Am letzten Donnerstag habe ich an einer gut besuchten Konferenz von Sozialen Bewegungen und Gewerkschaften im Europaparlament teilgenommen. Sie wurde gemeinsam eingeladen von den beiden Fraktionen Gue/NGL und Grüne. Hier die sehr gute Abschlusserklärung, der ich zustimmen kann. Zur Forderung, die EZB zum Lender of last resort zu machen, muss ich einschränkend sagen, dass dies im Rahmen der EU-Verträge nicht geht. Sinnvoll ist aber, dem ESM eine Banklizenz zu geben.
Text der Abschlusserklärung:
Five Key Proposals for Another Road for Europe
Brussels, 28 June 2012
An alternative to European Council inaction
from the Forum “Another Road for Europe”
150 participants to the International Forum “Another Road for Europe” held on June 28, 2012 at the European Parliament in Brussels have discussed viable alternatives to the lack of action on Europe’s crisis that is expected from the European Council in Brussels.
The practical actions that have been demanded include the following. As a matter of urgency:
1. Facing the dramatic acceleration of Europe’s financial crisis – marked by the interaction between a banking crisis and the public debt crisis – the European Central Bank must immediately act as a lender of last resort in the government bond market. The public debt problem has to be solved with a common responsibility of the eurozone, using institutional arrangements that could be put in place without delay.
2. A dramatic downsizing of the financial sector is needed, with a financial transaction tax, limitations on speculative finance and capital movements, and an extension of social control in particular over banks receiving public funds. The financial system should be transformed, so that it supports socially and environmentally sustainable productive investment.
3. Austerity policies should be reversed and the heavy conditionality imposed on countries receiving EU emergency funds should be revised; the dangerous constraints of the “fiscal compact” need be removed, so that countries can defend public expenditure, welfare and wages, while the EU assumes a greater role in stimulating demand, promoting full employment and taking a new course of sustainable and equitable growth. Moreover, European policies should move towards fiscal harmonization, putting an end to tax competition, and shifting the tax burden away from labour and to a higher taxation of profits and wealth.
Action should start now for longer term changes in the following directions:
4. A green new deal can provide a way out of Europe’s recession, with large investments supporting an ecological transition toward sustainability, providing high quality jobs, expanding capabilities in new innovative fields and enlarging possibilities for action at the local level, especially on public goods.
5. Democracy has to be expanded at all levels in Europe; the European Union has to be reformed and the concentration of power in the hands of more powerful states that has taken place with the crisis has to be reversed. The aim is to achieve greater citizens’ participation, a major role for the European Parliament, and a much more significant democratic control over key decisions.
Facing a risk of collapse, Europe’s policies need to change course, and an alliance between civil society, trade unions, social movements and progressive political forces – and notably in the European Parliament- is required to lead Europe out of the crisis created by neoliberalism and finance and towards a fully fledged democracy.
Information in five languages and the original appeal “Another road for Europe” can be found at www.anotherroadforeurope.org.
For information and contacts: anotherroadforeurope@gmail.com