Tag Archives: Angela Merkel

We’re All Speaking German Now – Apparently

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So who’s in charge? That’s the big question on everyone’s lips as the latest demonstration of the emasculation of Ireland’s nationhood plays out in the media. The revelation that members of the German parliament have been privy to Ireland’s upcoming budget has led to claims and counter-claims in abundance. It seems humiliation on an international stage is to become our national sack cloth and ashes for the next decade or so no matter what spin Irish government and European Union PR folk put on it.

According to the Herald:

“DETAILS of December’s Budget were leaked to several EU countries, it was claimed today.

The EU/IMF Troika was today blaming the European Commission for “mistakenly forwarding” the sensitive budget document to Germany and other EU countries.

The gaffe has caused major embarrassment for the Government who have lodged a complaint with the Commission.

The details emerged in the German Bundestag yesterday but sources now say that the EC sent the document to all member states on the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee.”

Well, that’s ok then. The Journal has the details and they make for grim reading:

“The package of documents also includes:

  • a firm commitment that domestic water charges will be introduced by the end of 2013
  • plans to broaden the income tax base in 2013, along with increases in excise duty and other indirect taxes
  • plans to cut social welfare spending and the public payroll even further in 2013
  • a government agreement to prepare a draft programme for selling state assets, to be discussed with the Troika by the end of this year
  • a request from Michael Noonan and Patrick Honohan to ‘frontload’ the bailout loans for 2012 – with deductions from the second, third and fourth instalments to make up for an extra-large first instalment
  • an update to the EU-IMF deal outlining that ”any unplanned revenues must be allocated to debt reduction“
  • a commitment to “initial resolution funding” of €250m for Ireland’s credit unions
  • further commitments to open up ‘sheltered sectors’ like pharmacies, GPs and legal services

Next month’s Budget proposes to make €670m through the VAT increase, €160m through the new €100-per-house ‘household charge’, and €100m through the reform of capital gains tax.”

Which begs the question: how much pain can one nation, or society, take before it breaks? I would suggest that we are closer now than most people will admit – or perhaps even suspect. However some see the writing on the wall, as The Journal reports again:

“THE DETAILS DISCLOSED in draft documents which outline Ireland’s proposals to meet the terms of its EU-IMF agreement have been heavily criticised by Dáil opposition this evening.

Speaking to TheJournal.ie this evening Independent TD and Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee member Shane Ross said while the detail was “pretty predictable” the measures were “tyrannical” and “in keeping with the craven attitude of this government to the EU-IMF deal”.

“It’s a humiliating document because the measures which are in there are at the whim of are European masters,” Ross said.”

Additionally,

“Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty was also critical of the documents’ disclosure to the other 26 EU member states before the Irish people, saying it was  ”quite outrageous”.

Doherty was also angered by the disclosure in the documents that all unplanned revenues such as those that come from the sell-off of State assets must go towards servicing the debt burden.

This disclosure contradicts the government’s public statements that it hopes to use the money from the sell-off of State assets to fund job initiatives. Doherty said the sale of State assets is “a disgrace”.”

Meanwhile, amongst the citizenry:

“THE mortgage crisis has hit a new high with 100,000 homeowners now struggling to meet their repayments.

Figures released by the Central Bank today show that the number of borrowers who are now in arrears of more than three months is 62,000.

And another almost 40,000 have already restructured their mortgage repayments.”

But hey, we all know who are really to blame.

“Banks are blaming rumours of a debt forgiveness scheme for the fact that many people have stopped meeting their repayments.

They say there has been a spike in arrears because some people thought there would be a scheme put in place to help people in debt.”

Selfish “people”. Expecting help. We help banks in debt. Not “people”.

Just ask the Germans. Oh, hold on. We have to ask the Germans.

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Deutschland Über Europa

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Ah, poor old Saor Éire. It was nice while it lasted. Ireland’s freedom and democracy? What’s that to the rulers of the “New Europe”. Instead we have technocrats and an autocracy where once we had votes and a system of representative government. And, it would seem, in the near future a new treaty series of amendments to the Lisbon Treaty dictated to us from the corridors of power in Brussels (and Berlin and Paris) with a new warning: this time make damn sure you vote the way we tell you to vote; or else…

Of course it doesn’t have to be like this. Some people, some nations, do it differently, as the Guardian points out in a report from Iceland (y’know? Iceland. The country that finally stood up to the Free Market racketeers and pirates when the rest of Europe capitulated):

“If the 99% want to reclaim our power, our societies, we have to start somewhere. An important first step is to sever the ties between the corporations and the state by making the process of lawmaking more transparent and accessible for everyone who cares to know or contribute.

We had the first revolution after the financial troubles in 2008. Due to a lack of transparency, corruption and nepotism, Iceland had the third largest financial meltdown in human history, and it shook us profoundly. The Icelandic people realised that everything we had put our trust in had failed us. One of the demands during the protests that followed – and that resulted in getting rid of the government, the central bank manager and the head of the financial authority – was that we would get to rewrite our constitution. “We” meaning the 99%, not the politicians who had failed us. Another demand was that we should have real democratic tools, such as being able to call directly for a national referendum and dissolve parliament.

Many great things have occurred in Iceland since our days of shock in 2008. Our constitution has been rewritten by the people for the people. A constitution is such an important measure of what sort of society people want to live in. It is the social agreement. Once it is passed, our new constitution will bring more power to the people and give us proper tools to restrain those in power. The foundation for the constitution was created by 1,000 people randomly selected from the national registry. We elected 25 people to put that vision into words. The new constitution is now in the parliament. It will be up to the 99% to call for a national vote on it so that we inside the parliament know exactly what the nation wants and will have to follow suit. If the constitution passes, we will have almost achieved everything we set out to do. Our agenda was written on various open platforms; direct democracy is the high north of our political compass in everything we do.”

Once upon a time such a description of core beliefs would have been the very essence of what most of us believed modern Europe stood for. This is what we enthusiastic Europeans thought of as our ideals as well. Then came the Lisbon Treaty votes. The first. The second. And with them the lies, distortions, threats and intimidation. The hallmarks of dictatorships, of police states, of that other Europe, the one we did not really think about any more. Old Europe, pre-Union Europe, a Europe we left behind. How wrong we were. How stupidly, blindly optimistically wrong we were.

The future is spelled out in The Atlantic, with an enthusiasm I suspect most of us will find baffling (or chilling):

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a speech at her party’s annual gathering this week, declared that Germany — and Europe — must address the problems in the economic union by creating a political union. The European financial crisis is threatening to snowball from small, periphery states such as Greece and Ireland to the world’s eighth largest economy, Italy, and possibly even the fifth largest, France. Even if Europe can save Italy, and even if France does not fall into similar crisis, the European Union’s awful year has exposed some real flaws in the monetary union.

Some economists (the ones not calling the entire European experiment doomed) argue that what Europe needs is a fiscal union to make sure that the state economies behave responsibly and in some kind of sync. Integrating some of the world’s largest economies under this kind of unified fiscal authority would be a big deal. But Merkel wants to go one very big step further. “It is now the task of our generation to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and create, step by step, a political union.” She warned that Europe had entered “the most difficult hours since World War Two,” drawing a pointed contrast to the event that led to the creation of the European Union in the first place.”

Once I defined myself as Celtic, Irish and European. I did so with a certain degree of snobbery, as if invited to the much sought-after membership of an exclusive club. Now? Celtic. Irish. But European? Do I feel European? Of Europe?

It is a question that I find harder and harder to answer.

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