How hard it is to collect 1 million signatures in member countries of EU? Here comes one example how EU Commission’s decision could be changed.

But beware - opposition to GM food may slowly make you accept phrases like “Europeans” or “EU citizens” and also accept the undemocratic logic of the Lisbon Treaty.

GM FOOD: FACTS NOT CROPS

The European Commission has just approved growing genetically modified crops for the first time in 12 years, putting the GM lobby’s profits over public concerns — 60% of Europeans (read: Citizens of EU member states) feel we need more information before growing foods that could threaten our health and environment.

A new initiative allows 1 million EU citizens (read: Citizens of EU member states) a unique chance to make official requests of the European Commission. Let’s build a million voices for a ban on GM foods until the research is done. Sign the petition and spread the word.

From (Labour Movement) CAEF - Campaign against Euro-federalism (in Britain)

To our trade union colleagues in Greece. We express solidarity with the actions taken by trade unions in Greece against the draconian criteria of the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact, and the dictats of the European Central Bank.

It is clear that cuts in Public Expenditure are part of an EU wide onslaught by big capital, the European Round Table of Industrialists, European Commission and Germany in particular.

These interests want the working class to “tighten their belts” and pay for and resolve the ills of the fiscal and economic crisis. At the same time it is an attempt to hand everything to the private sector and remove democratic accountability without any regard for the social consequences.

It is clear that for Greece and other EU Member States, including Britain, in a similar situation that the only rational course is to fully recover the right to self-determination and national independence and democracy.

We wish you every strength in your actions in this crucial period.

John Boyd
Secretary

CAEF is a member of TEAM

The euro is under attack like never before, as the promises on which it was based turn out to be lies. Hedge funds are speculating against Greek debt, while euro-zone politicians work behind the scenes to cobble together rescue packages. But fundamental flaws in the monetary union need to be fixed if Europe’s common currency is to survive…

…The notion that the European common currency is based on nothing but a series of lies is now taking its toll. All of the founders of the euro knew that the new currency could only be stable if all member states committed themselves to sound financial policy and, in the long run, spent only as much as they collected in tax revenue. But many ignored this principle right from the start.

This and more in one great article from Der Spiegel Online International.

Despite some politicians’ hopes that renegotiation of the Icesave deal would get in the way, it now seem highly likely the referendum will go ahead as planned with polls consistently suggesting the December law will be rejected by voters.

An information booklet on the referendum will be delivered to every house in Iceland and information can also be found on http://www.thjodaratkvaedi.is/ (brochure Yes or No available even in English => download .pdf here).

thanks to IceNews

Referendum date is set on Saturday, 6th of March 2010. Ides of March (15th) slightly rescheduled…

Brussels, Belgium — In one of its first decisions since taking office, the European Commission has today authorised the cultivation of a genetically modified (GM) crop for the first time since 1998. Health Commissioner Dalli, in agreement with President Barroso, used the so-called written procedure to authorise this crop so as to avoid a debate in the College of Commissioners. The genetically engineered potato (known as Amflora) developed by German agro-chemical company BASF contains a gene that confers resistance to certain antibiotics. Greenpeace warns that this GM crop poses an unacceptable risk to human and animal health, as well as to the environment.

thanks to Greenpeace European Unit

The negotiations for the ACTA treaty (The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) are conducted behind closed doors and are not part of any international organisation.

Negotiating countries (EU acts as one single block) have different positions on ACTA transparency.

A new European Union document [PDF] prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the US, and the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty.

thanks to Slashdot blog and the internet

additional reading:

• BitTorrent tracker sites threatened by draft ACTA agreement
• PublicKnowledge blog

New poll in Iceland on the attitude of the Icelandic people towards EU membership produced by Capacent for the Farmers Association of Iceland. The results are as follows:

33.2 percent in favour of EU membership (thereof 9.4 percent totally in favour, 7.2 percent very much in favour and 16.6 percent rather in favour).

56 percent opposed to EU membership (thereof 28.4 percent totally opposed, 11.3 percent very much opposed and 16.3 percent rather opposed).

26.8 percent trust the Icelandic government to defend the interests of the Icelandic people in Iceland’s accession process to the EU. 58 percent do not trust the Icelandic government to defend the interests of the Icelandic people in Iceland’s accession process to the EU.

A total of 1.173 people were polled with 68.7 percent participating.

This is in line with previous polls.

Thanks to Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson from (“EU news from Iceland”)[http://eunews.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-poll-on-eu-membership-in-iceland.html].

Full kollaps for ja-sida. Bare 33 prosent ønsker norsk medlemskap i EU

We can guess that with barely 33% people in favor of EU membership Norway is safe out of EU.

The Making of a Euromess

By PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times, February 14, 2010

The real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites — specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment.
None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s important to understand the nature of Europe’s fatal flaw. Yes, some governments were irresponsible; but the fundamental problem was hubris, the arrogant belief that Europe could make a single currency work despite strong reasons to believe that it wasn’t ready.

Germany’s Choice

By Marko Papic and Peter Zeihan, STRATFOR, February 8, 2010

And so the rest of the eurozone is watching and waiting nervously while casting occasional glances in the direction of Berlin in hopes the eurozone’s leader and economy-in-chief will do something to make it all go away. To truly understand the depth of the crisis the Europeans face, one must first understand Germany, the only country that can solve it.

