Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 119

Schäuble leaves but Schäuble-ism lives on

Wolfgang Schäuble may heave left the finance ministry but his policy for turning the eurozone into an iron cage of austerity, that is the very antithesis of a democratic federation, lives on.

What is remarkable about Dr Schäuble’s tenure was how he invested heavily in maintaining the fragility of the monetary union, rather than eradicating it in order to render the eurozone macro-economically sustainable and resilient. Why did Dr Schäuble aim at maintaining the eurozone’s fragility? Why was he, in this context, ever so keen to maintain the threat of Grexit? The simple answer is: Because a state of permanent fragility was instrumental to his strategy for using the threat of expulsion from the euro (or even of Germany’s withdrawal from it) to discipline the deficit countries – chiefly France.

Deep in Dr Schäuble’ thinking there was the belief that, as a federation is infeasible, the euro is a glorified fixed exchange rate regime. And the only way of maintaining discipline within such a regime was to keep alive the threat of expulsion or exit. But to keep that threat alive, the eurozone could not be allowed to develop the instruments and institutions that would stop it from being fragile. Thus, the eurozone’s permanent fragility was, from Dr Schäuble’s perspective an end-in-itself, rather than a failure.

The Free Democratic Party’s ascension will see to it that Wolfgang Schäuble’s departure will not alter the policy of doing whatever it takes to prevent the eurozone ‘s evolution into a sustainable macroeconomy. The FDP’s sole promise to its voters was to prevent any of Emmanuel Macron’s plans, for some federation-lite, from being agreed to, and for pursuing Grexit. Even worse, whereas Wolfgang Schäuble understood that austerity plus new loans were catastrophic for countries like Greece (but insisted on them as part of his campaign to discipline France and Italy), his FDP successors at the finance ministry will probably be less ‘enlightened’ believing that the ‘tough medicine’ is fit for purpose.

And so the never ending crisis of Europe’s social economy, that feeds the xenophobic political monsters, continues.

Ο Σόιμπλε φεύγει ο Σοϊμπλισμός ενισχύεται

Ο Βόλφγκαγκ Σόιμπλε μπορεί να αποχώρησε από το Ομοσπονδιακό Υπουργείο Οικονομικών αλλά η καμπάνια του να χρησιμοποιήσει την κρίση του ευρώ ώστε να μετατρέψει την ευρωζώνη σε Σιδερένιο Κλουβί Λιτότητας (το ακριβώς αντίθετο μιας δημοκρατικής ομοσπονδίας) ζει και βασιλεύει.

Η άνοδος του FDP, του Κόμματος των Φιλελεύθερων Δημοκρατών, εξασφαλίζει πως η αποχώρηση του Δρ Σόιμπλε δεν θα ανατρέψει τις πολιτικές με τις οποίες εκείνος έκανε ό,τι ήταν δυνατόν ώστε η ευρωζώνη να μην μετεξελιχθεί σε βιώσιμη μακροοικονομία.

Ένας ήταν ο Μέγας Ηττημένος των πρόσφατων γερμανικών εκλογών: Ο Εμμανουέλ Μακρόν και, μαζί του, όσοι πίστεψαν πως το κατεστημένο (μέσω του Μακρόν) έχει την δυνατότητα να γεννήσει λύσεις που παραπέμπουν μεσοπροόθεσμα σε μια δημοκρατική ευρωπαϊκή ομοσπονδία. Οι αυταπάτες αυτές διαλύθηκαν τώρα που ο Βόλφγκαγκ Σόιμπλε παραδίδει την σκυτάλη του Ομοσπονδιακού Υπουργείου Οικονομικών σε ένα κόμμα Σοϊμπλικότερο από τον ίδιο και αποφασισμένο να προωθήσει το Grexit την ώρα που αρνείται στο Παρίσι την παραμικρή πρόταση προς ομοσπονδοποίηση η οποία υπερβαίνει κάποιες διακοσμητικές αλλαγές (π.χ. την μετονομασία του Προέδρου του Eurogroup σε υπουργό οικονομικών της ευρωζώνης ή στην μετατροπή του Ευρωπαϊκού Μηχανισμού Σταθερότητας σε Ευρωπαϊκό Νομισματικό Ταμείο).

