EU threatened Greek broadcaster days before it went off the air

Revelations about a dispute with the Greek national broadcasting corporation, ERT, over the pro-EU news channel Euronews have cast doubt on the EU Commission’s claim to have been an impartial bystander in the decision to close the station.
The Commission threatened to take “action” against ERT for failing to broadcast pro-EU news days before it was taken off the air. The vice-president of the Commission, Viviane Reding, told a member of the EU Parliament that the Commission planned “action at European Union level” against ERT after it cancelled a contract to broadcast the subsidised Euronews.
The EU Commission, which effectually rules Greece as part of the so-called “Troika,” which also includes the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, claimed last week that it had “not sought the closure of ERT”—even if Greece is under constant pressure to sack government employees. The Commission admits, however, to a dispute with ERT over Euronews, which the ERT manage- ment forced off the air in December 2012.

Greece’s highest administrative court subsequently ruled that the government must reopen ERT immediately until a replacement station is ready to go on air.
In a blow to the conservative prime minister, Antónis Samarás, who sought to replace the state with a reduced operation named NERIT, the Council of State ordered the competent ministers to take all necessary action to return ERT’s world, national and regional television and radio signals to the airwaves and to restore its web sites. Sacked ERT employees continued broadcasting by live-stream hosted by the European Broadcasting Union, which has demanded that the station be reopened.
The latest proposal by Samarás would see all 2,600 ERT employees being rehired on fixed two-month contracts, after which the new slimmed-down station would take over.
Meanwhile the Turkish channel Hayat TV is also to be closed down, because it broadcast the Taksim Square protests. The Radio and Television High Commission says it investigated “the complaints received for our coverage of the Taksim Gezi Park protests” and made a decision to close it. Four other television channels have been fined by the radio and television commission because of their coverage of the recent events.
All of which is unlikely to happen here, as RTE continues to broadcast uncritical Brussels- speak. 

EU Austerity kills!

EU Austerity kills! People’s Movement chair, former MEP Patricia McKenna, says:

‘The Government is understandably hesitant about marking “Europe Day” on 9th May with any great fanfare.
Two of the central assertions of the “Europeanism” that the day is supposed to honour – the EU as a “peace project” and that small states by “pooling” sovereignty increase their influence over larger ones and in the world – stand exposed as ideological cover for political and economic interests that have been the engine of EU integration.
There has always been a neo-imperial dimension to the EU integration project.
The establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 was to facilitate German rearmament at the start of the cold war. In December the EU will discuss further militarisation. German chancellor Merkel and other EU leaders have compunction in presenting plans for a “European army” within wider EU integration.
In addition the EU which purported to unite Europe is now dividing its peoples and nations from one another in an unprecedented way.
The doctrine about “pooling” sovereignty is equally dubious. For EU members, most laws come from Brussels and the reality is that sovereignty “pooled” is in fact sovereignty surrendered.’
People’s Movement patron Robert Ballagh says:
‘As people face into years of misery and impoverishment to make the euro-currency work and keep the EU “project” on the road, EU President José Manuel Barroso has announced that the unelected EU Commission will set out a range of EU Treaty changes by early next year that will be of such a far reaching nature as to seem like “political science fiction” and that these changes “will be reality in a few years time, sooner than we might think”.
The vision of the unelected Eurocrats is that the peoples of the euro-zone countries must completely abandon their national independence and democracy, reversing centuries of democratic and social gains in order to try to save the euro. 

The prospect ahead is one of stagnation as the euro zone prevents peripheral member states like Ireland from dealing with the immense burden of debt which now rests on their governments, private citizens and business firms, imposing instead a continuous assault on living standards and a pro-cyclical austerity regime that is geared to ensuring that creditor banks, investors and governments are compensated to the maximum for their improvident lending during the bubble years.
“Europe Day” is part of an elite rather than a democratic project and should be marked as such.’ 

It’s time to say No!

