rights to vote and freedom of speech and assembly, and against the moves to a presidential dictatorship.

In İstanbul, Turkey’s largest city, Ekrem İmamoğlu—who defeated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in three elections—had been leading the polls for the presidential race. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) held a primary election on Sunday, where İmamoğlu ran as the sole candidate, drawing massive participation. According to the CHP, around 15 million people, including 1.65 million party members and 13.5 million solidarity voters, cast their ballots to endorse İmamoğlu as the party’s presidential candidate for 2028 or a potential early election.

The CHP leadership sought to channel the mass movement that erupted after İmamoğlu’s arrest into the primary election—originally intended only for party members—in an attempt to control and demobilize the protests.

In İstanbul’s Saraçhane district, the epicenter of the protests, hundreds of thousands—or nearly a million, according to the CHP—gathered on Sunday. While workers and youth seek a revolutionary way forward in the struggle against dictatorship and for democracy, the CHP leadership has made it clear that its role is to steer the movement into a dead end under capitalist rule.

CHP leader Özgür Özel highlighted the high turnout in the primary and called for early elections: “Our candidate is imprisoned in your dungeons. But we challenge you from this square. If you are too afraid to release our candidate İmamoğlu, we are ready for an election where he runs against you.”

Rejecting growing calls on social media and in the streets for a general strike by the working class, Özel said, “We are launching a great struggle starting this morning [Monday],” and added they would use “the power of consumers.”

İmamoğlu was sent to Silivri Prison, where Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) who was jailed in 2016 thanks to the CHP’s support for Erdoğan in parliament at the time, is being held. In a message sent from prison, İmamoğlu also pointed to the ballot box as a way out for the masses.

İmamoglu stated in his message: “There was a record level of participation in the presidential primary election of our Republican People’s Party. 15 million citizens voted. Tens of millions of people of this country, who were hurt by the tyranny of the government, the destroyed economy, meritlessness and lawlessness, ran to the polls. They said ‘enough is enough’ to Erdoğan... That ballot box will come and the nation will give this government a slap it will never forget.”

In a letter from prison on Monday, İmamoğlu urged youth to “avoid clashes” and added: “To our beloved security forces and police, you treat our people well.”

Meanwhile, the Erdoğan government is trying to suppress the growing mass opposition with police violence, detentions, and social media bans.

Late on Sunday night, after the CHP ended its rally in Saraçhane and MPs left the square, police violently attacked peaceful protesters.

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Similar scenes unfolded across the country throughout the night and the government launched an intimidation operation against journalists in the morning.

In a statement, Basın-İş Trade Union (UNI Graphical and Packaging affiliate) announced that NOW TV reporter Ali Onur Tosun, photojournalist Bülent Kılıç, journalist Zeynep Kuray, AFP reporter Yasin Akgül, journalist Hayri Tunç, photojournalist Kurtuluş Arı, Sendika.org reporter Zişan Gür and photojournalist Murat Kocabaş were detained because of covering the protests.

The wave of detentions continued with leftist political party officials who supported the protests. In a statement released by the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), the party’s İstanbul Provincial Chairman Ahmet Dincel, Party Assembly member Arda Hacıyusufoğlu and three other party members were detained. The Communist Movement of Turkey (TKH) announced that three of its members were detained in early morning raids on the grounds of “participating in a banned protest”.

Left Party İzmir Provincial Chairman Barış İnce and Left Party İzmir Provincial Executive Mehmet Duman were among those detained. The Enerji-Sen Trade Uniun headquarters in İstanbul was raided and its leader Süleyman Keskin was detained.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on X that 1,133 people were detained between March 19 and March 23, 2025.

The Socialist Equality Group, Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), demands the release of all political prisoners and those detained for exercising their constitutional rights.

The government has also tightened restrictions on social media. In the first days after İmamoğlu’s arrest, the government tried to block access to the Internet through “bandwidth restrictions”, but has now moved directly to closing down opposition accounts.

The authoritarian moves in Turkey are part of an international trend. The re-election of the fascist Donald Trump to the US presidency in January and his attempt to build a presidential dictatorship that abolishes the constitution has accelerated this process worldwide. The government’s attempt to arrest İmamoglu followed a phone call between Erdoğan and Trump.