The eurozone’s next decade will be tough

By Martin Wolf, Financial Times

What would have happened during the financial crisis if the euro had not existed? The short answer is that there would have been currency crises among its members. The currencies of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain would surely have fallen sharply against the old D-Mark. That is the outcome the creators of the eurozone wished to avoid. They have been successful. But, if the exchange rate cannot adjust, something else must instead. That “something else” is the economies of peripheral eurozone member countries. They are locked into competitive disinflation against Germany, the world’s foremost exporter of very high-quality manufactures. I wish them luck.

Are we about to see the end of the much-vaunted eurozone?

By Peter Oborne, The Observer, 3 January 2010

Before their decision to abandon economic sovereignty and sign up to the euro, policymakers had a tried and tested response to the kind of global setback of the last two years – depreciate the currency and loosen fiscal and monetary policy. This has been the answer produced by Britain, mercifully outside the euro thanks mainly to John Major’s brave, far-sighted and universally denounced decision to opt out of monetary union when he signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. But inside the euro, individual countries are stripped of the ability to manage their own economies. That is why the global recession has been far, far more devastating for some eurozone members than would otherwise have been the case – in just the same way that membership of the ERM inflicted wholly unnecessary damage on the British economy in the early 1990s.

Should we divorce the euro?

By David McWilliams, Sunday Business Post, January 10, 2010

Joining a currency union is the economic equivalent of a marriage. If a country decides to give up its currency and get into bed with another currency, it would seem ludicrous to entertain this move without being sure that the union was suitable. As we all know, there is a difference between fancying someone and making the thing last. To avoid single currency arrangements going sour, there is also a ‘matchmaker’ in economic theory. The economic matchmaker goes by the typically incomprehensible name of the ‘optimal currency area theory’. This theory is a checklist of economic attributes which need to line up in order for a monetary union to work. For a currency union to work for a country, the most important thing is that the country trades overwhelmingly with the other members of the monetary union. Like those Catholic fundamentalists who suggested that divorce would threaten the fabric of our society, the euro fundamentalists who run policy in Ireland suggest that, to leave the euro, would undermine the fabric of our economy. Like all fundamentalists, the thing they hate most is a sceptic. Lets hear it for the sceptics.

Still some never learn:

Former Mexican foreign minister calls for ‘North American union’, unified currency

Bloggers4UKIP report: EU flexes Lisbon muscle in Greece

Nigel Farage exposes new government of Europe

An Iron Fist has come down on Europe - Nigel Farage

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has called for the EU to proceed with plans for a European army under the Lisbon Treaty, which he dubbed “the beginning and not the end” of a common security and defence policy.

His remarks at the annual Munich Security Conference followed a call by Berlin’s defense minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg to end what he called Nato’s “absurd” practice of unanimous decision-making.

“The (Lisbon) treaty lays out a common security and defence policy. The federal government wants to make progress on this front,” said Mr Westerwelle. “The long-term goal is to build up a European army under parliamentary control. The EU has to live up to political expectations of its role as a global player.” The foreign minister sketched out a role for such an army as crisis management in a time of resource scarcity, to be developed by willing member states over time as a “motor for closer co-operation” in the EU. In a nod to Nato, Mr Westerwelle said such EU structures would not replace other military structures.

more in Irish Times

The WSJ reports that the European Commission has said it will accept Greece’s plan to reduce its government budget deficit, but warned that further spending cuts and new taxes might be needed to fix the country’s public finances. According to FT Deutschland, the European Commission has put Greece under de-facto EU supervision.

Trade unions in Denmark have reacted strongly to suggestions that the Commission could demand pay-cuts in Greece, Danish paper Politiken reports. The FOA, a Danish trade union which represents most of the country’s public sector workers, has warned that the Commission’s demands could force the union to recommend a No vote in a future Danish referendum on euro membership. “That the EU intervenes in setting [national] wages is completely unacceptable”, Dennis Kristensen, head of the FOA, is quoted saying. The FOA has previously stayed neutral in referenda questions.

The Telegraph quotes EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia saying the Greek targets will be enforced vigorously: “Every time we see or perceive slippages, we will ask for additional measures to correct these slippages. Never before have we established so detailed and tough a system of surveillance”.

The Guardian looks at the possibility of a Greek bail-out and quotes a senior official in Brussels saying, “For political reasons there can be no bailout, but the eurogroup can act with the Greeks to reform. We have a monetary union, a system for supporting the currency, interdependence.”

Die Welt reports on a study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, which favours IMF intervention as a solution for Greece, with a researcher quoted saying that “one could question whether EMU institutions have the necessary powers to persist and sanction budgetary discipline”, adding “it’s better that the IMF imposes disciplines on the indebted countries than that Eurozone countries fight amongst each other and political tensions emerge.”

Meanwhile, the FT reports that eurozone governments have borrowed a record €110bn from the markets so far this year, forcing up borrowing costs for those countries with the weakest public finances.

via Open Europe

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was set up in 1960. Britain had previously been a member of the EFTA, but it left to join the European Community (the EC, which later became the EU) in 1973.

After 37 years of EC/EU membership people of UK are starting to question the road they have been forced to take by their political elite.

Informative site on EFTA (UK-EFTA) and an important survey show how the tides of time change people’s perspectives and expectations.

Out of EU - join EFTA!

Bundesbank President says EU assistance for Greece would be politically impossible

The Telegraph reports that Axel Weber, President of the German Bundesbank and a member of the ECB Executive Board, has said that any EU aid for Greece in response to its economic problems would be counterproductive. He told the German Boersen Zeitung financial paper, “Politically, it would not be possible to tell voters that one country is being helped out so that it can avoid the painful savings that other countries have made”. He added that such a bail-out “is not provided for and, as a general rule, I think such aid, whether it is conditional, or - even worse - unconditional, is counterproductive”.

