Contribution of Communist Revolutionary Party of France

The war machine of Euro-Atlanticism, NATO, and the EU against the peoples
 The Communists' proposal for a solution in conditions of intensifying imperialist competition 
Contribution by the Revolutionary Communist Party of France at the ECA Conference, September 28, 2025

Dear Comrades,
We would like to begin by thanking our comrades from the Communist Party of Turkey for hosting this conference. The title of this conference leads us first to ask a question that is controversial in the international communist movement, as well as in our difficult national conditions of building a Communist Party through debate with various opportunist and Menshevik organizations: what is an imperialist alliance, and more specifically, what is the place of the Euro-Atlantic alliance today in global imperialism?

Indeed, the new sequences of class struggles in the Middle East during the summer of 2025, such as the military aggression against Iran and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, as well as the anti-social attacks by the EU and its member states in Europe, demonstrate once again two lessons for our party: 
First, imperialism cannot be limited to the actions and plans of the world's most powerful monopolies and states. We are far from a naive image of a “Western bloc,” let alone a closed system, which would lay down the law as it sees fit. The Euro-Atlantic war machine cannot objectively be the work of the US alone in our analyses and slogans, or of imperialist alliances disconnected from the national capital base that forms their members.

Secondly, our Party maintains that the solid common strategic interests of the various EU and NATO member states in international contradictions should not be underestimated. The war plans of the EU and NATO in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as the anti-popular offensives in each of our countries, demonstrate a unified strategy under the international war machine enabled by the NATO-EU coalition for a “new Middle East,” the continuation of the war in Ukraine, and the EU's transition to a generalized war economy. 

Such a strategy must therefore succeed, on the one hand, in reconciling the economic interests of other allied bourgeoisies, but also, on the other hand, in negotiating and knowing how to back down in the face of other bourgeoisies such as China, according to unequal positions and developments. Our party therefore considers it crucial, in political struggles, not to underestimate either the strategic unity of Euro-Atlanticism or the internal contradictions within that unity. 

Recent political events in France demonstrate this analysis for our party:
Indeed, the recent budget of Prime Minister François Bayrou, already replaced by Sebastien Lecornu in France, presented on July 15, 2025, touted two objectives: “Stop the debt!” and “Forward with production!” The goal is to achieve savings of 43.8 billion in 2026, while promoting French production. In reality, this is a new attack on working people to finance, including through debt, the fixed capital needs of French monopolies: the launch of a “blank year,” meaning a freeze on wages, pensions, and social assistance, new restrictions on unemployment insurance, the elimination of two public holidays, but also the delisting of drugs and consultations on a massive scale in the health sector. 

However, there is one major omission from these budget cuts: defense and the military. Indeed, the Ministry of Defense will not be affected by the freeze. There is an objective link here between increased exploitation in production and the policy of war, with the increase in the defense and military budget: the Bayrou plan is a new stage in the restructuring of our monopolies, aimed at violently reorganizing production in order to promote a war economy. However, is this new attack solely a sign of our monopolies' submission to NATO and the EU? Our party believes that, on the contrary, this plan is part of our bourgeoisie's increased participation in the Euro-Atlantic military and economic complex, in order to compete with other members and gain better economic positions in the strategic objectives of these alliances in Ukraine, the Middle East, and within the EU.

Since 2023, a nearly 40% increase in the military budget has made France the second military power in Europe. This increase is linked to the signing of the 5% of GDP allocated to the security and defense budget, decided at the last summit in The Hague. This plan is also linked to the austerity-related European standards linked to NATO's financial demands: we are thinking, for example, of the official clauses for EU integration: maintaining a public deficit of less than 3% of GDP, debt of less than 60% of GDP, and inflation below 2%. National austerity and preparation for international wars therefore go hand in hand, serving as leverage for the various bourgeoisies that are members of the Euro-Atlantic alliance to gain their own positions. In the last two months, for example, French arms monopolies have been strengthened, with Greece's purchase of a fourth frigate, Denmark's order for €8 billion worth of air defense systems, including French systems, a cooperation agreement signed between Naval Group and PGZ in Poland, although contracts were lost with Norway, which preferred the United Kingdom, Thalès receiving €500 million from the EU for research and development on its radars, India choosing France for its aircraft engine for €6.7 billion instead of the US and the UK, and the ongoing alliance project between Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo in the field of satellites, while the French army has just tested one of the best hypersonic missiles, placing it among the world leaders, etc.

In France, this also translates into a strengthening of the French state's strategic alliances outside NATO or the EU, alongside growing integration into these alliances: Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt, India, where the state sells its weapons and consolidates its influence.
Our Party's proposal is fully in line with current events, primarily the large-scale struggles that have been waged since September 10 against the austerity plan. The movement, which began in May 2025, included a variety of political tendencies, from social democracy to the most nationalist bourgeois parties, with trade unions and strikes coexisting with other forms of struggle and organization such as road and institutional blockades.

Our party believes that our cadres must invest in these popular movements and their unions on a daily basis in order to link national austerity and anti-popular attacks to foreign military interventions and the war plans of NATO and the EU in the Middle East and Ukraine. For example, our federations have promoted, around regional struggles for the right to housing or for the day of peace, a movement to amplify the demands for the fight against the EU and NATO with that against austerity plans, linking these issues as inseparable around our national slogan against war: “Money for the people's needs, not for war! Let's blame capitalism, the source of all evil!” This slogan gathered nearly a thousand signatures in just a few days in September.

Dear Comrades,
While it is true that the level of development of ACE member parties varies, fighting against the common strategies of our bourgeoisies within the EU and NATO requires our party to strengthen coordination between our different parties: by exchanging data about our monopolies and their links to international war economy plans, or by organizing joint marches, such as the one organized by the NCPN during the last NATO summit in The Hague. 
It is by fighting and linking the anti-popular plans of our own bourgeoisies to the Euro-Atlantic war machine, while strengthening our practical coordination, that understanding of the need to put an end to capitalism will grow, and that a popular political alternative, socialism-communism, will be understood through the experience of workers in our different countries, in line with their needs. 

The PCRF, 28 september 2025