We can be certain that the overwhelming majority of the population will be worse off as a result of budget 2013. The policy of austerity has been a disaster for people on low and middle incomes. Yet some people have gained during this austerity period. The latest ‘Survey on Income and Living Standards’ reveals that the lowest 10% of our population suffered a fall of nearly 20% in their income while the richest 10% saw their income rise by 8%. Meanwhile, the government predicts that real wages will continue to fall for the next three years.
But that notwithstanding, between now and 2013 the Government has agreed to pay in the ‘greater interest’ of the European banking system and the euro €31 billion plus €17 billion interest on the now defunct Anglo-Irish and Irish Nationwide alone. This is at the insistence of the EU’s European Central Bank. The cost to the state in terms of direct transfers to the banking sector is approximately €64.1 billion. This is equivalent to 40 per cent of GDP making the Irish bank bailout the costliest bank bailout in Europe since the Second World War if measured as a proportion of national GDP.
In addition, the European Stability Mechanism Treaty commits Ireland to ‘irreversibly and unconditionally’ contribute €11 billion in various forms of capital to the ESM Fund, a fund for which there is no guarantee that we could access if it was to prove necessary.
There is no sign that the country faces any other condition but further social and economic devastation in the coming years with a succession of severe government budgets of which budget 2013 is merely the latest.
Budget 2013 is planned to suck about €3.5 billion out of the already shaky economy, putting more jobs at risk and deepening stress, poverty and anxiety for many in our society.
It might be excusable if the money were to be used for productive social measures but €3.1 billion – that’s €3,100 million – is to be blown on the Anglo promissory notes on March 31st next. That is the greater part of the take from the new taxes, charges and cuts introduced in the budget and it will be spent on a bank that no longer exists and that was bailed out under pressure from the EU/ECB to ensure that ‘no bank should fail’.
The then government made a political choice to ‘save the euro’ and ‘prevent contagion’ and the present governing parties, before they came to power, assured us that they would not, unlike the previous administration, support Anglo bondholders . Who could forget Joan Burton, night after night telling of the big bonfire she would build for them or the self- assurance of Enda Kenny as he proclaimed ‘not a penny for Anglo’, a sentiment echoed by even Leo Varadkar!

Well, another austerity budget is upon us, as we head into Ireland’s austerity presidency. No doubt this one, like budget 2012, was written in Brussels and Frankfurt and approved by the Bundestag before the Irish government had sight of it. They were just more careful this year and avoided leaks.
Of course, most of the Anglo bondholders have been paid off by now on the strength of the promissory note (a sort of government IOU). So effectively, on March 31st, we will be paying €3.1 billion to the Irish Central Bank – which we own – and it will then engage in a balance sheet exercise, effectively burning the money and, in a supreme if painful irony, burning the people of Ireland instead of the bondholders.
This must be halted because this burning of the Irish people will be an annual event carried out at the behest of a government we elected to stop it. The government doesn’t have to pay this €3.1 billion – there is no way of legally compelling them to, should they choose not to do so.
It’s time to say No! 

It’s time to say No!

