Martin Schulz, Hypocrite Extraordinaire!

MARTIN SCHULZ, 
HYPOCRITE 
EXTRAORDINAIRE!


Martin Schulz, German Social Democrat (SPD), and President of the European Parliament, has achieved a dubious prominence during the current Euro crisis by calling for the abolition of democracy in Greece, the removal of the Tsipras government and its replacement by unelected “Technocrats” which is probably as far as anyone can get from the original principles and objectives of German Social Democracy. Yet, Schulz seems to think that this is a useful contribution to the current hot debate in Europe over the damnable austerity policies of the Neo-Liberal Cabal running the EU and is manifestly contrary to the popular mood of the majority of the working population which has seen the demise of long established social democratic parties across Europe.

In October, 2012, Schulz visited Dublin and spoke at the Irish Parliament, Dáil Éireann. His speech was riddled with rhetorical clichés and declarations that most of us might agree with but lacked any concrete proposals that would be effective in realising the grandiose objectives:

“It is my personal conviction that in this Union everybody has to live up to their commitments and be responsible for keeping their own house in order. This is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is solidarity. If one family member gets into troubled waters, the others are called upon to offer a helping hand. Thus, personally, I believe that the Irish programme should be adjusted before the end of the year along the lines of the June European Council conclusions”.

[This never happened and Schulz has never raised it in the Euro Parliament, another broken promise of the Euro elite. It has recently been revealed at the Irish Parliamentary Inquiry into the banking crisis of 2008, by former Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Brian Cowen, that Trichet, then head of the ECB was leaking to the world Press that Ireland had agreed to a bailout when negotiations had not yet started and Trichet had sent a threatening letter to the Irish Government saying “a bomb would go off in Dublin, not in Frankfurt”, if Ireland didn’t immediately agree to a bailout arrangement as proposed by ECB/IMF; the same threats and bullying that has been applied to the Tsipras Government in Greece.When Trichet was in Dublin last month to answer the parliamentarians questions he lied through his teeth and denied everything except he couldn’t deny the letter which is now in the public domain. Mr Cowen also confirmed the revelation of former Secretary General of the Irish Department of Finance, Kevin Cardiff, at the Inquiry last week that the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geitner, had vetoed Ireland’s proposal to burn the bondholders of the failed and criminal Anglo-Irish Bank, a proposal which had initially been agreed with the IMF, but, under pressure from Washington and Geitner the IMF had backtracked and Ireland was left on its own. So much for “solidarity” and Schultz’s claims of Germany helping Ireland which are just another pack of lies from social renegade Schulz].

“The biggest risk for Europe is the lack of mutual trust. How can we regain the confidence of our citizens if the highest European body, the European Council, which consists of Heads of State and Government, is not reliable? We will never regain the trust of our citizens if we do not stick to our promises. After all, Ireland got into trouble because it took over the debt of its banking system, a banking system which allowed some banks to engage in unethical financial transactions based on greed combined with irresponsible lending practices. Irish taxpayers are now paying the bankers' bills to stop a domino effect that could have dragged the whole European banking system down. Therefore, solidarity with Ireland is to give something back. You took the burden on your shoulders to avoid the crash of the systems of other countries, including my country. The economic crisis has come at a tremendous human cost. Hundreds of thousands have become unemployed, poverty is growing, many families had to leave their homes because they could no longer pay their mortgages and emigration numbers are on the rise again. When young people leave, it is a loss for both family and country. Still, despite all the hard work, despite the over-accomplishing of set targets, despite the huge sacrifices made by the people, Ireland has still to get back on its feet completely. To me, this shows that the recipe is not fully working. Yes, sustainable budgets are important, but with cuts alone no economy can recover”. 

 [Great, but where is the “solidarity” now?]