EUobserver reports that ECB Chief Economist Juergen Stark said yesterday that the state of EU governments’ public finances could lead to further credit rating downgrades and market turmoil. The Commission is expected to give its assessment of deficit cutting measures in four EU member states - Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta - today. The FT reports that Portugal’s government last night unveiled its budget proposals for 2010 aimed at bringing the country’s budget deficit under control, which stands at 9.3% GDP in 2009.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Les Echos, ECB President Jean-Claude Juncker said “I have been arguing for stronger economic policy coordination within the Eurozone for many years, but I never managed to gain support from all Eurozone countries”. He added, “If we want to turn the Eurozone into an influential monetary, economic and political entity, then we must stop giving the impression that we focus only on budgetary consolidation. The time has come for us to set up an integrated strategy to get out of the crisis”.

thanks to Open Europe

Plus WHY EUROPEAN UNION IS NOT AN OPTIMAL CURRENCY AREA: THE LIMITS OF INTEGRATION

The Wall Street Journal stated on 21 January that the financial markets are unconvinced by the Greek government’s assurances that it isn’t seeking outside help from either the EU or the IMF with its public debt. Analysts said the government is moving too slowly to address Greece’s fiscal problems and investors are showing their disbelief by selling down Greek stocks and bonds. A Commission spokeswoman denied yesterday’s reports that the EU was preparing a loan for Greece, saying she wasn’t aware of any financial bail-out packages being arranged.

Die Welt features an interview with the Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank Thomas Mayer. When asked if he is worried about the euro, he answers “The situation is more serious than it has ever been since the introduction of the euro. The trouble in Greece plays a key role for future development.” When asked what the worst case scenario could be, he answers: “If the Greece situation is handled badly, the Euro-zone could break down, or suffer major inflation”.
He added that “Neither the European Central Bank nor the Commission nor any other EU body can force Greece to implement necessary reforms in exchange for help.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal notes that the euro has lost value and that “persistent fears about Greece’s fiscal situation have turned trade in the euro into a vote on the currency bloc’s credibility.” A new publication by Econ Journal Watch, entitled “It can’t happen, It’s a bad idea, it won’t last: U.S. Economists on the European monetary union and the euro, 1989-2002” looks at the experiences with the euro and its prospects.

source: Open Europe

The party council of the Icelandic political party The Left Green Movement (Vinstrihreyfingin - grænt framboð) today confirmed the party’s opposition to Iceland joining the European Union. The Left Greens have since the foundation of the party been opposed to joining the EU but decided not to oppose an application being sent to Brussels after the general election in the spring of 2009 in order to form a government with the pro-EU Social Democratic Alliance. Since opposition to the joining the EU has grown rapidly among Icelanders with about two thirds against the move according to the latest polls. The EU application, which was only narrowly approved in the Icelandic parliament in July 2009, has also been very unpopular within the LGM. The party council is the highest authority of the LGM between national congresses.

The party council’s statement reads:

“The party council confirms the opposition of the Left Green Movement to possible membership of Iceland of the European Union. Despite an application for membership has been delivered it is the utmost will of the party council that Iceland shall remain an independent state outside the EU. The party council of the Left Green Movement urges ministers, MPs and members of the Left Greens across the country to honour the party’s policy to oppose membership of the EU and to fight hard for the independence.”

This is seen as yet another token of the split between the government parties on the EU issue.

Statement from the executive board of The People’s Movement against the EU in Denmark

The People’s Movement against the EU finds it reprehensible that the Danish Government wants to put pressure on the Icelandic population by threatening to withdraw Danish loan offers, if Icelanders say “no” to pay 27 billion kroner (4 billion euro) to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

It is unfair that Iceland’s population should pay an amount to cover the reckless borrowing that people in these countries have recorded in Icelandic banks. Denmark must therefore act to ensure that the British and the Dutch government cover the losses themselves. This applies all the more so as the British government during his time even recommended municipalities to incorporate Icelandic loans.

As the British newspaper Financial Times writes in an editorial on 7th January, the amount is of a negligible size for the two large countries, whereas it would be a disaster for Icelanders to pay it.

From the website int.folkebevaegelsen.dk

Iceland’s president rejected a bill to repay Britain and the Netherlands more than $5 billion their savers lost when Icelandic banks collapsed, forcing a referendum on the issue. The move threatens vital economic aid and the country’s EU accession bid.

President Olafur Grimsson’s refusal to sign the unpopular Icesave bill into law on 5 January threw the country into a political crisis and put its hopes of joining the European Union in jeopardy.

The government said a referendum would be held as soon as possible. The outcome is highly uncertain with opinion polls showing almost 70% of voters oppose the bill.

more in the EurActiv article

And not to forget - People of Iceland don’t want Iceland to become another member of EU.

Latvian Constitutional Court changes the world

press declaration by Sarah-Luzia Hassel-Reusing, 27.12.2009

On the 22.12.2009, few days before Christmas, the Latvian Constitutional Court has ruled that the cuts in the pensions - because of loan conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and of the European Union (EU) for a credit of 7.5 billions of euro - are incompatible with the Latvian constitution (Satversme) (file number 2009-43-01).( 1) All pensions have been reduced by 10% for still-working pensioners even by 70%. (2) According to the basic principles of the judgment, a part of the new pension law is void from its beginning, and other parts have to be replaced by a constitutionally compatible version until the 01.03.2010. Art. 1 (sovereignty, democracy), 91 (equality), and 109 (social safety with regard to old age, to inability to work, to unemployment, and to other cases regulated by the law), have been violated. The Latvian legislator could reduce social public spending in times of shorter financial resources, but only as far as the basic rights allow this. Already in an earlier judgment the Latvian Constitutional Court has had decided that cuts within the social security system are permissible for the purpose of the long-term securing of the social system. The court, however, regards the actual cuts as disproportionate. Possibly milder possibilities to reduce the costs have not been examined careful enough and special provisions to make sure that no-one sinks because of the cuts below the minimum of social security (which is) prescribed by the constitution.