We can be certain that the overwhelming majority of the population will be worse off as a result of budget 2013. The policy of austerity has been a disaster for people on low and middle incomes. Yet some people have gained during this austerity period. The latest ‘Survey on Income and Living Standards’ reveals that the lowest 10% of our population suffered a fall of nearly 20% in their income while the richest 10% saw their income rise by 8%. Meanwhile, the government predicts that real wages will continue to fall for the next three years.
But that notwithstanding, between now and 2013 the Government has agreed to pay in the ‘greater interest’ of the European banking system and the euro €31 billion plus €17 billion interest on the now defunct Anglo-Irish and Irish Nationwide alone. This is at the insistence of the EU’s European Central Bank. The cost to the state in terms of direct transfers to the banking sector is approximately €64.1 billion. This is equivalent to 40 per cent of GDP making the Irish bank bailout the costliest bank bailout in Europe since the Second World War if measured as a proportion of national GDP.
In addition, the European Stability Mechanism Treaty commits Ireland to ‘irreversibly and unconditionally’ contribute €11 billion in various forms of capital to the ESM Fund, a fund for which there is no guarantee that we could access if it was to prove necessary.
There is no sign that the country faces any other condition but further social and economic devastation in the coming years with a succession of severe government budgets of which budget 2013 is merely the latest.
Budget 2013 is planned to suck about €3.5 billion out of the already shaky economy, putting more jobs at risk and deepening stress, poverty and anxiety for many in our society.
It might be excusable if the money were to be used for productive social measures but €3.1 billion – that’s €3,100 million – is to be blown on the Anglo promissory notes on March 31st next. That is the greater part of the take from the new taxes, charges and cuts introduced in the budget and it will be spent on a bank that no longer exists and that was bailed out under pressure from the EU/ECB to ensure that ‘no bank should fail’.
The then government made a political choice to ‘save the euro’ and ‘prevent contagion’ and the present governing parties, before they came to power, assured us that they would not, unlike the previous administration, support Anglo bondholders . Who could forget Joan Burton, night after night telling of the big bonfire she would build for them or the self- assurance of Enda Kenny as he proclaimed ‘not a penny for Anglo’, a sentiment echoed by even Leo Varadkar!

Well, another austerity budget is upon us, as we head into Ireland’s austerity presidency. No doubt this one, like budget 2012, was written in Brussels and Frankfurt and approved by the Bundestag before the Irish government had sight of it. They were just more careful this year and avoided leaks.
Of course, most of the Anglo bondholders have been paid off by now on the strength of the promissory note (a sort of government IOU). So effectively, on March 31st, we will be paying €3.1 billion to the Irish Central Bank – which we own – and it will then engage in a balance sheet exercise, effectively burning the money and, in a supreme if painful irony, burning the people of Ireland instead of the bondholders.
This must be halted because this burning of the Irish people will be an annual event carried out at the behest of a government we elected to stop it. The government doesn’t have to pay this €3.1 billion – there is no way of legally compelling them to, should they choose not to do so.
It’s time to say No! 

Significance of ECJ decision in Thomas Pringle case

Even before today’s adverse judgement of the European Court of Justice concerning the legality of the European Stability Mechanism Treaty under EU law, this country had already paid over €500 million euro in October as a first instalment of Ireland’s legal obligation under the Treaty to ‘irreversibly and unconditionally’ contribute €11 billion in various forms of capital to the ESM Fund. Now further payments will be required.
The judgement does not bode well for the future integrity of EU treaties, the Commission and the institutional framework of the 27-member EU that has been built up over the years and which the ECJ is supposed to exist to uphold. The set-up that the ECJ has apparently endorsed will inevitably move the 17 member states that use the euro down a different legal- political path than the rest of the EU.
In his dissenting judgement in the Supreme Court, Judge Hardiman said that the ESM has introduced a new point of reference for the exercise of Irish government power in addition to the ‘common good of the people of Ireland’ and ‘the aims of the EU’. The new point of reference is the interest of ‘the euro area as a whole or of its Member States’. The other side of that equation is that the interests of members of the euro zone – especially the smaller ones – are completely submerged under the interests of the euro zone.
For example, there is no fixed commitment by the ESM to support Ireland should its assistance be required. The judgement is brutally frank: ‘stability support may be granted to ESM Members which are experiencing or are threatened by severe financing problems only when such support is indispensable to safeguard the financial stability of the euro area as a whole and of its Member States and the grant of that support is subject to strict conditionality appropriate to the financial assistance instrument chosen’ (Para 142).
In addition such assistance, ‘in no way implies that the ESM will assume the debts of the recipient Member State. On the contrary, such assistance amounts to the creation of a new debt, owed to the ESM by that recipient Member State, which remains responsible for its commitments to its creditors in respect of its existing debts’ and any financial assistance granted must be repaid and ‘the amount to be repaid is to include an appropriate margin’ (Para 139).
Although 27 judges heard Deputy Pringle’s application, only one judgement was delivered and we do not know if there were any dissenting judgements. Nevertheless, we owe Deputy Pringle a debt of gratitude for his courageous and public spirited action in undertaking this case. History will show how important it has been in re-asserting principles of democracy accountability and the rule of law.

