Analysis

Peter Mertens at the Havana International Conference For World Balance

At the 2025 European Forum in Vienna, David Pestieau, Political Director of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PVDA–PTB), delivered the following speech during the plenary “Austerity and the War Economy: Our Opposition to the EU ReArm Initiative. Fighting War Means Fighting Austerity“.

On October 14th, the trade unions organised a demonstration in Brussels against the anti-social plans of the so called 'Arizona' government. It marked a turning point. 140,000 people took to the streets. That number was immediately downplayed by the right, but reveals the scale of the popular resistance. Benjamin Pestieau, deputy general secretary of the PVDA-PTB, explains the reasons for this massive mobilisation, the government's strategy of division and repression, and the essential conditions for pushing back this government of social destruction.

At COP30, States are required to update their climate plans, ten years after the Paris Agreement, and after the failure of COP29 in Baku. Meanwhile, the UN’s latest climate report, “No More Hot Air… Please!” makes it clear: global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite all declared commitments. The world continues to face an average rise of global temperature whose impacts are already felt in the lives of the peoples.

The so-called twenty-point plan of Donald Trump for Gaza, enthusiastically received by Benjamin Netanyahu, is not a peace plan but a unilateral U.S.–Israeli ultimatum. It is an imposed capitulation that will only pause the genocide in Gaza, not end it. The international solidarity movement was moving to isolate Israel. With this plan Trump and Netanyahu want to reverse the roles. Their central aim is to isolate the Palestinians. The objective is to pressure Palestinians into accepting impossible, neocolonial conditions. If they refuse, Trump and Netanyahu will portray them as “obstructionists.” Then Washington will “pledge full support to finish the job” — meaning the full annexation of Gaza into a “Greater Israel.”

Discover the speech by PVDA-PTB president Raoul Hedebouw at the 2025 edition of ManiFiesta, the Festival of Solidarity. Saturday 13 September 2025

The European Commission aims to inject 800 billion euros into the arms industry with the ReArm Europe plan. Using militarisation as the driving force behind reindustrialisation will lead to either war or crisis - and in both cases, to industrial decline.

On the eve of the NATO Summit in The Hague, Peter Mertens brought eight theses to explain the essence and the challenges to confront, at peace events in The Hague and Brussels.

Seventy years ago, the seeds of a new world order were planted in Bandung. In the former colonial banquet hall, Sociëteit Concordia, leaders from Asia and Africa gathered to stand united against imperialism and domination. The building—once marked by a sign reading "Dogs and Natives Prohibited"—where Dutch officers, businessmen, and dignitaries had celebrated colonial power, became the stage for the Bandung Conference, a milestone in the struggle for independence and self-determination. What began as a bastion of colonial arrogance became a symbol of liberation.

The return of German militarism, the arms race in Europe and Washington's war rhetoric: all point to escalation. But as always, the power of peace lies below: with those who pay the price. Let's make the workers' movement a central force for disarmament, social justice and a socialist alternative, once more. Peter Mertens, General Secretary of the PVDA-PTB