Περιληπτικά, ο Βόλφγκαγκ Σόιμπλε πάσχισε όλα αυτά τα χρόνια για να παραμείνει η ευρωζώνη εύθραυστη, με την κρίση να σιγοβράζει χωρίς να επιλύεται. Ο λόγος που ήθελε διακαώς την μη λύση της κρίσης, και μια ευρωζώνη μονίμως εύθραυστη, ήταν ο εξής: Όσο η ευρωζώνη παραμένει εύθραυστη, και η κρίση σιγοβράζει, η απειλή της έξωσης από το ευρώ (όχι μόνο της Ελλάδας!) παραμένει ισχυρή και λειτουργεί ως μέθοδος πειθάρχισης των ελλειμματικών χωρών – ιδίως της Γαλλίας. Το FDP, το οποίο παίρνει την σκυτάλη από τον Δρ Σόιμπλε, διακρίνεται για την προσήλωσή του στην καμπάνια του απερχόμενου υπουργού οικονομικών της εύθραυστης, σε μόνιμη (ελεγχόμενη), κρίση ευρωζώνη. Έτσι, η μόνη ορθολογική προσδοκία για την νέα κυβέρνηση της κας Μέρκελ είναι η συνέχιση της κρίσης της ευρωζώνης, ως επιλογή του Βερολίνου (κι όχι αποτυχία) και, συνεπώς, η ενίσχυση των ξενοφοβικών πολιτικών τεράτων που αυτή γεννοβολά.

On negotiating with the EU & fiscal money – with Anatole Kaletsky & journalists from El Pais, Handelsblatt – Project Syndicate video

Yanis Varoufakis  discusses how to negotiate with the EU and his proposal to introduce fiscal money with Anatole Kaletsky, Co-Chairman of Gavekal Draganomics, David Alandete, Managing Editor of El Pais, and Torsten Riecke, Handelsblatt’s international correspondent.

“Προαπαιτούμενα ελπίδας” – Ομιλία Γ. Βαρουφάκη στην Πάτρα 25 Σεπτεμβρίου 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmi1...



DiEM25 Greece



Το DiEM25 και ο Γιάνης Βαρουφάκης βρέθηκαν στο θέατρο Royal στην Πάτρα που γέμισε με ανθρώπους κάθε ηλικίας που θέλησαν να ακούσουν από κοντά την πρόταση του κινήματος για την αντιμετώπιση της κρίσης στην Ελλάδα και την Ευρώπη.

Για περισσότερα διαβάστε εδώ: http://bit.ly/2hvSXSl

Adults in the Room: The Sordid Tale of Greece’s Battle Against Austerity and the Troika – by Dean Baker, Huffington Post

Yanis Varoufakis begins his account of his half year as Greece’s finance minister in the left populist Syriza government (Adults in the Room, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) with a description of a meeting with Larry Summers. According to Varoufakis, Summers explains that there are two types of politicians. There are those who are on the inside and play by the rules. They can just occasionally accomplish things by persuading others in the room to take their advice.

Then there is the other type of politician, those who don’t agree to the rules and will never get anywhere. Summers asks Varoufakis which type of politician he is.

As Varoufakis tells us he explained to Summers, he is the second type. He is committed to accomplishing something for his people, most immediately the people of Greece in the struggle to end mindless austerity, but ultimately the people of Europe and arguably the world, in an effort to fight against needlessly cruel economic policies. If this means breaking with the decorum of the elites, so be it.

There is no reason to question Varoufakis’ commitment. He left a comfortable life as an academic in Austin, Texas to take up what he certainly knew to be an incredibly difficult job as Greece’s finance minister in the middle of a financial crisis. The newly elected populist government was despised by most of the business and political establishment in Greece and across Europe. Only a person with a genuine commitment to the stated goals of the new government would take on this role. But reading his account, it is questionable whether the path he took was necessarily the best one for Greece and for Europe.

The Long Six Months

To give the basic story, at the start of 2015 Greece was being confronted by the joint power of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F), collectively known as the “Troika”, who were insisting that Greece impose further spending cuts and tax increases even though the country had already endured seven years of depression.

I am using “depression” in the interest of accuracy, not exaggeration. By 2015 Greece’s economy had contracted by more than 25 percent compared with its 2007 level. Employment was down by almost 22 percent from where it had been at its pre-crisis peak. By comparison, in the Great Depression the U.S. economy shrank by 28 percent from 1929 to 1933, but had exceeded its pre-crisis peak by 1936. Greece will be lucky if its economy gets back to its 2007 level of output by 2027.

The Troika had gotten the previous conservative government to agree to a wide range of tax increases and spending cuts that had both devastated the economy and left many of the country’s poorest people in desperate straits. They had agreed to large cutbacks in already meager pensions, as well as cuts to a variety of programs designed to serve the poor.

The ostensible purpose of these cuts was to have Greece build up a large budget surplus, which would allow it to repay prior loans from the Troika. The budget target demanded by the Troika was an annual surplus on the primary budget, which excludes interest payments, equal to 3.5 percent of GDP (a bit less than $700 billion in the U.S. economy in 2017). The Troika’s program also included a wide variety of other demands, including privatization of many public assets and measures designed to weaken the power of Greece’s workers.

