Stuttgart, July 31st 2013
The White Elephant crosses Europe’s borders
At the 3rd European Forum against Unnecessary Imposed Mega Projects up to 2000 activists from all over Europe discussed unsocial construction projects wasting billions of public money
http://drittes-europäisches-forum.de/
The Movement against Stuttgart 21 hosted the 3rd European Forum against Unnecessary Imposed Mega Projects and invited into the Wagenhallen, a former locomotive engine shed.
From July 25th to July 28th they organized over 45 panel discussions and workshops in rooms they had named after the cultural and natural heritages already destroyed in the course of the construction of Stuttgart 21.
After meeting in Val di Susa, Italy and Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France in 2011 and 2012, up to 2000 people from Italy, France, Spain, England, Belgium, Romania and Turkey came together in Stuttgart to discuss mega projects launched by European national governments and leading major economic units. Mega projects serve investors and companies executing the projects to recover at public expense, while a steadily growing proportion of the European population is falling into precarious life situations due to a lack of investment in education and social infrastructure.
With the white elephant the 3rd forum against Unnecessary Imposed Mega Projects is growing beyond Europe’s borders. The forum’s participants chose the Indian symbol to depict the uselessness of mega projects. Thus the declaration adopted at the forum says the planned mega projects will result in a new financial bubble. The participants of the 3rd Forum fear that the project bonds supported by the EU will lead to new debts of the countries using them, destroy national economies and social infrastructures.
Topics of the event were the biggest open cast gold mine project in Europe, which is planned in Romania and already drove 125 people into suicide because they had to give up their land for the mine project, as well as the planned airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France and the high-speed rail network expanding all over Europe: reaching from England and Germany to France, Italy and Spain, thereby destroying habitats, cultural and natural heritages. For instance the Treno ad Alta Velocità (TAV, high speed train) in Susa Valley, which is supposed to link Lyon, Torino, Trieste and Budapest. Another example is the high speed railway line trough Florence, for which eight kilometers of tunnel will be digged under the UNESCO world cultural heritage site – jeopardizing historic buildings, hundreds of trees and the stability of the city’s underground water system. The preparatory surface works for the temporary stop of high speed trains at the central station of Florence-Santa Maria Novella are already causing damages to buildings and houses, with evident cracks and water leaks in foundations.
The all over Europe and beyond extending protest wants to ensure a halt to the destruction of habitats. The participants of the forum are not only determined to come together virtually and in 2014, when the next forum will take place in Romania, but to fight with concerted acts of resistance against the area-wide mega projects: In their declaration the participants of the forum decided to strengthen the various protest movements – on a national as well as on an international level.
The participants want to actively take part in the debates on the 2014 European elections.
They expect the protest movements, politicians and the civil society to immediately meet the European Convention on Human Rights and to demand the signature of the implementing regulations of the Aarhus Convention.