 

Significance of ECJ decision in Thomas Pringle case

Even before today’s adverse judgement of the European Court of Justice concerning the legality of the European Stability Mechanism Treaty under EU law, this country had already paid over €500 million euro in October as a first instalment of Ireland’s legal obligation under the Treaty to ‘irreversibly and unconditionally’ contribute €11 billion in various forms of capital to the ESM Fund. Now further payments will be required.
The judgement does not bode well for the future integrity of EU treaties, the Commission and the institutional framework of the 27-member EU that has been built up over the years and which the ECJ is supposed to exist to uphold. The set-up that the ECJ has apparently endorsed will inevitably move the 17 member states that use the euro down a different legal- political path than the rest of the EU.
In his dissenting judgement in the Supreme Court, Judge Hardiman said that the ESM has introduced a new point of reference for the exercise of Irish government power in addition to the ‘common good of the people of Ireland’ and ‘the aims of the EU’. The new point of reference is the interest of ‘the euro area as a whole or of its Member States’. The other side of that equation is that the interests of members of the euro zone – especially the smaller ones – are completely submerged under the interests of the euro zone.
For example, there is no fixed commitment by the ESM to support Ireland should its assistance be required. The judgement is brutally frank: ‘stability support may be granted to ESM Members which are experiencing or are threatened by severe financing problems only when such support is indispensable to safeguard the financial stability of the euro area as a whole and of its Member States and the grant of that support is subject to strict conditionality appropriate to the financial assistance instrument chosen’ (Para 142).
In addition such assistance, ‘in no way implies that the ESM will assume the debts of the recipient Member State. On the contrary, such assistance amounts to the creation of a new debt, owed to the ESM by that recipient Member State, which remains responsible for its commitments to its creditors in respect of its existing debts’ and any financial assistance granted must be repaid and ‘the amount to be repaid is to include an appropriate margin’ (Para 139).
Although 27 judges heard Deputy Pringle’s application, only one judgement was delivered and we do not know if there were any dissenting judgements. Nevertheless, we owe Deputy Pringle a debt of gratitude for his courageous and public spirited action in undertaking this case. History will show how important it has been in re-asserting principles of democracy accountability and the rule of law.

 

Ordinary Germans also suffer to pay the bankers!

Anti-German feeling is prevalent in Ireland. One hears it vehemently expressed in the most general terms at public meetings dealing with the economic crisis and even in everyday conversation.
A greater amount of caution needs to be exercised concerning such sentiments. The ordinary German citizen is not responsible for the actions of the German banks and their political representatives in government. Germany’s working people are not benefiting from the policies of Merkel and Co., even though many of them might gullibly believe the propaganda of their masters.
Visit Germany’s capital city, and poverty is plain to see—not just people begging on the streets and in the underground but also well-dressed individuals of both sexes and all ages rummaging through street bins in search of returnable bottles.
Supermarkets pay 8 cents for certain glass bottles, 25 cents for plastic ones. Germans are indeed resourceful. Many of these bottle-hunters travel the city on bikes, carrying a number of large bags for their glass and plastic booty.
There is an element of surprise when one first becomes aware of the poverty. Unemployment in Germany may be at a relatively low 6.6 per cent, but a recent study carried out by the the German Trade Union Congress, the DGB, found that of those in full-time employment 29 per cent of West Germans and 34 per cent of East Germans receive social welfare assistance to supplement their inadequate wages in order to survive. In total, this costs the German taxpayer €6 billion per year. In other words, many German employers are being heavily subsidised by the state.
There is no minimum wage in Germany, and the average wage in the low-wage sector is €6.50 per hour. Another study carried out by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) showed that 22 per cent of the work force is employed in this sector—7.3 million people in total. The report reveals that low wages inevitably means that these workers have to work long hours—an average of 50 hours per week—to earn a basic wage.
The authorities have made eligibility for unemployment benefit or social welfare extremely stringent. The unemployed are put under constant pressure to take on “mini-jobs” and part-time work at extremely low rates of pay or else face the loss of benefits.
As in Ireland, the ruling political class want the ordinary person to pay for the economic crisis. In late June the German parliament, the Bundestag, debated the ESM and Fiscal Pact Treaties in the one session. Only Die Linke (Left Party) opposed both treaties. The Green Party and the Social Democrats supported the governing coalition proposal to pass both.
Sahra Wagenknecht of Die Linke spoke against the treaties. She argued: “You are behaving like puppets. The puppet-masters are the bankers, and the result has been treaties in which citizens are short-changed in order to rescue the fortunes of the richest and keep the financial market casino rolling along . . . This is a project for the smashing of employees’ rights and a project for the reduction of wages and pensions. It is a project by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for the plundering of European taxpayers.”