X/Twitter, the social media platform owned by Trump’s assistant, the fascist billionaire Elon Musk, has suspended a large number of accounts in the country at the request of the Turkish government.

Most of the suspended accounts were “university-associated activist accounts, basically sharing protest information, locations for students to go,” Yusuf Can, coordinator and analyst at the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, told POLITICO. Many of these accounts are “grassroots activists” with their followings in the low tens of thousands, said Can.

In a statement on Monday, Güçlü Yaman, who prepared reports on “excess deaths” in the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Pandemic Working Group and played a critical role exposing the deadly response of the government, said: “X blocked access to my account from Turkey, so I am now using this [new] account. I have not received any notification/warning from the court or X, but I think the reason for the block was my posts about police brutality.”

That is why the authorities and the pro-government media are trying to smear the legitimate democratic protests as “street terrorism”. The CHP, as another representative of the imperialist ruling class, is as afraid as the government that these protests will mobilise the working class as an independent social force.

German parliament agrees to €1 trillion for war

Peter Schwarz

A Leopard II battle tank is on display to advertise for joining the German army Bundeswehr at the Essen Motor Show in Essen, Germany, Friday, December 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

In a historic turning point, the German parliament has authorised €1 trillion in new loans.

Officially, it is being justified with the country’s defence and security needs as well as the renovation of ailing infrastructure. But this is empty propaganda. It is not a defence programme, but a war programme.

The real purpose of the gigantic armaments package is to transform Germany back into a major military power that can free itself from American control, dominate Europe and take on other great powers—Russia, China and the US—in the battle for the violent redivision of the world. Eighty years after the capitulation of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (Army), German militarism is throwing off the last shackles that were imposed on it because of its war crimes.

No one should harbour any illusions. The price for this massive rearmament offensive will be borne by working people and especially the youth in the form of falling wages and social benefits, the reintroduction of compulsory military service, the suppression of democratic rights and ultimately war and destruction.

While the parties of the incoming grand coalition, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), with the support of the Greens, are releasing unlimited sums for rearmament, they are also insisting on intensifying cuts in social and pension spending as well as in the public sector. Chancellor-designate Friedrich Merz (CDU) has already announced further cuts to Bürgergeld (welfare payments) and other social spending.

Moreover, the “special fund for infrastructure,” which accounts for around half the new borrowings, is not being used to renovate dilapidated schools and hospitals—as has been widely reported—but to expand roads, bridges and other facilities to make them fit for war.

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil has stated that huge investment in infrastructure was “central to a strong Germany in a strong Europe that takes on more responsibility for security.” The “White Paper” on defence policy, presented by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, lists “military mobility”—a network of land corridors, airports and seaports for the transport of troops and material—and the development of new technologies for electronic warfare as central components of European rearmament, alongside the production of modern weapons systems.

Added to this are the enormous costs for interest and loan repayments, which have to be financed from the regular budget. The total debt of federal, state and local government will rise from the current €2.5 trillion to €4.2 trillion within 10 years as a result of the rearmament loans.

The undemocratic means by which the package was whipped through the Bundestag (parliament) already show that the implementation of this huge rearmament programme requires dictatorial methods.

During the Bundestag election campaign, neither the CDU/CSU nor the SPD came clean with the electorate and announced that they wanted to invest a trillion euros in armaments. For years, both parties have paraded the constitutionally enshrined “debt brake,” which places a strict limit on new borrowing, like an untouchable holy relic in order to justify unprecedented social cuts. The outgoing coalition government of the SPD, Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP) fell apart over this issue, and Merz had claimed during the election campaign that the debt brake would be observed.

But as soon as the polling stations closed, the CDU/CSU and SPD recalled the outgoing Bundestag to decide, together with the Greens, on gigantic borrowings for their war programme, since the incoming government lacks the necessary two-thirds majority in the new Bundestag required to pass such legislation.

End of the transatlantic alliance

If you read the papers of the relevant think tanks and the commentaries in leading German media, the real purpose of the gigantic arms offensive becomes clear. Three goals are being pursued: Breaking free from military dependence on the US, the sustained weakening and imperialist subjugation of Russia, and German dominance in Europe.