In addition to that, the Latvian Constitutional Court held, that the basic rights of the Latvian constitution must not be limited by international agreements. While art. 91 and 109 contain basic rights, art. 1 of the Latvian constitution contains structure principles. So the court has stated for Latvia a preeminence of the Latvian basic rights and of the Latvian structure principles before any international law. It has, in addition to that, ruled that the Latvian government may conclude international treaties only with the authorization of the parliament (see art. 68 of the Latvian constitution) – inclusively loan agreements with international organisations like the EU or the IMF.

One may wonder, if there will be constitutional complaints also with regard to the closure of hospitals and the lay-offs in the health sector (3), which have had been enforced by the IMF holding back credit rates, because art. 111 of the Latvian constitution guarantees every inhabitant of Latvia the protection of health and the basic medical supply.

The 22.12.2009 judgment has also effects on European and world policy. Already the German Constitutional Court had held in the first Lisbon judgment (4) at the 30.06.2009 in basic principle no. 4, that the constitutional identity of the Basic Law (German constitution) is higher-ranking than the EU law. The constitutional identity (art. 79 par. 3 Basic Law) contains at Germany the basic rights and the structure principles of the Basic Law (no. 217 and 218 of the first Lisbon judgment). In addition to that, according to the German Constitutional Court judgment of the 30.06.2009, the „tasks of the state“ peace and European integration stand above the EU law.

The Latvian judgment is a milestone for the protection of especially the basic rights, democracy and the rule of the law as well as for the return to normality in the international law. The IMF can autonomously formulate its loan conditions, but it has to accept, that these conditions are complied with only as far as they are compatible with the constitution of the respective country, especially with the basic rights and structure principles. In contrast to the EU law, the IMF law stands, because of the sovereignty (art. 2 par. 1 UN Charter) of the states clearly below all national constitutions and also below the UN Charter (art. 103 UN Charter). All states of the world can now refer to the Latvian Constitutional Court decision – exactly as far as the IMF conditions are incompatible with their constitutions or with international law, which is higher-ranking than the IMF law.

Also the decision, that credit agreements with the IMF depend on the authorization by the parliament as well as other international treaties, is a milestone. Hitherto, in many states of the earth, laws have been changed because of IMF conditions without informing the public and the parliament with regard to the IMF background. This non-transparency should be over now in many states.

In the following a few examples of the violation of basic rights and of structure principles of national constitutions and of universal UN human rights by IMF conditions:

• starvation because of cuts in food subventions at Bolivia (1985), Zambia (1986), Venezuela (1989), and Jordan (1989) (5)
• privatization of the water supply at South Africa because of IMF conditions even though the basic right to water (art. 27 par. 1 lit. b of the South African constitution) (6) (7)
• denial of food aid from the public millet stocks of Niger during the starvation catastrophe in 2003, because the IMF has been afraid of distortions of the competition (8)
• IMF demanded in 2009 the privatization of the Turkish financial authority (9)

Also at Germany, there are violations of basic rights, structure principles and human rights of the UN social pact because of IMF conditions. (10)

The IMF has, e. g., sent recommendations respectively demands towards Germany at the 11.09.2006. In no. 5 of these recommendations, the IMF has demanded to reduce the job seeker’s allowance II („Hartz IV“) for long-term jobless people by 30%, if they do not try hard enough to find a job. This has been exceeded by Germany with the aggravation of the job seeker’s allowance II at 2007. Now, according to §31 par. 5 of the second social law book (SGB 2), in cases of insufficient proofs of job applications, the job seeker’s allowance II has to be reduced by 30 % steps – in cases of several times lacking proofs down to 0,- euros. The IMF has „only“ demanded one such 30% step. Whenever such a reduction takes place, the law puts, for Germany, the granting of benefits in kind for the very survival into the deliberation of the state. So the IMF has brought the hunger to Germany, to the illiterates, to the dyslexics, to the inhabitants with little knowledge of the German language, and to all other persons, who are able to work, but who have difficulty in proving their job applications. In no. 14, the IMF has demanded, at the 11.09.2006, cuts in pensions, and in no. 15 cuts in the health system, in order to prevent the health fund from becoming too expensive.

The IMF will, if enough states, ngos, and parties will take this historical chance, very soon have to accept first the preeminence of the national basic rights and structure principles and then also of the universal human rights.

One of the next steps for the limitation of the IMF power should be to strip it of its states as a UN special organization. For this status has the effect, that IMF can, legally, draft its conditions without regarding the UN Civil Pact and the UN Social Pact (art. 24 UN Social Pact, art. 46 UN Civil Pact). Here is action by the UN General Assembly needed, because the canceling of the treaty, which makes the IMF being a UN special organization, would close this gap. This is crucial, in order to protect also those human beings, whose national constitutions contain less social human rights than the Social Pact of the United Nations. In addition to that, the immunity of the IMF employees (see IMF statutes) should be removed at least, whenever they disregard the preeminence of the national constitutions. The chances to civilize the often brutal IMF conditions, are good as never before, because the US people will, in view of, simultaneously, the record indebtedness and the fall of the dollar exchange rate, soon urge for the ratification of the UN Social Pact, because the US constitution does not contain enough social human rights, in order to protect the social security of the American people against the conditions of the creditors of the USA.