ECB calls for “further sharing of sovereignty"

EU Observer reports that a member of the board of the European Central Bank, Jörg Asmussen, has said that euro-zone states need to give up more sovereignty in order to fix the construction flaws of the euro, with the bail-out fund possibly turning into a budget authority further down the road. “We have construction mistakes of Economic and Monetary Union, and it is time to correct them. It is clear that the core of the current debate has a name: further sharing of sovereignty,” he said.
Part of the vision—which the ECB is shaping in a report drafted by Herman van Rompuy—is a cap on how much debt countries can issue, intervention in national budgets, and fiscal corrections imposed if a country deviates from the deficit and debt limits imposed in the euro zone. A common budgetary authority could also be formed, Asmussen said, with the forthcoming ESM a “starting-point.”
“The ESM is a fiscal authority by definition, because it deals with taxpayers’ money,” he explained, adding that it would have to be put under the scrutiny of the European Parliament—or a subdivision of it, pooling members from euro-zone countries only. The ESM is yet to be set up, pending a ruling of the Constitutional Court in Germany, due on 12 September, and in Ireland the outcome of Thomas Pringle’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
Under the existing rules the Parliament has no say over the ESM. Asmussen said this needed to change and that the ECB itself should be under more scrutiny from the EU Parliament, as it will acquire new supervisory powers over banks in the euro area. “Deeper euro-area integration can only be sustainable if there is progress on democratic legitimacy.
And it should not be only the ECB continuously emphasising it,” he said, adding that already national parliaments could be involved more, so that they “internalise” what it means to be an economic union.
Asked if he thought all present euro members were “willing and able” to go this path of further concessions of sovereignty, he said it was “worth fighting for,” and that majorities in those countries needed to be convinced that it is the only way to achieve prosperity.
Asmussen, a former official of the German ministry of finance, also defended the sometimes criticised stance of the ECB when giving advice to politicians on how to change the structure of the euro zone. “It is clearly not beyond our mandate. If we can’t answer where we want to be ten years from now, no-one will buy a ten-year bond from us, and that is very much an issue for the ECB,” he said.

“We need more Europe”—Merkel

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the euro zone was moving inevitably towards a “political union,” requiring countries to cede more sovereignty and leading to more of a multi-speed Europe, with non-euro states in the slow lane. “We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy,” according to Merkel.
She emphasised that a political union was also necessary. “And we need most of all a political union—that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control,” she said. “Whoever is in a currency union will have to move closer together. We have to be open to make it possible for everyone to participate. But we cannot stand still because some do not want to go with us,” she said.
Most EU officials see the process of integration taking five to ten years at best, much longer than the view of the markets. According to the president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, the aim is to have detailed proposals in October.
Merkel’s push for greater EU integration also underlined a growing rift with our major trading partner, Britain, which said that it would not take any part in a euro-zone banking union as envisaged by the ECB and the Commission. The chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister), George Osborne, told BBC Radio: “There is no way that Britain is going to be part of any euro-zone banking union.

The Austerity Treaty (and its discontents)

One aspect of the voting pattern in the referendum on the Fiscal Compact Treaty on 31 May last that was strangely remarked upon by, among others, the Financial Times and the Economist was what the Financial Times called the “class divide” that it revealed.