Jörg Lau writes in Die Zeit that Donald Trump’s renewed assumption of office marked “the end of an era of transatlanticism in German foreign policy—an era in which governments of all colours took it for granted that the alliance with America would secure Germany’s security and prosperity.”

Putin’s attack on Ukraine had revealed “the frightening extent of Europe’s dependence on the USA,” said Lau. Now, “Merz must design a German foreign policy that in case of doubt, could function without the USA as a benevolent partner (or even with the USA as an opponent).”

Der Spiegel was jubilant about the “European spring in security policy.” A detailed article by seven authors states: “A NATO without the USA—that would be a task for the century, a historic turning point. But that is exactly what is now being seriously considered.” Possible outlines of a “Europeanised NATO in which Washington plays little or no role are already emerging. A new, flexible alliance could reach from Van in Turkey to Vancouver in Canada—and in the best-case scenario, count on the battle-hardened Ukraine.”

The news magazine accuses the Americans of having “deliberately organised NATO in such a way that not much works without it. The alliance has always been a vehicle for controlling the allies.” High-resolution satellite images, transport aircraft and US intelligence had held NATO together. Many European countries had bought US weapons that were dependent on American spare parts and software updates. In the meantime, Europe is puzzling over whether the Pentagon might even have built a kind of “kill switch” into the F-35 stealth jet—a mechanism that would render the aircraft unusable if necessary.

The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) echoes this sentiment. “There is no longer a transatlantic alliance as we know it and the cohesion between Europe and the USA is eroding further every day,” writes its Eastern Europe expert Stefan Meister. “Trump is not only serving up Ukraine to Putin, but also Europe, which cannot defend itself without US security guarantees.” The costs of the “German and European denial of reality over the last decade” are now becoming brutally visible.

DGAP has published over a dozen articles urging faster rearmament and a more aggressive German foreign policy. The headlines alone speak for themselves: “A Europeanisation of NATO is indispensable.” “For a militarily strong Germany,” “Franco-German defence cooperation: now or never,” “Germany must once again become a driving force in EU trade policy,” “Cyber defence is not enough against China and Russia’s cyber aggression” and “The time for naivety is over”—to name just a few.

DGAP is the authentic voice of German imperialism. Founded in 1955 by leading representatives from politics and business—including Hermann Abs and Robert Pferdemenges, both leading bankers under the Nazis—more than two thirds of its funding still comes from the private sector. Its current president, Thomas Enders, was for many years head of Airbus, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer and Europe’s third-largest defence company.

Warmongering against Russia

The swan song for the transatlantic alliance goes hand in hand with hysterical warmongering against Russia. Germany and other European powers are reacting to Trump’s attempts for rapprochement with Putin with a crazy plan to bring the world’s second-largest nuclear power to its knees on their own.

Der Spiegel cites a retired British general who was convinced “Europe alone can stand up to Russia.” According to him, European NATO members would have to spend 3.5 percent of their economic output, or around €250 billion a year, to replace American capabilities and troops.

Economically, according to Der Spiegel, “the Europeans have a clear advantage in the arms race.” Russia only has one-tenth of the economic power of all European NATO states. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk put it in a nutshell: “500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to protect them from 140 million Russians.”

European weapons production is being massively ramped up. The €150 billion that the EU is making available for this purpose should “explicitly not be used to buy American weapons” because there was “no strategic autonomy without European preference,” Der Spiegel quotes a French minister as saying.

In order to prevent the war plans being blocked by EU members such as Hungary, a “coalition of the willing,” which also includes non-EU members such as the UK, Norway and Turkey, should be formed to create a European NATO.

“Turkey controls access to the Black Sea and maintains a 400,000-strong army, the second largest in NATO,” says Der Spiegel. “Its defence industry can quickly deliver weapons, combat drones and artillery shells.” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has already promised to participate in a new European security architecture.

According to Der Spiegel, future cooperation with Kyiv is just as important. “Nobody knows better than Ukrainian soldiers how to fight with drones. The Europeans can benefit enormously from this knowledge.” A German manufacturer is already producing them together with Ukrainian kamikaze drones: “Anything that keeps Putin in check helps.”