“We want a supervision of banks that works and can, at a later stage, be extended to insurance, pension funds and financial markets and also be extended from the Eurozone to all EU countries.Ordinary hard-working people cannot be asked to shoulder the follow-up costs of this crisis alone. The European Parliament with an overwhelming majority believes that the financial markets have to deliver now and they have to contribute to the follow-up costs of the crisis with a financial transaction tax. In the view of the European Parliament, it is simply a matter of moral decency and social justice.

The third lesson from the crisis is that we need a growth pact to boost the economy and create jobs, in Ireland and in Europe. The European Parliament believes that a more balanced approach is needed - "Yes" to sustainable budgets but also "Yes" to growth initiatives. The European Council is called upon not only to talk the talk, but to walk the walk. It promised a growth initiative. It now has to deliver a growth initiative. That is also a question of credibility. Fiscal stability is necessary, but it needs to be backed up by other measures as well”.

[Again, worthy objectives but, no follow up]

“Today, we are faced with what could potentially become another lost generation. Young people, as witnessed most recently in Spain or Greece, are taking to the streets because they feel abandoned and outraged. Their helplessness and despair in the face of seemingly all-powerful financial markets coupled with alienation from the political institutions is the biggest threat to democracy. Democracy lives when people know that they can take decisions about their lives and that, by getting involved, they can change society for the better.

I wish to say something about a trend that is worrying me deeply. Times such as these, times of crises, are always times of the executive. The pressure of events calls for swift action and leaves parliaments, both national parliaments and the European Parliament, ever more marginalised. Parliaments are increasingly seen as an annoying waste of time. They are not. Parliaments are the guarantors of democracy. The big member states, or those which consider themselves to be big member states, should not, in the European context, be able to give lessons to the smaller countries”.

[Who is giving “lessons” to the smaller countries now?]

The Irish Opposition replied:

Deputy Gerry Adams (Sinn Féin):

Gerry Adams, T.D. President of Sinn Fein

“For the past five years states across the European Union and European institutions have been grappling with fiscal and banking crises. A succession of summits has failed to deliver any concrete solution. The previous Government informed us that the State was coerced into a European bailout by the European Central Bank and other European leaders in 2010. It claimed that EU institutions insisted that the Irish taxpayers should carry the burden for the bad banking debts of private institutions and the banks.

In June this Government returned from the European Council summit claiming it had secured agreement that this bad banking debt would be lifted from the shoulders of Irish citizens. The Taoiseach called it a "seismic shift" and the Tánaiste described it as a "game changer". However, last week's statement by the so-called "Helsinki three", the finance Ministers of Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, that the ESM bailout fund would only deal with future banking liabilities, sharply contradicts these assertions. This situation was made worse by the European Commission President's, José Manuel Barossa's, very clear refusal yesterday to back the Government's interpretation that the June agreement would deal with legacy debts in the banking system.

I welcome remarks of the President of the European Parliament on this issue today, though I note he couched them as his personal opinions. I especially welcome his eloquent comments on the need for solidarity. He said that the bigger member states should not give lessons to the smaller ones and I agree. However, he will know that thus far, as far as the leaders of the bigger European states are concerned, smaller states such as this one can be treated with disdain and left to carry the burden of debts that are not ours.

Unlike the Government, Sinn Féin from the very start of this crisis has been advocating a write-down of private bank debt. Bank debt needs to be separated from sovereign debt. The burden of bad banking debt, the so-called legacy issue, which was foisted on the shoulders of the Irish people, also needs to be removed.The continuation of this type of austerity, coupled with the austerity policies in other EU states, will serve to hamper the prospects of a strong recovery across the Union. Sinn Féin believes that a radical change in direction is required and that the EU has its priorities seriously wrong. We agree with many of President Schulz's comments. However, the EU can find €100 billion for bad Spanish banks but only a pittance to tackle youth unemployment. President Schulz has identified youth unemployment as the most serious problem facing the people of the European Union. We welcome that statement, which is true.