While there was much for any progressive to object to in the Troika’s program for Greece, Varoufakis’ key point throughout the book is that the program clearly would not work if the point was to get the money back for Greece’s creditors. He argues that there was no way for Greece to run the large surpluses demanded by the Troika. This meant that the debt was likely to grow through time rather than shrink. He argued that the only honest route forward was a write-down of large amounts of the debt, admitting that this money was lost. After a write-down, which would free Greece of onerous interest payments, the country could get back on a course of stable growth.

The book is a tale of bureaucratic dysfunction and outright treachery. In the latter category we find the Socialist finance minister of France as well as the Social Democratic economy minister of Germany. Both are warm and supportive of Varoufakis in private meetings, but then turn around and condemn Greek profligacy when they speak in public. Any number of other figures accept the logic of Varoufakis’ argument in private, including top officials at the I.M.F., but then melt into submission in the presence of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Veroufakis’ main nemesis.

The account would be comical if the lives of real people were not at stake. We also get an inside look at the absurd bureaucratic structures that have been created by the European Union. Varoufakis repeatedly finds himself at meetings where no one has the power to do anything to help Greece in its efforts to seek debt relief. While much of this was obviously a deliberate effort at obstruction, the structures of the EU do make it difficult to get anything done and hold anyone accountable for what ultimately happens.

Varoufakis explains to us his negotiating strategy, and ostensibly the strategy of Syriza government to which he belonged. The goal was to accomplish debt relief while staying in the euro zone. He knew that the Troika would never grant debt relief without some threat. (Why would they give to a populist government that had harshly criticized them a deal that they would not give to a subservient right-wing government?) Varoufakis’ threat was to leave the euro zone and establish a new currency.

Throughout the book, he is very clear that the goal was always staying in the euro. For an outsider following the negotiations closely at the time, this certainly seemed to be the case. However, he argued that the exit option was essential in order to force concessions from the Troika. His ranking of outcomes was always first, stay in the euro with debt relief, second leave the euro and unilaterally default, third stay in the euro and endure further austerity.

To jump to the finish, Greece ended up staying in the euro and enduring further austerity. In other words, it ended up with the worst option. In Varoufakis’ account this was due to the unwillingness of his government to be prepared to carry through on the threat to leave the euro. Without this threat, the country had no bargaining power and therefore no option other than further austerity.

The Exit Option: Was It a Real Threat?

To evaluate Varoufakis’ assessment it is worth asking about the motives of the Troika. One that he repeats several times is that debt relief would imply that the first two bailouts Greece had received had been a hoax. In effect these bailouts were about rescuing banks (mostly German and French) from their bad loans, not about helping Greece get back on a stable growth path.

Varoufakis is undoubtedly correct about the purpose of the bailouts, but governments have gotten very good at hiding the reasons for their actions from the public. Part of the Obama administration’s stimulus package was a first-time homebuyer’s tax credit. The credit almost immediately stopped the plunge in house prices as people rushed to get the $8,000 the government put on the table (myself included). However since the bubble had not yet fully deflated, house prices began plunging again in the summer of 2010 after the credit ended.

The tax credit had the effect of allowing the payoff of hundreds of billions in mortgages that likely would have gone bad if the house price decline continued. Many of these mortgages were in the hands of banks or privately issued mortgage backed securities. When the homes were sold the new mortgages were almost exclusively government backed, since the private securitization market was destroyed by the financial crisis. This little trick was especially pernicious since the temporary reversal in pricing was most pronounced at the bottom end of the market. In effect, the credit was a great way to get hundreds of thousands of moderate income households to buy into the bubble market before it fully deflated.

Virtually no one paid attention to this massive transfer of high risk debt from the private sector to the government through the tax credit and to this day even most careful followers of the crisis haven’t noticed this effect. It not plausible the reason for refusing a write-down of Greek debt was just to hide bailout loans. When it comes to public deception, Varoufakis was dealing masters of the art. These people certainly could have found some clever way of giving a backdoor debt write-down which would not require any acknowledgement of the purpose of the previous bailouts.

A second possible motive was to force labor market reforms on Greece and other countries in the euro zone. This was clearly a goal of the bailout packages, but it is not clear that it precluded debt forgiveness. Varoufakis even says that he offered to work out an acceptable package of labor market reforms with Schäuble, but he didn’t express any interest in pursuing the issue.

Perhaps Schäuble didn’t think he could come to any agreement with Varoufakis on the issue, but if labor market reform really topped his agenda, it’s hard to believe that Schäuble would not at least pursue a preliminary discussion on the topic. In this respect, it is worth noting that Emmanuel Macron, Varoufakis’s great French ally on the write-down issue, is putting labor reform front and center in his agenda as president of France.

