DECISIONS TAKEN AT THE EUROPEAN ESF ASSEMBLY
BUDAPEST, 4TH 5TH 6TH MARCH 2011

We, the participants to the European Assembly, in the framework of the ESF process, met in Budapest to build a larger and better relation between East and West and to strengthen the participation in the ESF process of the Eastern European associations, movements, and social actors.

While we commit ourselves to a stronger dialogue and to cooperation between East and West, we also commit ourselves to support as much as possible the South Mediterranean civil societies which are on the front line of a crucial and difficult process of change.

We discussed the situation of the social movements in Europe, the struggles we are all facing in the coming months and the rising of resistance; but we also confronted the weakness of the European dimension of the struggle, at a time when we are facing the most dramatic aspects of the crises and the most relentless attempts to destroy fundamental human rights and the bases of democracy.

Europe needs the ESF, it needs a strong, large and inclusive open space where social movements and actors can find an opportunity for connections, convergences and common actions.

We recognise the responsibility to be active for the renewal of the process and to engage all the energy of the real European social actors in the process of creating a new and stronger ESF.

The struggles, mobilizations and campaigns of the next period must constitute the basis and the opportunity for the enlargement of the debate, and also the grounds for our commitment to the creation of a new ESF.

We commit ourselves to spread all over Europe a call to the social actors and movements to be part of this process by building the coming mobilizations, for a different Europe and for a different world which is absolutely needed:

1. Organize and mobilize for the global campaigns as was decided in Dakar:

• G8 – France May 2011, demo on the 21^st , actions on the 22^nd . (European preparation meeting in Paris 26-27^th March 2011 organized by the French Committee (see below)

• G20 – France (Cannes) November 2011

and

• World Forum on Public water 2012 – France (Marseilles)

• COP 17 - Durban

• Rio +20

2. Within the framework of the ESF process conferences will be organized and are called by the organizing groups

• Conference on debt and austerity 31^st of May 2011 in Brussels (not only a conference but a space in which common actions could be decided). There is a suggestion to focus on the European semester, its consequences on people lives and possible alternatives

3. Other conferences and mobilizations at an European level will take place; we list some of them as they were presented during the assembly:

– Brussels 10^th-11^th of March 2011 - Joint Social Conference

– UK 1^st October 2011 organized by Coalition of Resistance

– ETUC mobilization in 9^th of April in Budapest

– Meeting in Kiev organized by Prague Spring network against right wing extremism

– 16^th -21^st August European Forum on Food Sovereignty in Krems, Austria (www.nyelenieurope.eu)

– European Summer University in August in Germany and in 30 June- 3^rd July in Belgium

4. Participate in the Genoa Forum - 19^th to 24^th of July for the 10^th anniversary of the anti G8 actions.

5. As lots of different struggles will take place in different countries in Europe it will be important give them visibility and create solidarity. (e.g. through the web spaces)

6. Work on thematic Forums at European level

7. Restarting the networks meetings during the EPAs

8. Meeting in Paris on the 23^rd of May to discuss about the possibility of having the next WSF in Europe in 2013 or the next ESF in 2012 and re-launch the ESF process.

9. Organize a forum on the open ESF list to debate on cultural, political and social alternatives in Western and Eastern European Countries (based on the speech made in Budapest on Friday 4^th )

10. Improve the websites and create new media tools: two network meetings were held on the website and media tools. We are going to re-launch the ESF-FSE website. Monica and Mariangela offered as volunteers and they will administrate the ESF-FSE website. This website will be the place for all official information; the Open ESF website will carry on as the working space to debate and start new projects. We will need to translate the documents in different languages. We are going to open a Facebook page and have a space on YouTube. This working group is open to all people willing to help. Contact

11. We, the people and organisations present in Budapest, support the Khimki and Copenhagen protesters in their fight against criminalization. (Mirek will send to Mariangela the final text for this point)

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DECLARATIONS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY

Solidarity to the 300 Migrants Hunger Strikers in Greece

On January 25^th, 300 migrant workers went on hunger strike in Athens and Thessalonica.

Their main demand is to be legalized.

At this moment, their struggle has reached the 41^st day. A hundred of them are in the hospitals, facing several serious health problems and risking their lives. The migrants are the first victims of the economic crisis and the austerity policies that are applied by the European governments.

We, the participants of the preparatory ESF Assembly which is held in Budapest support their fair demand for legalization, the right for a decent life and jobs with legal rights. We support and express our solidarity to their struggle. The Greek government should immediately fulfill their demands for legalization, in order not to have more innocent victims.

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Declaration on red sludge

We, the people meeting in the ESF Assembly in Budapest considers it shocking, that people still live in an area, which is still covered by the red mud, in an area where the dust content of air (PM10) in the first four months after the disaster was higher then the health standard of the European Union on 75 days, which harmful to health.

It is startling, that in Hungary, a country which is currently holding the position of the EU presidency, human rights are ignored and do not care about the health and future of thousands of people, and there is no proper examinations on the health of the people by the sate.

We call the Hungarian government to immediately begin the necessary health examinations by independent health authorities, including heavy metals on each person who live in the affected area, as the laboratory tests which took place in Vienna require it - because the results show differences in the maximum norm of chrome, cadmium , arsenic and gamma GT.

We consider it outrageous that the economic interests and continued operation of the MAL Company are more important for the Hungarian government than the children grow up healthy.

We demand the Hungarian government to provide every opportunity to the people who live in the affected area to move to another places of the country in similar conditions as they lived before the catastrophe – considering the health risks and the negative psychological effects on the people.

Finally, we express our solidarity with the people of the red mud area and express our support to them that we will tell on every international and national forum about their real situation and call the attention to the urgent solution of the situation.

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France will host the G8 and the G20 in 2011, which will respectively be held the 27-28^th of May in Deauville and the 3^rd and 4^th of November in Cannes.

Since 2008, the G20 has imposed itself as the main framework for dialogue among the richest countries, in which their leaders deliberate and define the “solutions” for the financial, economic and climate crisis plaguing the entire planet. Yet summits go by, and the multiple global crises remain. The last G8 and G20 meetings failed to bring any real solutions. On the contrary, everything suggests that G20 leaders’ sought first to re-legitimize the actors and mechanisms at the origin of these crises (IMF, WB, WTO, the free trade and investment regime, etc.), while leaving it up to citizens to pay the price. Though truly democratic solutions to the crisis do exist and it’s urgent to promote peoples’ responses to the crisis and the system change agenda face to the G20 agenda.

To help broadening the mobilization front, a call has been worked out during the Dakar WSF, which is open to the signature of organizations, networks, movements in Europe willing to support and join the mobilizations planned in France.
In Dakar, through the G8 G20 convergence assembly for action we launched the international working process towards these mobilizations in May and November.
The Deauville and Cannes mobilizations offer us an unique chance to raise the people’s voice face to the crisis and the world leaders’ false solutions. These mobilizations are ours.

We, gathered at the European assembly in Budapest, support the mobilisations face to the G8 and G20 in France.

(An G8-G20 International preparatory meeting will take place on the 26^th and 27^th of March 2011, in Paris.)

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