The Greek people is acting in self-defence against attempts at imposing insufferable austerity policies upon it. The successive plans concocted in Brussels or by the European Council, and presented at increasingly regular intervals as being the only means to "save" the Greek people from its excessive debt and to "save" the euro, invariably lead to failure. Submitting a patient ever more rigorously to the dictates of financial markets does not cure the disease, it kills the patient. To carry on in that direction is as unreasonable as it is dangerous.

What is needed is a solidarity plan for Greece. It is also the only way to save the euro and Athens’ European partners. The ECB must help stimulate growth and employment in Greece and everywhere else by financing - at the same rates as the rates at which it lends money to banks, namely 1%, or even less - the States and their public services, by permitting them also to break free from their dependence upon financial markets and their usurious interest rates.

Growth is now declining everywhere. A new recession is looming over the euro zone. Democracy is being trampled. Unelected governments, like the one in Athens, are appointed. Bureaucratic bodies dictate their law to elected assemblies. Authoritarian decisions are made to crush popular resistance against drastic cuts in wages and social benefits.

The European construction will not survive this blind headlong rush. The peoples’ struggle against austerity is legitimate. It needs our full support. [1]

We support the idea put forward by economists, social activists and leftwing forces in France and the European Union that the European Central Bank should buy public bonds when they are issued and so finance the States and their public services directly. This would be the only means to clamp down on speculative moves against public debts.

The euro zone’s various partners must be able to use the ECB’s power to create money in order to finance today’s vast needs (whether social, ecological, energetic, or sanitary...). The European financial stability fund set up by the EU must be turned into a European social and ecological development fund and must be made to pursue those ends. And the re-capitalization of banks or their nationalization must be conditional upon a selective loan policy that should pursue those objectives.

Europe stands at a turning point. The only way out of this crisis is through emancipation from financial markets and EU’s determined conversion to a mutual social, democratic and ecological progresssive agenda.

[1] The petition can be signed on line on l’Humanité’s website.

RSS 2.0 | Site Map | Translators’ zone |