The third reason, which Varoufakis hints at several times, is that if Germany agreed to a write-down for Greece, it would be pressed to do the same for Italy, Spain, and other heavily indebted countries. While Greece is small change in the context of the EU budget, Italy and Spain certainly are not, especially if both are seeking write-downs at the same time. Certainly Schäuble understood that he had to give the respectable politicians running other heavily indebted countries at least as good a deal as he gave to the scruffy radicals running Greece.

This one seems the most compelling. If we assume the governments of other euro zone countries are run by competent people, then there is no way that Schäuble could give any substantial debt reduction to Greece and keep it secret from them. If he allowed Greece to write down a substantial portion of its debt he would have to do the same with other countries. This would be real money. For this reason it is completely understandable that Schäuble would not want to give Greece a debt write-down; he would have to soon do the same with other troubled debtors.

Of course we have to take a step back and ask what would be the problem if the EU did make the money available to allow large-scale debt write-downs for all the heavily indebted countries. The ECB did have the money for even a major dose of debt forgiveness since after all it prints the stuff.

Whatever the economic reality might be, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that these people really don’t understand the basic economics. They may really believe that the euro zone was genuinely constrained in its ability to finance debt forgiveness. If this is the case, Schäuble’s refusal to seriously discuss terms with Varoufakis makes perfect sense.

There is another aspect to the issue that is worth considering. Varoufakis’s trump card was the threat to leave the euro. He is undermined in this threat by his prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who backs away from the threat when push comes to shove.

But suppose that Germany, and in particular Schäuble, didn’t care if Greece left the euro. Back in 2011, at the height of the crisis, Greece’s exit could well have led to the collapse of the euro. But by 2015 the markets had stabilized. ECB bank president Mario Draghi’s commitment to “do whatever it takes” to support the bonds of the countries in the euro zone had done its job. The interest rates on the non-Greece crisis countries had come down to very manageable levels. They likely felt that the euro could withstand a Grexit at that point, even if they might have preferred a compliant Greek government to accept their package.

If this is the case, then the threat to leave the euro was of little value. The real choice was accepting the bailout conditions and staying within the euro or taking the leap and leaving. Tsipras was elected on the agenda of ending the austerity and staying within the euro. If this was impossible, then the question was which of his commitments to the public he should break. He may have chosen the wrong one, but he really had no good choices from day one.

In this respect it is worth noting an issue that Veroufakis mentions in passing but doesn’t fully pursue in the book. As his meeting with various ministers and officials were proving fruitless, Veroufakis had an opportunity for a face to face meeting with Schäuble. At this meeting Schäuble explained that Greece really didn’t belong in the euro. He proposed an orderly departure, which he said could be a temporary time-out. This departure would come with a grace period on debt obligations and assistance in re-establishing its own currency.

It’s not clear if Schäuble was fully serious in putting this proposal on the table or that he had the backing of Angela Merkel to pursue it. However if debt forgiveness within the euro was not a possibility, this sort of orderly exit certainly would have been the best possible option. If there was any way Greece could have pushed forward along the lines Schäuble suggested to Varoufakis, this should have been his top priority. However his book suggests that he treated the proposal as a passing curiosity, not something that should distract him from his quest for a debt write-down within the euro.

There is one point that should jump out at any reader of this book. The title, “adults in the room” is a quote from I.M.F. managing director Christine Lagarde. It refers to the people with whom Varoufakis spent his six months negotiating. By contrast, he and his scruffy populist colleagues had questionable status in this world.

On this topic it is worth checking the scorecard. These are the people who controlled economic and financial policy as the world saw the growth of asset bubbles of unprecedented size. The collapse of these bubbles, coupled with the weak response of fiscal policy, and to a lesser extent monetary policy, cost the world tens of trillions of dollars of lost output. This translated into tens of millions of people needlessly going unemployed, millions losing their homes, and others going without access to health care or being denied the opportunity to get an education. (FWIW, the I.M.F. now projects that Greece’s primary budget surplus in the years ahead will be almost exactly the 1.5 percent of GDP offered by Varoufakis.)

The events of the last decade were a true disaster from which we have still not fully recovered. In a just world, the people who were responsible for this momentous failure would have been pushed out of their jobs. Instead, with few exceptions, the same group of people who led us into disaster are still the ones determining economic policy. These people may have considerable power, but that doesn’t make them adults.

Note: The description of the exchange with Summers has been corrected from an earlier version, which said we don’t know what he said to Summers.

For the Huffington Post site where this review was published, click here.

Germany needs a frank debate, not this tepid election campaign – Op-ed in Deutsche Welle

The Greek people are paying dearly for having been lulled into a false sense of security, writes former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. Germans, he says, are laboring under the same illusion today.

