Austerity stripping away Europe’s human rights: Council of Europe

“Austerity” measures imposed by international creditors on member-states are eroding the social and economic rights of people, says the Council of Europe.

Cuts in public expenditure and selective tax increases aimed at curbing public deficits have not achieved their stated aims. Instead the rights to decent work and adequate standards of living have rolled back, contributing to deepening poverty in Europe.

 The report notes that civil and political rights have also been eroded as some governments exclude people from having any say in austerity proposals, provoking large-scale demonstrations.

The latest twist is a revised draft law on public order in Spain that cracks down on civil disobedience. The law, if adopted, would mean that people could be fined up to €30,000 for insulting a government official, burning a flag, or protesting outside the parliament without a permit. Covering faces or wearing hoods at demonstrations would also be an offence. Judges would be able to impose fines of up to €600,000 for picketing at nuclear plants or airports or if demonstrators interfere with elections.

The EU Commission says it is unable to comment on the draft law because it is a national issue.

The Council of Europe in a report in October also condemned the Spanish police for their disproportionate use of force against anti- austerity protests. Undercover police at demonstrations are not held accountable for their actions, it says.

The report says that most national deficits did not result in unsustainable public expenditure from before the crisis but from the public rescue of financial markets. The rescue cost an estimated €41⁄2 trillion between 2008 and 2011. The economic downturn and historical unemployment rates means that the worst- affected member-states lost out on vital tax revenue. Those worst affected include children and young people, the disabled, the elderly with low pensions, and many women. 

Commentary on the EU Permanent Austerity Treaty (Fiscal Compact Treaty & Irish referendum)

After they had agreed the final wording of the intergovernmental agreement—the "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union"—the member-states of the euro area pronounced that the treaty “represents a major step towards closer and irrevocable fiscal and economic integration and stronger governance in the euro area,” which they claimed “will significantly bolster the outlook for fiscal sustainability and euro area sovereign debt and enhance growth.”

According to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the euro-zone member-states have set themselves on an “irreversible course towards a fiscal union.” She told an international gathering at Davos:

“We have to become used to the European Commission becoming more and more like a government.”

The Government seems determined to push ahead in the next few months with the ratification of this treaty and its partner, the revised Treaty on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

The two treaties would make euro-zone member-states into regimes of economic austerity, involving deeper and deeper cuts in public expenditure, increases in indirect taxes, reductions in wages, sustained liberalisation of markets, and privatisation of public property.

The cumulative effect of being bound by both treaties would be an obligation to insert a balanced-budget rule

“through provisions of binding force and permanent character, preferably constitutional or otherwise guaranteed to be fully respected and adhered to throughout the national budgetary processes,” 

put Irish budgets under permanent and detailed euro-zone supervision, make the existing subordination of Ireland’s interests to those of the “stability of the euro area as a whole” even more systematic and pronounced, impose conditions of “strict conditionality” without limit for ESM “solidarity” financial bail-outs, and require Ireland to contribute some €11 billion to the ESM fund when it is established later this year.

In other words, the EU Permanent Austerity Treaty will make a permanent feature of that external interference in our economic governance that was so obnoxious when Fianna Fáil surrendered sovereignty to the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But if it’s bad in the short term—and it is—it’s even worse when it’s made permanent.

The fact that the British and Czech governments are not going to ratify the treaty is clear evidence that an EU member-state can stay outside it and still remain within the European Union. So the Irish Government cannot avoid holding a referendum by claiming that signing it is, in the words of article 29.4.10 of the Constitution, “necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union .”

And from a democratic and sovereignty point of view the treaties represent an abject surrender of governmental powers clearly vested by the Constitution exclusively in the democratically accountable organs of the state. This places a clear obligation on the Government to seek the consent of the people in a referendum before it makes any attempt to ratify these treaties.

Below is an annotated version of the treaty, which the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, hopes to sign at a meeting of the European Council in March and which his Government hope to be able to ratify by the end of the year.

There is a fundamental division between those who advocate that euro-zone member-states should abandon more and more control over their financial and economic affairs and those who see a solution to our crisis in establishing genuine national independence and democracy. Central to the latter position is winning back for this country, and the other countries of Europe, the fundamental state powers that have been surrendered and using them intelligently for the benefit of the majority of the people, rather than for the social and economic elite.

The treaty has been drafted in such a way as to hoodwink the gullible into believing that the institutions of the European Union will not be involved in actions and procedures beyond those that they have already been involved in and that they will act only within the framework of EU treaties. However, the fact is that the EU institutions will be used in new procedures and would exercise new powers created by the treaty.

What is involved is further EU integration through an intergovernmental agreement that confers new powers on the EU institutions outside the EU legal framework and changes the rules concerning the powers of the EU institutions. The main issue during the negotiations on the treaty was whether the contracting parties should be allowed to use the EU institutions to implement, monitor and enforce compliance with the proposed new set-up.

The EU institutions were created by the EU treaties, which conferred upon them powers and duties. The role of the EU institutions is not only dened by the European Treaties fi but is limited by those treaties, and it would be unlawful for an institution to operate beyond the powers granted to it by the treaties.

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TREATY ON STABILITY, COORDINATION AND GOVERNANCE IN THE ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION

Annotated version

THE CONTRACTING PARTIES [. . .]

Irish austerity measures could threaten human rights

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, says that budget cuts planned in Ireland “may be detrimental” to the protection of human rights.

The Government has pushed through nearly €21 billion in spending cuts and tax increases, equivalent to more than 13 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). But, Hammarberg said, “it is crucial to avoid this risk, in particular regarding vulnerable groups of people.”

His comments come in a report following a recent fact-finding visit to Ireland. In the report he calls on the Irish authorities to “refrain from adopting budget cuts and staff reductions which would limit the capacity and effectiveness” of institutions designed to combat discrimination, racism, and xenophobia.

The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, represents both EU and non-EU states and, among other things, champions the rights of minority groups.