V.i.S.d.P.:
Sarah Luzia Hassel-Reusing
Thorner Str. 7
42283 Wuppertal (Deutschland / Germany)
human rights and civic rights activist

sources:
1 press statement of the Latvian Constitutional Court on the judgment in English language

2 newspaper taz, article of the 23.12.2009 „Lettland kippt von EU und IWF erzwungene Rentenkürzung“

3 taz article „In Lettland gehen die Lichter aus“ of the 14.08.2009

4 Lisbon judgment of the German Constitutional Court of the 30.06.2009

5 „Zum Beispiel IWF & Weltbank“, Uwe Hoering, Süd-Nord Lamuv-Verlag, S. 28+29

6 „Der Vierte Weltkrieg“ (Film von www.bignoisefilms.com, at Europe distributed by www.cinerebelde.de)

7 basic rights chapter („Bill of Rights“) of the South African constitution

8 Germanwatch interview with the then UN Special Rapporteur for the human right to food, Prof. Dr. Jean Ziegler „Ein Kind, das heute verhungert, wird ermordet“.

9 taz article of the 07.10.2009 „Weg vom IWF-Diktat“ on IMF demands to Turkey

10 IMF demands to Germany of the 11.09.2006

Euroland’s revolt has begun. Greece has become the first country on the distressed fringes of Europe’s monetary union to defy Brussels and reject the Dark Age leech-cure of wage deflation.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
(Telegraph, London, Monday 14 December 2009)

While premier George Papandreou offered pro forma assurances at Friday’s EU summit that Greece would not default on its £298bn (£268bn) debt, his words to reporters afterwards had a different flavour.

“Salaried workers will not pay for this situation: we will not proceed with wage freezes or cuts. We did not come to power to tear down the social state,” he said.

Were we to believe that a country in the grip of anarchist riots and prey to hard-Left unions would risk its democracy to please Brussels?

Mr Papandreou has good reason to throw the gauntlet at Europe’s feet. Greece is being told to adopt an IMF-style austerity package, without the devaluation so central to IMF plans. The prescription is ruinous and patently self-defeating. Public debt is already 113pc of GDP. The Commission says it will reach 125pc by late 2010. It may top 140pc by 2012.

If Greece were to impose the draconian pay cuts under way in Ireland (5pc for lower state workers, rising to 20pc for bosses), it would deepen depression and cause tax revenues to collapse further. It is already too late for such crude policies. Greece is past the tipping point of a compound debt spiral.

Ireland may just pull it off. It starts with lower debt. It has flexible labour markets, and has shown a Scandinavian discipline. Mr Papandreou faces circumstances more akin to those of Argentine leaders in 2001, when they tried to cut wages in the mistaken belief that ditching the dollar-peg would prove calamitous. Buenos Aires erupted in riots. The police lost control, killing 27 people. President De la Rua was rescued from the Casa Rosada by an air force helicopter. The peg collapsed, setting in train the biggest sovereign default in history.

Economists waited for the sky to fall. It refused to do so. Argentina achieved Chinese growth for half a decade: 8.8pc in 2003, 9pc in 2004, 9.2pc in 2005, 8.5pc in 2006, and 8.7pc in 2007.

London bankers were soon lining up to lend money (our pension funds?) to the Argentine state - despite the 70pc haircut suffered by earlier creditors.

In theory, Greece could do the same: restore its currency, devalue, pass a law switching internal euro debt into drachmas, and “restructure” foreign contracts. This is the “kitchen-sink” option. Such action would allow Greece to break out of its death loop.

Bondholders would scream, but then they should have delved deeper into the inner workings of EMU. RBS said the UK and Ireland have most exposure, with 23pc of Greek debt between them (mostly for global clients). The French hold 11pc, Italians 6pc.

Remember, Athens holds the whip hand over Brussels, not the other way round. Greek exit from EMU would be dangerous. Quite apart from the instant contagion effects across Club Med and Eastern Europe, it would puncture the aura of manifest destiny that has driven EU integration for half a century.

I don’t wish to suggest that Mr Papandreou - an EU insider - is thinking in quite such terms. Full membership of the EU system is imperative for a country dangling off the bottom of Balkans, all too close to its Seljuk nemesis. But Mr Papandreou cannot comply with the EU’s deflation diktat.

No doubt, EU institutions will rustle up a rescue. RBS says action by the European Central Bank may be “days away”. While the ECB may not bail out states, it may buy Greek bonds in the open market. EU states may club together to keep Greece afloat with loans for a while. That solves nothing. It increases Greece’s debt, drawing out the agony. What Greece needs - unless it leaves EMU - is a permanent subsidy from the North. Spain and Portugal will need help too.

The danger point for Greece will come when the Pfennig drops in Berlin that EMU divergence between North and South has widened to such a point that the system will break up unless: either Germany tolerates inflation of 4pc or 5pc to prevent Club Med tipping into debt deflation; or it pays welfare transfers to the South (not loans) equal to East German subsidies after reunification.

Before we blame Greece for making a hash of the euro, let us not forget how we got here. EMU lured Club Med into a trap. Interest rates were too low for Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, causing them all to be engulfed in a destructive property and wage boom.

The ECB was complicit. It breached its inflation and M3 money target repeatedly in order to nurse Germany through slump. ECB rates were 2pc until December 2005. This was poison for overheating Southern states.