Complacency is a country’s worst enemy.  My compatriots were, once upon a time, lulled into a false sense of having “made it.” I very much fear that a majority of Germans feel their land is “doing fine.”

That the federal election campaign is proving such a tepid affair is a reflection of the false sense of security generated by Germany’s three surpluses: Companies save, households save, the Frankfurt banks are awash with monies sent to them from other European countries, even the federal government budget is in surplus. But these surpluses are the sign of weakness, not strength. They are the harbingers of significant current and future hardship for most Germans now and in the future.

Think about it for a minute: A current account surplus of almost 10% of national income means that the nation must take its savings and send it abroad to be invested in deficit countries. Is this a prudent thing to do, especially when German capital abroad is creating bubbles bound to burst (like they did in Greece and Spain)?

Also, how smart is it to rely on the money influx into the Frankfurt banks to cover up their insolvencies, especially when this tsunami of foreign monies is flooding Germany because their Italian or French owners are losing hope in their own countries’ economy? Finally, how rational is it for the federal Finance Ministry to celebrate a budget surplus that is due to the negative interest rates which (a) are crushing German pension funds and (b) causing the famed Swabian housewife to lose faith in the German political establishment?

Germany needs a frank debate among its citizens on how to deal with the threat that its surpluses are posing to German society, just as much as Greece needed a similar debate, some time ago, on the threat posed by our deficits. After all, for every surplus there must a deficit somewhere else within a monetary union. To have the political establishment celebrate imbalances as signs of economic health, just because Germany is blessed with their surplus side, is to misrepresent to the German public a source of troubles as evidence of success.

Taking a look at history, Germany rose to envy-of-the-world status as a result of a social contract that offered its working-class strong protection (and seats on the boards of directors of large companies) in exchange for a flexible, rule-bound, liberal environment in which business could get on with it. But this was only possible while the United States were managing the macroeconomic environment on behalf of Europe, and of course Germany. Alas, since the 2008 crisis, America can no longer perform this role and the German working-class experiences, year by year, day by day, the fragmentation of this protective shield. It is now up to Germany and the rest of us Europeans to construct a rational mechanism for recycling within Europe our deficits and surpluses. If we fail, Europe will fail, Germany will fail and civilisation will be imperilled.

Judging by the current pre-election debate, none of the parties of government are even interested in having this debate. Thankfully, there are many smart members of existing parties that recognise the importance of this re-orientation of German politics. The German members of DiEM25, our Democracy in Europe Movement, are working feverishly to bring about a coalescence of these political actors into a new political movement that puts on the agenda this central issue. It is what Germany needs. It is what Europe needs.

Yanis Varoufakis is a professor of economics at the University of Athens and co-founder of the DiEM25 group. He served as Greek finance minister in the first Syriza government from January to July 2015, leading his country’s negotiations with the EU over the Greek debt crisis. 

Click here for the original DW site.

For Europe’s sake, Britain must not be defeated – op-ed in The Sunday Times 10/9/2017

Britain must make a radical move if it is to avoid the snare set by Brussels, which wants Brexit to fail, writes Greece’s former finance minister

Yanis Varoufakis

September 10 2017, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Varoufakis arrives at a meeting in Athens while he was the Greek finance ministerGETTY

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Brussels’s cheerleading journalists are at it again. Their mission? To aid and abet the EU negotiators in winning the blame game over the failure of Brexit negotiations that Brussels is doing all it can to guarantee.

That Michel Barnier and his team have a mandate to wreck any mutually advantageous deal there is little doubt. The key term is “sequencing”. The message to London is clear: you give us everything we are asking for, unconditionally. Then and only then will we hear what you want.

This is what one demands if one seeks to ruin a negotiation in advance.

Ever since Theresa May embarked on her ill-conceived journey towards an ill-defined hard Brexit, I have been warning my friends in Britain of what lies ahead. The EU would not negotiate with London, I told them. Under the guise of negotiations it would force May and her team to expend all their energies negotiating for the right to . . . negotiate.

Meanwhile, its media cheerleaders would work feverishly towards demeaning London’s proposals, denigrating its negotiators and reversing the truth in ways that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of.

 

Right on cue came the leaks that followed the dinner that the prime minister hosted for Jean-Claude Juncker in 10 Downing Street on April 26 — their explicit purpose being to belittle their host. Then came the editorials by the usual suspects — the journalists that Brussels uses to leak its propaganda — deploring the “lack of preparation” by the British — using Berlin’s and Brussels’s favourite put-down that “they have not done their homework”.

As I promised on the day I resigned from Greece’s finance ministry, after my prime minister’s capitulation to that same Brussels-Berlin cabal, I wear their loathing with pride.