Five constituencies voted No, three of them Dublin working-class constituencies—Dublin North-West, Dublin South-West, and Dublin South-Central—and the two Donegal constituencies. Academic gurus were cited as finding a growing “left-right” divide in Irish politics, caused by austerity.

Four major unions—UNITE, the TEEU, Mandate, and the CPSU—campaigned for a No vote, on the grounds that the Fiscal Compact regime would not create jobs and is in effect anti-worker.

The referendum clearly revealed an understandable measure of alienation among a section of the working class at the price that it is being forced to pay by the present economic crisis.

But that alienation was not a sufficient basis on which to mobilise a No majority in the referendum, much less to build a politics that can get the country out of the crisis.

The Yes campaign was based on the usual combination of patronage and blather but also skilfully used the fear that a No vote would cut the country off from access to economic recovery. A No vote would mean the country being barred from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

The No campaign emphasised austerity but largely failed to bring home the fact that there were significant issues about the European Stability Mechanism.

There was little understanding that constitutionally the ESM Treaty and the amendment to an existing EU treaty authorising the ESM Treatyrequire a further referendum in Ireland, and that politically the EU treaty amendment provides Ireland with a veto that is a powerful bargaining card with which to bargain for relief on the private bank debt.

Compliant media failed to tell the people that in fact the ESM was much more complex than what it was being portrayed as, and that in fact “best boy and girl in the class” behaviour can get us nothing but more and more austerity.

Enda Kenny’s reflections a couple of days after the referendum are very revealing about how he understands his role as head of the government of what its constitution still describes as a “sovereign, democratic, independent State.” He proclaimed that the Yes majority “strengthened Dublin’s hand in its negotiations in Europe over introducing measures to boost growth and in dealing with the tens of billions of euros of bank debt that Ireland had assumed during the crisis.”

He was probably not even aware of how ironic his statement was. In four years the state will be marking the hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Proclamation, which asserts “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies.” The great and the good of the state will be dancing at the crossroads to mark the event.

Having to “negotiate” with others so as to be able to “introduce measures to boost growth” is clearly not the mark of “unfettered control,” nor is having to lay out 40 per cent of the state’s GDP to bail out banks on the instructions of others an assertion of “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.”

But even more bizarre was the admission made a few days before the referendum by the Fianna Fáil leader Mícheál Martin about the blanket bank guarantee by the Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition government on 30 September 2008, which shifted the debt of insolvent private banks onto Irish taxpayers: “We did it for the euro . . . We did it to prevent contagion across the euro zone.”

As a historian, Mr Martin would be aware of another act by Ireland as a small nation in the interests of a great-power enterprise. The price paid was of a different kind, but in both cases the action was not truly a self-determined one but rather that of a dependent.

On 20 September 1914, a little over a month after the outbreak of the First World War, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Party in the British House of Commons, made his call at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow, for Irishmen to fight for the British Empire “wherever the firing-line extends.”

Many answered his call, and nearly fifty thousand were killed.

Alert: Government Attempts to Pass ESM with Minimal Public Debate

Today – Wednesday, & Tomorrow – Thursday

The Government will seek Dail approval of:
The Article 136 TFEU amendment to the EU Treaties which authorises the setting up of the permanent Eurozone loan fund, the European Stability Mechanism
+ A motion to approve the ESM Treaty which is authorized by this amendment
+ A motion to approve future Government spending on the ESM,
TODAY – WEDNESDAY, AND TOMORROW – THURSDAY.
A guillotined debate on the second reading of the latter Bill will take place TOMORROW.