The European Union and member states need to focus on stimulating Europe's economies and to encourage growth through stimulus packages. There is no stimulus in any of what the Irish Government is doing. We need to get people back to work. More important, we need to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens by protecting public services rather than destroying them. Sinn Féin has long argued that the role of the ECB needs to be re-examined and that it needs to fulfil the role of a lender of last resort. In recent months, the focus of attention of the larger states such as Germany, the President of the Commission, Mr. Barroso, and Mr. Schulz, as President of the EU Parliament, have moved increasingly towards a political and fiscal union. Sinn Féin does not believe that fiscal federalism will stabilise the euro. The current policy of austerity and bank bailouts has led to greater instability in the Eurozone. The one-size-fits-all monetary policy was part of the problem. A one-size-fits-all fiscal policy will only make matters worse. Sinn Féin is firmly of the view that what is now required is a different approach based on investment in jobs and economic growth. A social European Union is required, a European Union of equals, one which protects our citizens, rural communities, young people and most especially those who are marginalised and vulnerable”.

Deputy Stephen S. Donnelly (Independent): 

Stephen Donnelly T.D. (Independent)

“All of us, as European citizens, have much of which to be proud. There has been relative peace across the Continent for decades now for the first time in a long time and a growth in Europe's voice on critical issues such as inequality, social justice, climate change and so on. Unfortunately, the current economic crisis, in particular the manner in which European leaders and certain European institutions have responded to it, has fundamentally challenged the solidarity upon which Europe is built, as referred to earlier by President Schulz.

I would like to use this opportunity to add the following point to the conversation on Ireland and Europe. Ireland never received a bailout and is not looking for one. However, we do need our €64 billion returned to ensure our recovery. I often hear expressed in the so-called creditor countries the common view that Ireland mismanaged its internal affairs, made mistakes and is now looking for other people's hard earned money to correct those mistakes. A mixture of economic and moral sentiment is expressed. During a recent conversation I had with a German economist he pointed out to me that the German translation of "debt" is the same as that for "guilt", which I found interesting.

There is no doubt but that mistakes have been made in this country. We have made mistakes and are working to correct them. However, the interpretation that Ireland is looking for aid is incorrect and is damaging to the solidarity of Europe and Ireland's ability, as a modern, developed society and economy, to help Europe get out of the current crisis. The following tells an interesting story. Ireland will borrow €67 billion from the troika. To date, Ireland has poured €64 billion into failed banks, which, in my opinion, should never have been given a penny. This €64 billion is the equivalent of the German people being asked to put one trillion dollars into a failed banking system. When, during a recent interview for a documentary exploring this issue, I put this to a German journalist his response was, "There would be revolution". This is what Ireland has done thus far. It is likely we will do more. The banks have, in return, given this money to bondholders. This numbers in this regard are, again, very interesting. Some €124 billion of senior debt was held by the banks when the State guaranteed it. In Greece, there was a 50% write down for senior bondholders. President Schulz is a business man, having run a bookshop for many years. He knows that when a bankrupt company is taken over the new owner meets with the company's creditors and debts are written down. This is standard practice.

What one gets when one knits the three aforementioned figures together is interesting: €67 billion is being borrowed from the troika, virtually all of which is going into the banks and almost the same amount is being given by the banks to the senior bondholders in terms of forgone losses. This is what has happened: there has been a €67 billion circle of money from the troika through Ireland to the international banks and investors. I have spoken to many people about this and have, as I am sure have President Schulz and other Members of this House, read many opinions on it. I have yet to read an opinion which says that this was morally or economically correct. Yet, it continues to happen. On Monday, we paid another €1 billion to senior bondholders of a bank which would have gone bankrupt.

The Government is paying it but it does not want to do so. The reason it is paying it is because it is afraid of what the European Central Bank and the European Commission would do to Ireland in retaliation for not covering the losses of professional investors. I have heard Mr. Schulz agree this is not sensible. The counterargument goes that the €64 billion came in and saved the Irish banking system. As Mr. Schulz knows, half of this money went to a bank which no longer exists and which is under criminal investigation for what it was doing. The other half of the money went to banks which still exist but which are increasing charges and mortgage rates and are, in essence, sucking the rest of the money out of the Irish economy. The money from the troika achieved only one benefit, which was to avoid contagion to the European banking system.