But I worry that Brussels and Berlin may succeed in damaging Britain, as they previously succeeded in damaging my people.

Reading between the lines, the message to London from the EU propaganda machine is fourfold:

The EU will not budge. Brussels’s worst nightmare is a mutually advantageous economic agreement that other Europeans may interpret as a sign that a mutiny against Europe’s establishment may be worthwhile. To ensure that there will be no such deal, Barnier and the European Commission have not been given a mandate to negotiate any concessions to Britain regarding future arrangements such as a free trade agreement.
Angela Merkel will not step in to save the day. The only national leader who is capable of intervening therapeutically did not do this for Greece and she will not do it for Britain.
London must not try to bypass the rule of EU law. Every time London makes a proposal, Brussels will reject it as either naive or in conflict with “the rule of EU law”; a legal framework for exiting so threadbare that it offers no guidance at all regarding the withdrawal of a member state from the union. In this light, when they speak of the “rule of law” what they really mean is the logic of brute force backed by their indifference to large costs inflicted on both sides of the English Channel.
Prepare your people for total capitulation — that is your only option.

None of this is new. It springs out of the EU playbook that was thrown at me during our 2015 negotiations. I had bent over backwards to compromise on a deal that was viable for Greece and beneficial to the rest of the eurozone. It was rejected because being seen to work with us risked giving ideas to the Spaniards, the Italians, indeed the French, that there was utility to be had from challenging the EU establishment.

To kill off any prospect of a mutually beneficial agreement, we were forced to negotiate with Barnier-like wooden bureaucrats lacking the mandate to negotiate, while Merkel turned a blind eye to the impending impasse. As for the “rule of law”, or the “rules” that German officials always appealed to, it was nothing but an empty shell that they filled with whatever directives suited them.

What can be done to prevent a capitulation that, in the end, would be bad for Britain and bad for Europe? Earlier this year I suggested that May accepts the impossibility of sensible negotiations with the EU. Once she accepts this, two options are available.

One option is to make the EU an offer it cannot afford, politically, to refuse. For example, request an off-the-shelf Norway-like (European Economic Area) agreement for an interim period of no less than seven years. Tactically, this would render redundant Barnier and his team; offer certainty for business, EU residents in Britain and Brits living in Europe; as well as allow Merkel to relax in the belief that the problem has been passed into the lap of her successor.

It would also serve the purpose of respecting Brexit, in the sense that Britain would leave the EU forthwith while restoring sovereignty to the House of Commons by giving MPs the space and the time fully to debate what future arrangements Britain wants to establish long-term with the EU.

The second option is the only one available if the immediate end of free movement and of the role of Europe’s courts in the UK is deemed paramount: unilaterally withdraw from all negotiations, leaving it to Brussels to come to London with a realistic offer regarding free trade and other matters.

If Brussels does not, it does not. While the EU is struggling to respond, the British government should grant British citizenship to all EU residents unconditionally, followed by a statement that secures the moral high ground: “We have no quarrel with Europeans. Indeed, we have just done what is right by EU citizens in the UK. Let us now see how our friends across the Channel behave.”

Of the two options, the first is immensely preferable. The second option will pile up great costs on British business, probably stir up renewed xenophobia and reinforce Europe’s reliance on authoritarian incompetence.

In contrast, the first option of a Norway-style interim arrangement gives parliament a genuine opportunity to debate Britain’s future without the eerie sound of a ticking clock in the background.

Maybe, by the time the interim transitional period that I propose has lapsed, the EU will be a democratic union that the people of Britain might want to rejoin. While the chances are slim, leaving that possibility open is a great source of desperately needed hope.

One of the reasons I opposed Brexit was that the UK would expend an inordinate amount of economic and political capital in pursuing withdrawal, ending up more intertwined with Brussels after Brexit than it was before.

In my view it was better to struggle against the EU’s anti-democratic establishment from within than from without. Alas, Britons were not persuaded by such arguments and voted to leave. As a democrat I respect their verdict, but fear that May will fall into the EU trap.

Meanwhile, Brussels’s cheerleaders are advising London to learn the wrong lessons from Greece.

The right lesson is to deny the EU the opportunity to wear Britain’s negotiators down until they capitulate. A Norway-style interim agreement or the immediate cessation of negotiations are the only two options.

As an Anglophile and a radical Europeanist I strongly support the former.

Yanis Varoufakis is co-founder of DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, and the author of Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment published by Bodley Head, £20

[Click here for the site to The Sunday Times]

In Brussels next Saturday 9/9? Come to the Bozar to discuss with DiEM25’s finest, plus guests including President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, the Real State of the European Union

The weekend before the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, delivers his official ‘State of the Union’ speech in Strasbourg, DiEM25 will be in Brussels, at the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, to open the lid on the real state of our European Union; and to discuss DiEM25′ plans for 2019 and beyond.