The deeper truth that few in Euroland are willing to discuss is that EMU is inherently dysfunctional - for Greece, for Germany, for everybody.

by ANTHONY COUGHLAN (Dublin)

Wednesday 2 December 2009

With the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty on Tuesday 1 December, members of the European Parliament, who up to now have been “representatives of the peoples of the States brought together in the Community” (Art.189 TEC), become “representatives of the Union’s citizens” (Art.14 TEU).

This change in the status of MEPs is but one illustration of the constitutional revolution being brought about by the Lisbon Treaty.

For Lisbon, like the EU Constitution before it, establishes for the first time a European Union which is constitutionally separate from and superior to its Member States, just as the USA is separate from and superior to its 50 constituent states or as Federal Germany is in relation to its Länder.

The 27 EU members thereby lose their character as true sovereign States. Constitutionally, they become more like regional states in a multinational Federation, although they still retain some of the trappings of their former sovereignty. Simultaneously, 500 million Europeans becomes real citizens of the constitutionally new post-Lisbon European Union, with real citizens’ rights and duties with regard to this EU, as compared with the merely notional or symbolical EU citizenship they are assumed to have possessed up to now.

Most Europeans are unaware of these astonishing changes, for two reasons. One is that, with the exception of the Irish, they have been denied any chance of learning about and debating them in national referendums. The other is that the terms “European Union”, “EU citizen” and “EU citizenship” remain the same before and after Lisbon, although Lisbon changes their constitutional content fundamentally.

The Lisbon Treaty therefore is a constitutional revolution by stealth.

A constitutionally new European Union

The EU Constitution, which the peoples of France and Holland rejected in 2005, sought to establish a new European Union in the constitutional form of a Federation directly. Its first article stated: “This Constitution establishes the European Union”. That would clearly have been a European Union with a different constitutional basis from the EU that had been set up by the Maastricht Treaty 13 years before.

Lisbon brings a constitutionally new Union into being indirectly rather than directly, by amending the two existing European Treaties instead of replacing them entirely, as the earlier Constitutional Treaty had sought to do. Thus Lisbon states: “The Union shall be founded on the present Treaty” - viz. the Treaty on European Union (TEU) - “and on the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union.” These two Treaties together then become the Constitution of the post-Lisbon European Union. A new Union is in effect being “constituted”, although the word “Constitution” is not used.

What we called the “European Union” pre-Lisbon is the descriptive term for the totality of legal relations between its 27 Member States and their peoples. This encompassed the European Community, which had legal personality, made supranational European laws and had various State-like features, as well as the Member States cooperating together on the basis of retained sovereignty in foreign policy and defence and in crime and justice matters.

Lisbon changes this situation fundamentally by giving the post-Lisbon Union the constitutional form of a true supranational Federation, in other words a State. The EU would still lack some powers of a fully developed Federation, the most obvious one being the power to force its Member States to go to war against their will. It would possess most of the powers of a State however, although it has nothing like the tax and spending levels of its constituent Member States.

Three steps to a federal-style Constitution

Lisbon’s constitutional revolution takes place in three interconnected steps:

Firstly, the Treaty establishes a European Union with legal personality and a fully independent corporate existence in all Union areas for the first time (Arts.1 and 47 TEU). This enables the post-Lisbon Union to function as a State vis-a-vis other States externally, and in relation to its own citizens internally

Secondly, Lisbon abolishes the European Community which goes back to the Treaty of Rome and which makes European laws at present, and transfers the Community’s powers and institutions to the new Union, so that it is the post-Lisbon Union, not the Community, which will make supranational European laws henceforth (Art.1 TEU). Lisbon also transfers to the EU the “intergovernmental” powers over crime, justice and home affairs, as well as foreign policy and security, which at present are not covered by European law-making, leaving only aspects of the Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy outside the scope of its supranational powers. The Treaty thereby give a unified constitutional structure to the post-Lisbon Union.

Thirdly, Lisbon then makes 500 million Europeans into real citizens of the new Federal-style Union which the Treaty establishes (Arts.9 TEU and 20 TFEU). Instead of EU citizenship “complementing” national citizenship, as under the present Maastricht Treaty-based EU (Art.17 TEC), which makes such citizenship essentially symbolical, Lisbon provides that EU citizenship shall be “additional to” national citizenship.

This is a real dual citizenship - not of two different States, but of two different levels of one State. One can only be a citizen of a State and all States must have citizens. Dual citizenship like that provided for in Lisbon is normal in classical Federations which have been established from the bottom up by constituent states surrendering their sovereignty to a superior federal entity, in contrast to federations that have come into being “top-down”, as it were, as a result of unitary states adopting federal form. Examples of the former are the USA, 19th Century Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Australia. Lisbon would confer a threefold citizenship on citizens of Federal Germany’s Länder.

Being a citizen means that one must obey the law and give loyalty to the authority of the State one is a citizen of - in the case of classical Federations, of the two state levels, the federal and the regional or provincial. In the post-Lisbon EU the rights and duties attaching to citizenship of the Union will be superior to those attaching to one’s national citizenship in any case of conflict between the two, because of the superiority of Union law over national law and Constitutions (Declaration No 17 concerning Primacy). The EU will be constitutionally superior even though the powers of the new Union come from its Member States in accordance with the “principle of conferral” (Art.5 TEU). Where else after all could it get its powers from? This is so even though the Member States retain their national Constitutions and their citizens keep their national citizenships. The local states of the USA retain their different state Constitutions and citizenships, even though both are subordinate to America’s Federal Constitution in any case of conflict between the two. The tenth amendment to the US Constitution alludes to the principle of conferral when it lays down that powers not delegated to the US Federation “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”.