Mr. Schulz recently stated the Irish people need to have some cause for hope for the future. This hope is not in a deal on the €64 billion or in its restructuring, it is in a return of the €64 billion. If this happens we can, as a modern, sophisticated high-tech export-oriented economy, contribute to the recovery of Europe. I thank Mr. Schulz for his support and I hope he will be able to bring this simple message back: Ireland did not get a bailout and Ireland is not looking for aid or benevolence. We need our money back in order that we can contribute to the recovery of Europe”.

But, it was Joe Higgins, Leader of the Socialist Party, who put Schulz in his place:

Joe Higgins, T.D. (Socialist Party)

Deputy Joe Higgins (Socialist Party):There will be much pomp, ceremony and chatter to accompany the Irish Government assuming the Presidency of the European Union in 2013. However, there will be no change in the disastrous and destructive austerity policy being ruthlessly imposed on the Irish and European working class, middle and low income workers, the unemployed, pensioners, the poor and the young. As President of the European Parliament, Herr Schulz is effectively in a power-sharing arrangement between social democrat and Christian democrat political parties. Throughout Europe it is these parties, just like the Irish Government of Fine Gael and the Labour Party, which carry out the economic diktats of the financial markets which dictate policies that have left 25 million EU citizens unemployed and threaten to turn the weaker capitalist economies, the so-called peripheral states, back to Third World conditions.
 
We have the tragic irony that as the EU establishment boasts of being the most generous donor to the poorest countries on earth, features of this poverty, such as homelessness and even malnutrition, are reappearing in Greece, which is a member state of the European Union, as a result of austerity. These policies are being driven by the markets which dictate that the profits of speculators, bondholders and bankers take precedence over hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens. Today we have heard fine words about democracy, but we live in an economic dictatorship of the financial markets. The troika and the political parties of Social Democracy and Christian Democracy are agents of these financiers and speculators dictating that the people of Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and others should have transferred onto their shoulders the debts of the global bankers and have their economic lifeblood drained to rescue the diseased system that is casino capitalism.
 
Have the political parties in Europe noted reports in the world financial press that while 25 million languish in unemployment, European big business corporations sit on €2 trillion of retained profits which they refuse to invest to create productive employment, not being confident of sufficient profit? Have they noted a report in The Guardian on research by the Tax Justice Network which shows that €16 trillion belonging to the global elite sits in offshore accounts, channelled there by the ten biggest international banks, including the vampire squid Goldman Sachs, for the benefit of this elite only? It is beyond time that a full frontal assault was made on this nauseating inequality and that we have not a puny transaction tax but a massive supertax on this wealth in order that it is channelled into job creation, major public infrastructure programmes which would create millions of jobs, research, the transformation of services such as health and education, and ending the draconian brutality and injustice of austerity.
 
The injustice that saddles the Irish people with the bad gambling debts of Irish bankers and developers and bankers in France, Britain and Germany is taking billions from the pockets of ordinary people here and, in the process, is wrecking the domestic economy with catastrophic results for jobs and services. Since the EU political establishment is the agent of the markets and austerity, ordinary people can only rely on their own power, and this is what our great historic Irish socialists, James Connolly and Jim Larkin, would say, as would the great German socialists, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The year 2013 will mark not only the Presidency by Ireland of the European Union but also the 100th anniversary of the great lockout when the Dublin working-class rose up in an historic and Herculean struggle against the employers, who were the elite of those days, to demand justice and a decent life.
 
When the political establishment which represents European capitalism descends on Ireland next year, as they will many times, they should be met with widespread mobilisation by the economic victims of the austerity they impose. Working class people will demand that the bailout of the bankers and speculators and crippling austerity are halted, and we will join with the millions of workers in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Germany where it is not commonly known that millions of workers languish in very low waged situations, to demand a different Europe not of the markets but of the people, a new genuinely democratic socialist Europe where we can end the obscenities of mass youth unemployment to which Mr. Schulz alluded and create a new and decent life for all European citizens”.