Featuring  former Ecuador President Rafael Correa, Jeff Sachs, Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, Philippe Legrain, Lorenzo Marsili, & Yanis Varoufakis, this two-hour event, in Brussels’ best theatre space (the Bozar) will address three questions:

“What is the state of play across Europe today?”




“What should Europeanists do in response to the real state of our Union?”




“What does DiEM25 propose to do over the next two years, leading to the European elections of 2019, and beyond?”

The event will take place at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, with DiEM25 co-founders Yanis Varoufakis and Srećko Horvat, and many others leading activists.

Tickets may be purchased from http://www.bozar.be/en/activities/131444-the-real-state-of-the-union

Cannot join us on the day? Help us by donating for the expenses of the event here:   https://internal.diem25.org/donations/to/brussels

 

The six Brexit traps that will defeat Theresa May – Guardian op-ed 3 May 2017

“It’s yours against mine.” That’s how Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, put it to me during our first encounter in early 2015 – referring to our respective democratic mandates.

A little more than two years later, Theresa May is trying to arm herself with a clear democratic mandate ostensibly to bolster her negotiating position with European powerbrokers – including Schäuble – and to deliver the optimal Brexit deal.

Already, the Brussels-based commentariat are drawing parallels: “Brits fallen for Greek fallacy that domestic vote gives you stronger position in Brussels. Other countries have voters too,” tweeted Duncan Robinson, Brussels correspondent of the Financial Times. “Yep,” tweeted back Miguel Roig, the Brussels correspondent of Spanish financial daily Expansión. “Varoufakis’ big miscalculation was to think that he was the only one in the Eurogroup with a democratic mandate.”

In truth, Brussels is a democracy-free zone. From the EU’s inception in 1950, Brussels became the seat of a bureaucracy administering a heavy industry cartel, vested with unprecedented law-making capacities. Even though the EU has evolved a great deal since, and acquired many of the trappings of a confederacy, it remains in the nature of the beast to treat the will of electorates as a nuisance that must be, somehow, negated. The whole point of the EU’s inter-governmental organisation was to ensure that only by a rare historical accident would democratic mandates converge and, when they did, never restrain the exercise of power in Brussels.

In June 2016, Britain voted, for better or for worse, for Brexit. May suddenly metamorphosed from a soft remainer to a hard Brexiteer. In so doing she is about to fall prey to an EU that will frustrate and defeat her, pushing her into either a humiliating climb-down or a universally disadvantageous outcome. When the Brussels-based group-thinking commentariat accuse Britain’s prime minister, without a shred of evidence, of overestimating the importance of a strong mandate, we need to take notice, for it reveals the determination of the EU establishment to get its way, as it did when I arrived on its doorstep, equipped with my mandate.

When I first went to Brussels and Berlin, as Greece’s freshly elected finance minister, I brought with me a deep appreciation of the clash of mandates. I said as much in a joint press conference with Schäuble in 2015, pledging that my proposals for an agreement between Greece and the EU would be “aimed not at the interest of the average Greek but at the interest of the average European”. A few days later, in my maiden speech at the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, I argued: “We must respect established treaties and processes without crushing the fragile flower of democracy with the sledgehammer that takes the form of statements such as ‘Elections do not change anything’.” May will, I presume, go to Brussels with a similar appreciation.

When Schäuble welcomed me with his “it is my mandate against yours” doctrine, he was honouring a long EU tradition of neglecting democratic mandates in the name of respecting them. Like all dangerous hypotheses, it is founded on an obvious truth: the voters of one country cannot give their representative a mandate to impose upon other governments conditions that the latter have no mandate, from their own electorate, to accept. But, while this is a truism, its incessant repetition by Brussels functionaries and political powerbrokers, such as Angela Merkel and Schäuble himself, is intended to convert it surreptitiously into a very different notion: no voters in any country can empower their government to oppose Brussels.

There is a long EU tradition of neglecting democratic mandates in the name of respecting them

For all their concerns with rules, treaties, processes, competitiveness, freedom of movement, terrorism etc, only one prospect truly terrifies the EU’s deep establishment: democracy. They speak in its name to exorcise it, and suppress it by six innovative tactics, as May is about to discover.

The EU runaround

Henry Kissinger famously quipped that when he wanted to consult Europe, he did not know whom to call. In my case it was worse. Any attempt to enter into a meaningful discussion with Schäuble was blocked by his insistence that I “go to Brussels” instead. Once in Brussels, I soon discovered that the commission was so divided as to make discussions futile. In private talks, Commissioner Moscovici would agree readily and with considerable enthusiasm with my proposals. But then his deputy in the so-called Eurogroup Working Group, Declan Costello, would reject all these ideas out of hand.