DGAP is in favour of forcing regime change in Russia by escalating the war in Ukraine and further expansion of the EU. “It is an illusion to believe that Putin will stop the war against Ukraine and the West in return for any kind of concessions,” writes Stefan Meister. “The Putin system must be weakened in a sustained manner so that political change from within becomes possible.” It remained “crucial that Russia realise the limits of its military power in Ukraine.”

The madness of this strategy cannot be exaggerated. Regime change in Moscow would probably bring a faction to power that would be much faster than Putin to deploy nuclear weapons. Figures like the late Alexei Navalny, who are completely in the service of NATO, have hardly any supporters in Russia. The memories of the German war of annihilation, which cost the lives of 28 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union, are too vivid for that.

The claim that Russia will conquer the whole of Europe if it is not defeated in Ukraine is absurd. The country lacks all the economic and military prerequisites for this, as well as a political motive. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a reactionary response to the advance of NATO to its borders, which Moscow—as today’s war hysteria confirms—rightly perceived as a threat. Precisely because Russia lacks the necessary means to wage a conventional war against a highly armed Europe, the danger of it resorting to nuclear weapons is particularly high.

Longstanding rearmament plans

Trump’s attacks on the European Union, the imposition of punitive tariffs and the attempt to reach an agreement with Putin on a Ukraine deal over the heads of the Europeans have accelerated Germany’s rearmament plans. But these go back much further.

The German ruling class has never come to terms with the fact that it had to take a back seat militarily after the failure of Hitler’s war of annihilation. What held it back from becoming a major military power again was the mistrust of the victorious powers and, above all, the resistance of the working class.

When NATO was founded in 1949, its task was to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down,” as the first NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay put it. Initially, the post-war Federal Republic of Germany had no armed forces of its own and was only admitted to NATO six years later, with the escalation of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Although the Bundeswehr’s troop strength was soon relatively high at just under 500,000 conscripted soldiers, it was primarily used for territorial defence and was never deployed in active warfare before 1999.

Opposition to war and militarism was widespread in Germany. In the 1950s, millions protested, supported by the trade unions, against rearmament and efforts at nuclear armament. At the end of the 1960s, the protest movement against the Vietnam War was linked to a sharp rise in conscientious objection to conscription. And in 1982, mass demonstrations against the deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles on German soil led to the premature end of Helmut Schmidt’s (SPD) government.

With German reunification in 1990, calls for a German great power policy became louder. In 1993, then German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel (FDP) declared: “As a nation of 80 million people, as the country with the strongest economy in the centre of Europe, we bear a special, sometimes new responsibility, whether we like it or not.” Due to its central location, its size and its traditional relations with Central and Eastern Europe, Germany was “predestined to derive the main benefit from the return of these states to Europe.”

In 1998, the Bundestag voted in favour of the first deployment of German troops in the NATO war against Yugoslavia. As is the case today, the old Bundestag, which had already been voted out, was then reconvened. The Greens, who had strictly rejected German participation in the war during the election campaign, voted in favour, paving the way for their entry into the German government, with Green leader Joschka Fischer as foreign minister. Back then, the decision in favour of war almost tore the party apart; today, the Greens are the worst warmongers.

In 2013, more than 50 leading politicians, journalists, academics, military and business representatives drew up the paper “New Power—New Responsibility,” which served as a blueprint for the foreign policy of the newly formed grand coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD under Angela Merkel (CDU). Ursula von der Leyen, also CDU, now president of the European Commission, was defence minister at the time and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) was foreign minister.

The paper claimed an international “leadership role” for Germany: As a “trading and exporting nation,” which lived from globalisation like “hardly any other country” and required “demand from other markets as well as access to international trade routes and raw materials.” In particular, “the increasingly unstable European environment from North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia” was named as a target for German military operations.

Escalation in Ukraine

This strategy experienced its baptism of fire in Ukraine. In February 2014, Berlin, together with the US, supported the coup by far-right forces, which helped a pro-Western regime to power and provoked the current war. David North, chairperson of the World Socialist Web Site international editorial board, said shortly afterwards in his speech to the 2014 international May Day rally:

For German imperialism, the confrontation with Russia is welcomed as a pretext for the repudiation of the constraints on militarism imposed in the wake of the unspeakable crimes committed during the years of Hitler’s Third Reich. In recent months, the German media has been engaged in an increasingly frenzied propaganda campaign directed against not only Russia, but also against the deeply rooted anti-war sentiments of the German working class. ...