As can be seen above, Schulz has been trading for years on a purely rhetorical “progressive” social and economic policy but has produced little or no actual progress in the living or social standards of the people he claims to represent. In the current crisis he has contributed nothing of any impact rather, exposed his hypocritical stance in the starkest terms by proposing the abolition of democracy in Greece.

The Eurozone now faces its most serious crisis ever and the political leaders are bankrupt of solutions as never before. A  normal currency zone like the US Dollar or British Sterling has a system of fund transfers (unemployment insurance, child support payments, Social Security, subsidies, nationally-funded contracts and investment projects) that compensate for differential rates of productivity change in a currency zone.
 
But unlike these, the Eurozone is not a transfer union that provides that kind of automatic economic stabilisers across the entire currency zone. There is not, for instance, a Eurozone-wide system of unemployment insurance that automatically produces a transfer of funds from more prosperous areas to those that are being hit by economic hard times. In the absence of separate national currencies and without a transfer union, the only immediate way for a country in the Eurozone to adjust its competitiveness to match that of more competitive countries is through internal devaluation. Which comes down in practice right now to pushing down wages and salaries, increasing the proportion of part-time and temporary workers, making it easier to lay workers off, reducing employers' costs for benefits. In other words, the project of improving national competitiveness in the Eurozone right now is about reducing real income for most workers. This is a program that has been playing out for years, especially in the Eurozone periphery countries of Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
 
Competitiveness does involve labour costs but, it's not just a matter of such costs but also of productivity. Part of the inhuman Neo-Liberal ideology that currently has a death lock on the Conservative, Social-Democratic and Liberal parties in the Eurozone, is focusing all but exclusively on reducing real income. And of course this is naturally detrimental to labour productivity as who is going to work harder and innovatively for less income?

The Germans have managed to keep the Eurozone together through five years of destructive austerity policies, and even persuaded their Eurozone partners to sign on to the Fiscal Suicide Compact that limits individual countries' debts and deficits in a way that effectively requires a pro-cyclical economic policy during recessions and depressions, exactly the opposite of what is needed. (The Fiscal Suicide Compact is officially known as the “Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union” (2012).
 
Another consequence that has become widespread is a crisis for the social-democratic parties, which have been the main center-left parties in Europe for decades. The Greek Social Democratic Party PASOK damaged itself so badly by supporting the German austerity program that it formally went out of existence, refounding itself as the Ελιά–Δημοκρατική Παράταξη (Olive Tree–Democratic Alignment), or Ελιά/Elia for short. They considered themselves lucky in the Euro Parliament elections to lose only one-third of the votes that collapsing PASOK received in the previous national elections. The ruling Socialist Party in France saw the far-right National Front party take first place, and the Socialists came in third after the conservative UMP. In Spain last month, anti-austerity Mayors replaced the conservatives in the Capital, Madrid and the major city of Barcelona and many other municipalities after the local elections there. Conservative Spanish Prime Minister, Rajoy, is shitting in his pants after the Greek referendum as his rotten government is likely to be ousted in the next general election by Podemos, the anti-austerity alliance and the Spanish equivalent of Syriza. In Ireland, the EU bootlicking government of Fine Gael/Labour coalition is likely to be replaced by a Sinn Fein/Left anti-austerity alliance supported by the Trade Unions.

While Schulz and the Eurocrats, the Neo-Liberal pigdogs, argue about rules and regulations, the Greek people suffer the worst impoverishment and hardship seen in Europe since the 1930’s. The brutality of these impositions is akin to what Greece suffered under the Nazi occupation in WW2 and shames the name of Europe as a civilised part of the World. It is time that these reprobates all resigned and were deprived of their overpaid extortions of the taxpayers money. 

Down with the Brussels Dictatorship! Down with the Neo-Liberal Cabal!