This means that the whole business of signing up the Irish State to the ESM Treaty for the Eurozone and committing us to significant expenditure to help bail out Spain and other Eurozone countries in the coming period, could go through all stages in the Oireachtas BY THE END OF NEXT WEEK – with minimal debate in the Irish media over the long-term implications of these steps or awareness of what this all means amongst the general public.
The ESM Treaty can be downloaded from the internet – http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/582311/05-t…2.pdf
The relation of the ESM Treaty to the Article 136 TFEU amendment to the EU Treaties authorizing it and to the Fiscal Treaty which Irish voters voted on last Friday is set out in the publication “A Tale of Two Treaties” by Cork solicitors Joe Noonan and Mary Linehan.
This can be downloaded from the internet at: http://taleoftwotreaties.tumblr.com
The letter below to the Ambassadors in Ireland of those EU States which have not yet ratified or approved the ESM Treaty or the Article 136 TFEU amendment sets out the reasons for regarding the ESM Treaty as it stands as illegal under EU law and in violation of the Irish Constitution.
A reformatted standalone version of this as explanatory text, is available here - http://nationalplatform.org/2012/06/06/4-reasons-the-esm-treaty-is-illegal-2/ – “4 Reasons why the ESM Treaty is illegal”.
If these measures are pushed through the Oireachtas this week and next in the way the Government proposes, the only way this profound illegality and unconstitutionality can be prevented is by President Higgins referring the relevant Bill to the Supreme Court for adjudication or by Deputy Thomas Pringle’s legal team securing a relevant injunction to stop it pending a Court hearing of the issues.
Yours sincerely
Anthony Coughlan
Director, National Platform EU Research & Information Centre

4 reasons the ESM Treaty is illegal

By Anthony Coughlan
Director, National Platform EU Research & Information Centre
Related Link: http://www.nationalplatform.org
First published online @ http://www.indymedia.ie/article/101936

 

Reasons to believe that the ESM Treaty as it stands is illegal under EU law and therefore unconstitutional in Ireland:

The proposal to ratify the European Stability Mechanism Treaty as it stands and to approve the Article 136 TFEU amendment to the EU Treaties as authorizing the Stability Mechanism envisaged in the ESM Treaty, are unlawful under the EU Treaties and are therefore unconstitutional in Ireland and the other EU Member States.

There are constitutional challenges to the ESM Treaty and the Article 136 TFEU amendment in Germany, in Estonia and in Ireland. In this country independent Dáil Deputy for Donegal Mr. Thomas Pringle has launched a constitutional challenge on these matters which opens in the Irish High Court on 19 June.
Deputy Pringle’s lawyers are seeking a constitutional referendum in Ireland on the ESM Treaty. They are also claiming that the EU Treaties should be amended under a different provision of the Art. 48 TEU treaty revision procedure than that currently used of the ESM Treaty as it stands is to be lawfully ratified under EU law.
Deputy Pringle’s legal action is seeking to defend the principle that the EU is an entity governed by the rule of law in face of a political attempt to change the EU treaties by subterfuge and to open a way to transforming the present EMU into a fiscal-political union for the Eurozone.
While my colleagues and I are not involved in Deputy Pringle’s action, we and many other Irish people share his concerns that the integrity of the existing EU Treaties and the Irish Constitution be upheld in face of the attempt by some Eurozone Governments effectively to take the Eurozone captive for their own ends and to organize the Economic and Monetary Union on quite different principles from heretofore by means of this ESM Treaty. We have respectfully requested several ambassadors therefore, to urge their Governments not to proceed with their country’s ratification of the ESM Treaty or approval of the Article 136 TFEU authorisation, until the Irish Courts have ruled on the issues raised by this constitutional action.
The reasons which lead us to believe that the ESM Treaty as it stands is illegal under EU law and unconstitutional in Ireland are the following:-

1. Article 3 TFEU of the EU Treaties which have been agreed by all 27 EU Member States provides that monetary policy for the countries using the euro is a matter of “exclusive competence” of the EU as a whole.