Behind the propaganda stand definite economic and geopolitical interests. The German president has declared that his country’s weight in the world economy requires that it obtain the military force necessary to secure its broader geopolitical interests. As in the twentieth century, Germany is once again gazing longingly upon the Black Sea region, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia and the vast land mass of Russia. 

Eleven years and several hundred thousand war dead later, this imperialist war policy is taking on new dimensions. In order to pursue its economic and geopolitical interests, German imperialism is not only investing huge sums in rearmament, but also accepting the risk of nuclear annihilation.

In doing so, it is following in its traditional footsteps. German imperialism already focused on Russia and Ukraine in the First World War and the Soviet Union in the Second. And just like back then, it endeavoured to dominate Europe in order to achieve its goals. The same is true today.

Political scientist Herfried Münkler, who has long advocated a strengthening of German militarism, regards this as one of the most important tasks of the rearmament programme. “Above all, the Germans must emerge with a relatively large amount of money in order to regain the leading position within Europe,” he said in a Pioneer podcast.

The confrontation with Trump is currently bringing the European powers a little closer together. French President Emmanuel Macron is also endeavouring to build a European army and has reiterated his offer to deploy French nuclear weapons to protect the whole of Europe—although the decision on their use should be left exclusively to him.

The UK is taking part in European meetings despite Brexit and wants to continue to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. And Poland is working closely with Germany and France on armaments.

However, the confrontation with the US, rival economic and geopolitical interests, the battle for lucrative defence contracts and growing domestic political tensions will inevitably cause the conflicts within Europe, which made the continent the scene of two world wars, to flare up again. Neither France nor Britain nor Poland, which was devastated by Germany in the Second World War, are prepared to accept the German “leading position within Europe” invoked by Münkler.

EU adopts White Paper demanding €800 billion defense spending increase

Alex Lantier

A Leopard II battle tank is on display to advertise for joining the German army Bundeswehr at the Essen Motor Show in Essen, Germany, Friday, December 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

This week, the European Union (EU) Commission released its Joint White Paper for European Defense Readiness 2030. Endorsed by the European Council of EU heads of state at a meeting on Thursday, the White Paper calls for a staggering increase in EU military spending of €800 billion to prepare Europe for high-intensity war with Russia, a major nuclear-armed state.

This anti-democratic and militarily suicidal policy is setting up an explosive confrontation with the European working class. Last year, a Eurasia Group poll found that 89 percent of people in Western Europe opposed sending ground troops to Ukraine to fight Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron’s funding of military budget increases with social austerity, including a massive pension cut in 2023, provoked overwhelming popular opposition and mass strikes.

Nonetheless, with contempt for public opinion, the EU is signaling a massive military spending increase that could only be financed by devastating social austerity against workers and youth. Hailing the vast increase in EU military spending during the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, it lays out a framework for doubling military spending and so-called “military investment” in weaponry and equipment in the next four years.

EU “Member States’ defence spending has grown by more than 31 percent since 2021, reaching 1.9 percent of the EU’s combined GDP or €326 billion in 2024. Specifically, defence investment reached an unprecedented €102 billion in 2024, almost doubling the amount spent in 2021,” the White Paper boasts, adding: “Based on projections of gradual take-up, defence investment could reach at least €800 billion over the next four years.”

The White Paper lays out five basic mechanisms for increasing military spending:

* A Security and Action For Europe (SAFE) loan program granting EU member states €150 billion in loans to finance military spending.
* Invoking the “National Escape Clause of the Stability and Growth Pact” to allow EU states to run budget deficits above 3 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), so long as the resulting deficit spending is used to fund the military. The White Paper claims that this could “mobilise additional defence expenditure of up to 1.5 percent of GDP.”
* Using EU “Cohesion policy” funds, normally reserved for poorer EU countries to spend on key infrastructure or education, to increase defense spending.
* Using the European Investment Bank to fund the building of high-tech weapons such as drones, space weapons and cyber warfare.
* “Mobilizing private capital,” including with measures like seizing the balances of private EU citizens’ savings accounts and using them to invest in arms manufacturers.

