Shopfloor article: ‘Truth Behind the European Crisis’

See below my contribution to this month’s Shopfloor, the Mandate Trade Union newspaper.

Three times in the last year the Finance Committee of the Bundestag in Germanyhas seen documents that relate to our budgetary position before they were presented to the Dail. Recently the European commission apologised for the ‘leaks’ but did not say it would not happen again!

As a member of the Dail I have still not received these documents. So what this means in practice is that if an Irish citizen wants to know what is happening in Ireland they should look to the German Finance Committee and not Dail Eireann.

The recent Fiscal Treaty Referendum result if ratified will strengthen this process. The treaty will give powerful oversight of our budget to the European Commission and enshrines in Irish law the budget rules contained in the treaty. I would like to commend Mandate for their stance in opposing the treaty; in calling for a No Vote and attempting to protect Irish sovereignty and ensure that we retain control over our own destinies.

You may ask why this is important and did we not make our own mess? More and more it is becoming clear that this mess was created inEuropeand we have been forced to bailout the Euro through saving German, French and English banks.

Over the last eighteen months there have been very serious developments inEuropeand the emergence of the domination of the bigger countries that is against the very sentiments contained in the European treaties. Two democratically elected governments have been over thrown, first the Greek and then the Italian- no matter what we think of Berlusconi he was elected by the Italian people and their prime ministers replaced by so called ‘Technocrats’.

Article 1 of the Lisbon Treaty says that the union is based on the ‘inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law’. These are fine words and we as citizens ofIrelandhave to make sure that the EU lives up to them. Is it an EU that has respect for democracy that forces two prime ministers to resign? Is it an EU that respects equality that allows the German parliament to see Irish budgets before the Irish people?

There is too much at stake to allow the big countries like Germany and France to ignore the rule of law, democracy and equality during this so called ‘crisis’ in order to impose their ideology on 500 million people. This is a crisis of markets and bankers that is being imposed on citizens in countries all acrossEurope. It is debatable whether it should even be called a ‘crisis’, it is not a natural disaster, it is a programme of austerity that is being imposed by the strong to subject the weak.

It is at times like this that the rule of law should prevail because if this is a crisis we need the law to protect the vulnerable and the values that the EU is supposed to be founded upon. If we allow the law to be set aside at this time what hope can we have for the ‘inviolable and inalienable rights of freedom, democracy and equality’?

Where next will the EU decide that a so called ‘crisis’ exists and what will be the price that will be extracted from small countries in order to bailout the rich? We are watching the Greeks being subjected to untold horrific misery and we see hundreds leaving this county every single day, families, young people and a haemorrhaging of the Irish populous, communities and families.

This is the issue that is being debated in the constitutional courts acrossEuropeand it is a battle that needs to be fought to defend the rights of not only Irish citizens but citizens across the continent.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

•