French minister says bail-out alters EU treaty | FT
In an interview with the FT, French Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche has said that the eurozone's €440bn debt guarantee scheme marks an "unprecedented" change to the EU treaties. "It is an enormous change," Mr Lellouche said. "It explains some of the reticence. It is expressly forbidden in the treaties by the famous no bail-out clause. De facto, we have changed the treaty," he added. "The €440bn mechanism is nothing less than the importation of Nato's Article 5 mutual defence clause applied to the eurozone. When one member is under attack the others are obliged to come to its defence."
The French minister conceded that it required a lot of effort to make the Franco-German relationship work, likening the current challenge to postwar reconciliation between the two countries. He added that France accepted as "normal" that Germany now asserted its own national interests, Mr Lellouche said. "Since when did we expect Germany to act as cash cow indefinitely?"
Latest posts by Donagh (see all)
- The policy of transferring incomes to capital and the rich - September 6, 2012
- ILR Will Not Blink While Facing Down the Jaws of Excessive CPU Usage - September 6, 2012
- Dan Froomkin | The Jobs Crisis Obama, Romney and the Low-Wage Future of America - August 29, 2012
- Money as a Social Construct – Talk Given by Mary Mellor - August 27, 2012
- - August 23, 2012
May 29, 2010 12:47 pm
And there’s me worried that the mutual defense clause in the Lisbon Treaty would oblige Ireland to ditch nutrality…who could have guessed that a European Mutual Defense clause could / would be applied to ‘financial war’…and you know if you think about it… thats kinda whats has been / is taking place…brigades & platoons of financial soldiers invading a country like Greece through its markets and essentially attempting to overthrow its citizens using financial force…
Of course here in Ireland we have been invaded / occupied and have been under the ‘jack-boot’ of the free-market and their neo-liberal generals for years…indeed it might be argued that the ‘financial colonization’ of Ireland has done more harm to its citizens (who are now financial prisoners of war) than decades of British rule ever did…
Yes who would have thought that the mutual defense clause could be applied to the ‘markets’…all we need now is to set up an ‘International Fiancial War Crimes Court of Justice’…any thoughts on we might see in the dock I wonder??
Cheers
Note Robs copyright…just in case someone picks up on my ideas for an ‘International Financial War Crimes Court of Justice’…Though the seed germinated when I listened to Will Hutton last night…
“we have socialism for the rich and capatilism for the poor”…perverse but true!!
Now we know why they won’t introduce Gramsci into the school curriculum…