These confusing references to “investment” and “loans” obscure one fact: The EU intends to finance its military build-up via debt and for these debts to be repaid by the workers. Military spending differs crucially from investment in productive capacity like a factory: It produces no new wealth. The cost to the state of building drone bombers or guided missiles, or of employing them on the battlefield, can be repaid either out of its revenues at home or by plundering new revenues abroad.

Europe’s economy has stagnated for nearly two decades since the 2008 Wall Street crash, bled white by repeated bank bailouts handing trillions of euros in public funds to the wealthy. All EU states are heavily indebted, and several are effectively bankrupt: France’s public debt stands at 110 percent of GDP, Spain at 104 percent, and Italy at 137 percent. With EU governments rejecting tax increases on the capitalists, their military spending will be financed by plundering workers either through imperialist war abroad, or class war at home.

After millions of Ukrainians and hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed or wounded in the war, the White Paper ghoulishly calls on the EU to “profit from Ukraine’s war experience.” It callously treats Ukraine as a testing ground for the best use of modern technologies like artificial intelligence to the purpose of drone murder:

Ukraine is today using its experience from the frontline to continuously adapt and upgrade equipment to the point that Ukraine has become the world’s leading defence and technology innovation laboratory. Closer cooperation between the Ukrainian and European defence industries will enable first-hand knowledge transfer on how to best use innovation to achieve military superiority on the battlefield, including on rapidly scaling up production and updating existing capabilities. …

Innovations in drone technology are already dictating the way battles are fought, and the role of robotics is poised to grow, with autonomous ground vehicles taking the lead in early combat operations. These machines, capable of reconnaissance, direct assaults, and logistical support, are already having an impact on battlefields. AI powered military robots are still in early stages of development and there is ample opportunity for Europe to excel in robot weapons ...

From the experience of the Ukraine war so far, the White Paper calls for massively increasing EU spending on seven key areas of military technology. These include: air and missile defense, artillery and long-range missile systems, ammunitions stockpiles, drone and counter-drone systems, military logistics, cyber warfare, airlift and “strategic enablers” like space-based surveillance and warfare. To ensure that this military build-up is profitable for private companies, the White Paper adds, the build-up must occur on a massive scale.

Calling for the “acquisition of capabilities for high-intensity warfare in line with EU and NATO capability processes,” it adds, “scaling up production capacities depends on companies having a steady stream of solid, multi-year orders to steer investment in additional production lines.” It calls for the pre-positioning of large “Defense Industrial Readiness Pools” of ammunition and military supplies and industrial capacity so they can be rapidly used if and when the war in Ukraine explodes across all of Europe.

It also advocates building an “Eastern Border Shield” to “strengthen the EU’s external land border with Russia and Belarus against military and hybrid threats. That would include a comprehensive mix of physical barriers, infrastructure development and modern surveillance systems.”

The alarm must be sounded among workers and youth. What the EU is preparing is the largest European military build-up and the largest European war since the rearmament of Nazi Germany and Hitler’s genocidal invasion of the Soviet Union. The cost in lives of such a conflict, even before it escalates to nuclear war, would be astronomical. It must be stopped, and stopping it requires in the first instance rejecting the concocted arguments the EU advances to present its military build-up as forced upon it by the threat of Russia and China.

“The political equilibrium that emerged from the end of the Second World War and then the conclusion of the Cold War has been severely disrupted,” it declares. “If Russia is allowed to achieve its goals in Ukraine, its territorial ambition will extend beyond. Russia will remain a fundamental threat to Europe’s security for the foreseeable future … Authoritarian states like China increasingly seek to assert their authority and control in our economy and society.”

In reality, throughout the post-Cold War era following the Stalinist bureaucracy’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the European imperialist powers have been on the warpath. Whether rivaling US imperialism or working closely with it, they have bombed, invaded or occupied countries from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan to Syria, Libya and Mali. The current EU military program builds on this blood-soaked history, including NATO’s provocative decision to heavily arm Ukrainian forces on Russia’s borders that led to the Kremlin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine in 2022.