Likewise, it is not unusual for the Constitutions of classical Federations to provide for a right of withdrawal for their constituent states, just as the Lisbon Treaty does (Art.50 TEU). The existence of these features in the Constitution of the post-Lisbon European Union does not take away from its federal character.

An alternative source of democratic legitimacy to the Nation State

Under Lisbon population size will in turn become the primary basis for EU law-making, as in any State with a common citizenry. This will happen after 2014, when the Treaty provision comes into force that EU laws will be made by 55% of Member States as long as they represent 65% of the total population of the Union.

Lisbon provides an alternative source of democratic legitimacy which challenges the right of national governments to be the representatives of their electorates in the EU. The amended Treaty provides: “The functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy. Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament. Member States are represented in the European Council by their Heads of State or Government and in the Council by their governments…” (Art.10 TEU). Contrast this with what is stated to be the foundation of the present Mastricht Treaty-based EU (Art.6 TEU): “The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States.”

The constitutional structure of the post-Lisbon EU is completed by the provision which turns the European Council of Prime Ministers and Presidents into an “institution” of the new Union (Art.13 TEU), so that its acts or its failing to act would, like those of the other Union institutions, be subject to legal review by the EU Court of Justice.

Constitutionally speaking, the summit meetings of the European Council will henceforth no longer be “intergovernmental” gatherings outside supranational European structures, as they have been up to now. The European Council will in effect be the Cabinet Government of the post-Lisbon Union. Its individual members will be constitutionally obliged to represent the Union to their Member States as well as their Member States to the Union, with the former function imposing primacy of obligation in any case of conflict or tension between the two.

One doubts if all the Heads of State or Government who make up the European Council themselves appreciate this!

As regards the State authority of the post-Lisbon Union, this will be embodied in the Union’s own executive, legislative and judicial institutions: the European Council, Council of Ministers, Commission, Parliament and Court of Justice. It will be embodied also in the Member States and their authorities as they implement and apply EU law and interpret and apply national law in conformity with Union law. Member States will be constitutionally required to do this under the Lisbon Treaty. Thus EU “State authorities” as represented for example by EU soldiers and policemen patrolling our streets in EU uniforms, will not be needed as such.

Although the Lisbon Treaty has given the EU a Federal-style Constitution without most people noticing, they are bound to find out in time and react against what is being done. There is no European people or demos which could give democratic legitimacy to the institutions the Lisbon Treaty establishes and make people identify with these as they do with the institutions of their home countries. This is the core problem of the EU integration project. Lisbon in effect has made the EU’s democratic deficit much worse.

It is hard to imagine that this EU Constitution by stealth will not make struggles to reestablish national independence and democracy and to repatriate supranational powers back to the Member States the central issue of EU politics in the years and decades ahead.

Anthony Coughlan is Director of the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, Dublin, and President of the Foundation for EU Democracy, Brussels. He is Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He may be contacted at 00-353-1-8305792.

Defend the Swedish model!

The Swedish Labour Court (Arbetsdomstolen or AD) announced on December 2nd its judgment in the so called Laval case (Case A 268/04). According to the AD judgment the two Swedish trade unions the Swedish Building Workers’s union (Byggnads) and the Swedish Electrical Workers Union (Elektrikerna) should pay 2.5 million SEK in damage compensation and costs of trial to the Latvian construction company Laval as a consequence of the conflict in Vaxholm autumn 2004.

First level AD judged that the conflict between Byggnads and Laval is legal and does not need to be interrupted. Five years later the same court decides that we now should pay a large compensation. Today’s judgment contradicts any common sense. It is unbelievable that the union should pay compensation, when we have applied the applicable Swedish law and the decision in the AD, says Hans Tilly, who is the president of Byggnads in a comment to the judgment.

At the same time AD has concluded that Laval company has not been able to verify that it had suffered any economic damage as a consequence of the conflict. Thus the trade unions do not need to pay compensation for economic loss.

The court was split. Four out of the seven members stand behind the judgment. In the minority was the vice president, who considers that the unions should pay nothing at all.

The AD judgment in the Laval case is very serious and will in its prolongation cause large impacts for Swedish employees. Now, when trade unions arbitrary may have to pay large compensations it will be very difficult to work for fair conditions for foreign construction workers, says Hans Tilly.

But what is even worse in the whole process, from the ECJ’s judgment to the government proposal of a Laval bill, is that the Laval case opens for wage dumping, Hans Tilly continues.

A few weeks ago the Minister of Labour Sven Otto Littorin presented a bill due to the ECJ’s rejection of the Swedish collective bargaining model, after that the AD had asked for guidance from the ECJ.

Among all things Littorin proposes that the right to take industrial actions will be greatly circumvented, and that foreign collective agreements or legislation should be applicable on the Swedish labour market if they fulfill pre-decided minimum requests concerning wage and other working conditions.

Every day we meet companies that stretch the working conditions and which in the collective agreement give one level of wage, but in practice pay a lower wage to the construction workers. A dumping of wages and conditions is ongoing on the labour market today. The risk is that companies which follow the rules will be set out of competition by companies that pay less attention to the working conditions and pays lower salary, says Hans Tilly.

It is self-evident that Byggnads and Elektrikerna should refuse to pay any compensation to the Laval company as they have not broken any Swedish legislation. Byggnads requested Laval to sign a Swedish collective agreement, and when the company refused Byggnads has put the workplace under blockade. Soon afterward Elektrikerna started a sympathy action. All this was fully in conformity with the so called Lex Britannia, which the parliament acted in 1991. When did it become a crime to apply valid Swedish legislation? Which are laws induces compensation to apply?