It is not therefore open to the 17 Member States of the Eurozone to attempt effectively to diminish the competence of the Union and to establish among themselves a Stability Mechanism entailing a €700 billion permanent bailout fund to lend to Eurozone governments as envisaged in the ESM Treaty. This ESM fund, to which Ireland would have to make significant contributions for the indefinite future, would trench profoundly on monetary policy for the euro area.
The Stability Mechanism envisaged in the ESM Treaty is effectively an attempt to find a way round the “no bailouts” provision of Article 125 TFEU, whereby it is forbidden for the EU to take on the debt of Member States or for Member States to take on the debt of other Member States.
It also breaches other EU Treaty articles. The ESM Treaty if ratified as it stands would effectively amount to an attempt to open a legal-political path to what France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy called for last November, namely “A Federation for the Eurozone and a Confederation for the rest of the EU“.
A radical step of this kind, which would transform the Economic and Monetary Union from what it has been up to now, may only lawfully be taken by means of the “ordinary” treaty amendment procedure of Art. 48.2 TEU. It cannot lawfully be done by means of a mere Decision of the European Council of Prime Ministers and Presidents under the “simplified” treaty amendment procedure of Art. 48.6 TEU. The latter procedure is meant to deal with minor technical amendments to the treaties, but is currently being used by the governments of the 17 Eurozone countries in an attempt to alter radically the character of the EMU by ratifying this ESM Treaty as it stands.

2. How can it be lawful for the ESM Treaty to permit a permanent ESM loan fund to be established for the 17 Eurozone countries when the express terms of the Article 136 TFEU amendment, agreed by all 27 EU Governments, authorises a Stability Mechanism only if that is established unanimously by the Eurozone States, as the general provisions of EU law require,

viz:
“The Member States whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole” (emphasis added).

The Art. 136 amendment to the EU Treaties does not say that “Member States”, meaning some of them, may establish a Stability Mechanism, but rather “The Member States” , namely all of them (In French Les Membres rather than Des Membres).
Yet the ESM Treaty which has been concluded among the 17 provides that the Stability Mechanism it envisages may come into being once States contributing 90% of the capital of the proposed fund have ratified the treaty.
The eight largest Eurozone States, a minority of the 17, can therefore establish this Stability Mechanism, while other Eurozone States that may need assistance from it badly are excluded.
How then can this be a Stability Mechanism “for the euro area as a whole“, as article 136 TFEU, which still has to be constitutionally approved by all 27 EU Member States, requires?
Likewise the so-called Fiscal Treaty – the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU – on which Irish voters have just voted and which cross-refers to the ESM Treaty, provides that it can come into force when it is ratified by 12 Eurozone Members.
Does not this treaty also require unanimous ratification by all 17 Eurozone Members before it can be lawfully binding on them under EU law?

3. How can the ESM Treaty be lawfully ratified by July 2012, as is the stated intention of the 17 Eurozone governments concerned, when the Article 136 TFEU amendment to the EU Treaties authorising a Stability Mechanism does not have legal effect, once if has been constitutionally approved by all 27 EU Member States, until 1 January 2013?

Does not this mean that any treaty purporting to establish an ESM before 2013 must be legally void? ESM Treaty No. 1 which was signed by Eurozone Finance Ministers in July 2011 but was never sent round for ratification, conformed to the 2013 time-frame set by the Art. 136 TFEU authorisation, whereas ESM Treaty No. 2 which was signed by EU Ambassadors on 2 February 2012 does not.
This shows again how the exigencies of a political response to the financial crisis by some Eurozone States puts them in breach of EU law and therefore of the Irish Constitution.

4. EU Member States may only sign international treaties that are compatible with EU law. The EU Court of Justice has made clear that intergovernmental agreements cannot affect the allocation of responsibilities defined in the EU Treaties.

The provisions of the ESM Treaty and the Fiscal Treaty which involve the EU Commission and Court of Justice in the implementation of the proposed ESM go well beyond what is permissible under the current EU treaties and are therefore unlawful.





Copies of this article are being released to the Irish and international media for their information regarding the concerns which are widely shared in this country that the proposed ESM Treaty is in violation of EU law and in breach of the Irish Constitution.
 
Anthony Coughlan
Director, National Platform EU Research & Information Centre

Related Link: http://www.nationalplatform.org

First published online @ http://www.indymedia.ie/article/101936