It is also self-evident that Byggnads and Elektrikerna and the whole Swedish trade union movement should refuse to subordinate themselves to the ECJ’s anti-trade union judgment in the Laval case and with all possible means fight against the anti-trade union legislation changes the Reinfeldt-led alliance government now (with ill-concealed delight) have put on the parliament table.

The EU has no right what so ever to meddle with the Swedish labour market model. In the referendum concerning the EU membership 15 years ago guarantees were given from the present minister of Foreign relations Carl Bildt, the social democrat leader at that time Ingvar Carlsson, leaders of the Swedish industry as well as from the LO (Swedish TUC) and TCO (Swedish “white-collar” TUC) that an eventual membership in the EU should not change what so ever the collective bargaining system or the trade unions right to take industrial actions. As citizens we were told that we had got these guarantees in the negotiation process.

This very day of the 2 December at 10.21 the LO president Wanja Lundby Wedin (also the acting president of ETUC) claimed in an e-mail from her fellow-worker Anders Larsson that “Sweden got guarantees before the membership in the EU that we should have our model untouched”.

When, if not at this moment, should the trade unions and the political leaders make use of these guarantees, and to inform concerned EU institutions which legislation and rules that are valid on the Swedish labour market. These legislation and rules are decided by the Swedish parliament and not by non-elected bureaucrats and perverters of the law in Brussels and Luxemburg. Defend the Swedish model.

Gösta Torstensson
Editor Critical eu-facts
www.nejtilleu.se

(Translation Jan-Erik Gustafsson)

From 1 December you are a citizen of the European Union super-state. All of us in Britain will be ruled by a centralised Euro-federalist government in Brussels. Already four out of five laws emanate from Brussels rubber stamped by the elected government in Westminster. EU legislation is decided behind closed doors by unaccountable and unelected Commissioners -all done in conjunction with the various Councils of Ministers from the 27 Member States. They are now the Euro-federalist government who are responsible for and to the EU and no longer primarily to their national governments.

The Lisbon Treaty, or more properly the EU Constitution, has ditched the inter-governmental arrangements which have been in force since the Common Market was set up in 1957 and has turned the EU into a super-state. This qualitative change has been brought about by stealth over half a century and without changing the name European Union. Totally absent was any democratic procedure, agreement or consultation over the Lisbon Treaty by and amongst 500 million people across the 27 nation-states within the EU bar one, Ireland. The electorates of France and the Netherlands threw out the EU Constitution and then Ireland rejected the deliberately scrambled Lisbon Treaty. This rejection was unacceptable to the political elites so Ireland was according to Irish and EU law illegally made to vote again. Money without limit was poured in to the Yes! camp to set up unrelated arguments which were crafted to frighten and mislead the electorate. With the misinformation and saturated one sided media put before them they understandably voted for the Lisbon Treaty and sacrificed what national independence and democracy they still held and had literally fought for over the centuries.

No other member state was given the opportunity to fully discuss and voice opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. All three major political parties in Britain fell into line and reneged on promises to hold a referendum on Lisbon. The EU Constitution has been imposed from the top downwards and does not have any support from the will of the peoples across the EU. It is a serious blow to democracy and the right to self-determination of nation-states. In historical terms it undoes both the American and French revolutions.

All the EU’s institutions have been strengthened by the Treaty to consolidate this centralised government and the neo-liberal free market initiated by the Thatcher Government. Sixty new areas normally dealt with by national governments have passed to the centralised government. Not one area has been passed back down from Brussels to national capitals. An unelected EU President and de facto EU Foreign Secretary, misnamed High Representative, are part of this Union’s government.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg is the supreme court of the EU which overrides the courts and Parliament in Britain. That includes the recently formed Supreme Court which sits in the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square. The ECJ has made rulings on four important cases which affect the labour and trade union movements and all those who work for their living within the EU. The Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxembourg cases have sought to turn the clock back to the 19th Century by undermining trade union rights. This includes collective bargaining, using the free movement of labour around the EU to the detriment of wages, conditions and welfare protection. These impinge on the right to strike and other fundamental trade union and workers’ rights in what has been aptly coined the “race to the bottom”.* A major purpose of the ECJ is to see the objectives of the “free movement of capital, services, goods and labour” of the Single European Market are strictly adhered to. In other words to give big capital free reign and damn the social consequences. The EU Constitution has specified that capitalism shall be the economic system of the Union. This is contrary to every other constitution across the world and specifically blocks the right to legislate for socialist measures let alone a socialist economic system.

Big capital is no longer prepared to tolerate national democracy or be inhibited by the powers of the nation-state. The only institution in existence able to curb the ever growing transnational corporations and banks, and movement of big capital are the governments of nation-states. Just because we have elected governments who do not exercise that power but instead hang on to the coat tails and cow tow to big capital does not negate such powers. However, what does remove the powers of nation-states is the formation of the EU superstate where the real government, the Euro-federalist government, cannot be kicked out and policies and legislation is put in place.

We are all now both subjects in the monarchy of the United Kingdom and citizens of the EU super-state. We have responsibilities and duties to obey the laws and pay heed to all the EU institutions in addition to institutions in Britain. If we wish to resist this new arrangement then first we have to understand the qualitative change that has taken place without notice. Above all we have to understand this remains part of the class struggle between labour and big capital and that well tested and hard won rights have to be defended and used. The longer we dally the worse it will be to untangle this huge reactionary backward step which undermines all forms of democracy.

*Further details can be found on the websites of CAEF and TUAEUC and past reports in the Morning Star.

written by John Boyd, secretary of the CAEF (Campaign against Euro-federalism and editor of The Democrat.