The uninitiated may be excused for thinking that this EU runaround is the result of incompetence. While there is an element of truth in this, it would be the wrong diagnosis. The runaround is a systemic means of control over uppity governments. A prime minister, or a finance minister, who wants to table proposals that the deep establishment of the EU dislike is simply denied the name of the person to speak to or the definitive telephone number to call. As for its apparatchiks, the EU runaround is essential to their personal status and power.

Picking opponents

From my first Eurogroup, its president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, began an intensive campaign to bypass me altogether. He would phone Alexis Tsipras, my prime minister, directly – even visiting him in his hotel room in Brussels. By hinting at a softer stance if Tsipras agreed to spare him from having to deal with me, Dijsselbloem succeeded in weakening my position in the Eurogroup – to the detriment, primarily, of Tsipras.

The Swedish national anthem routine

On the assumption that good ideas encourage fruitful dialogue and can be the solvents of impasse, my team and I worked hard to put forward proposals based on serious econometric work and sound economic analysis. Once these had been tested on some of the highest authorities in their fields, from Wall Street and the City to top-notch academics, I would take them to Greece’s creditors in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt. Then I would sit back and observe a symphony of blank stares. It was as if I had not spoken, as if there was no document in front of them. It would be evident from their body language that they denied the very existence of the pieces of paper I had placed before them. Their responses, when they came, would be perfectly independent of anything I had said. I might as well have been singing the Swedish national anthem. It would have made no difference.

The Penelope ruse

Delaying tactics are always used by the side that considers the ticking clock its ally. In Homer, Odysseus’ faithful wife, Penelope, fends off aggressive suitors in her husband’s absence by telling them that she will announce whom among them she will marry only after she has completed weaving a burial shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’ father. During the day she would weave incessantly but at night she would undo her work by pulling on a loose string.

In my negotiations in Brussels, the EU’s Penelope ruse consisted, primarily, of endless requests for data, for fact-finding missions to Athens, for information about every bank account held by every public organisation or company. And when they got the data, like the good Penelope, they would spend all night undoing the spreadsheets that they had put together during the day.

Truth reversal

While practising the Swedish national anthem and Penelope ruse tactics, the Brussels establishment utilised tweets, leaks and a campaign of disinformation involving key nodes in the Brussels media network to spread the word that I was the one wasting time, arriving at meetings empty-handed; either with no proposals at all or with proposals that lacked quantification, consisting only of empty ideological rhetoric.

Sequencing





The prerequisite for Greece’s recovery was, and remains, meaningful debt relief. No debt relief meant no future for us. My mandate was to negotiate, therefore, a sensible debt restructure. If the EU was prepared to do this, so as to get as much of their money back as possible, I was also prepared for major compromises. But this would require a comprehensive deal. But, no, Brussels and Berlin insisted that, first, I commit to the compromises they wanted and then, much later, we could begin negotiations on debt relief. The point-blank refusal to negotiate on both at once is, I am sure, a colossal frustration awaiting May when she seeks to compromise on the terms of the divorce in exchange for longer-term free trade arrangements.



So what can Theresa May do?

The only way May could secure a good deal for the UK would be by diffusing the EU’s spoiling tactics, while still respecting the Burkean Brexiteers’ strongest argument, the imperative of restoring sovereignty to the House of Commons. And the only way of doing this would be to avoid all negotiations by requesting from Brussels a Norway-style, off-the-shelf arrangement for a period of, say, seven years.

The benefits from such a request would be twofold: first, Eurocrats and Europhiles would have no basis for denying Britain such an arrangement. (Moreover, Schäuble, Merkel and sundry would be relieved that the ball is thrown into their successors’ court seven years down the track.) Second, it would make the House of Commons sovereign again by empowering it to debate and decide upon in the fullness of time, and without the stress of a ticking clock, Britain’s long-tem relationship with Europe.

The fact that May has opted for a Brexit negotiation that will immediately activate the EU’s worst instincts and tactics, for petty party-political reasons that ultimately have everything to do with her own power and nothing to do with Britain’s optimal agreement with the EU, means only one thing: she does not deserve the mandate that Brussels is keen to neutralise.

This is an adapted extract from Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment by Yanis Varoufakis published by The Bodley Head.

To order a copy for £15 (RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Ο Μακρόν στα (νέα) δίχτυα του Σόιμπλε – ΕφΣυν 2/9/2017

Ο Εμανουέλ Μακρόν, από τη στιγμή που φάνηκε ικανός να κερδίσει την Προεδρία της Γαλλικής Δημοκρατίας, αντιμετωπίστηκε από το Βερολίνο ως, ταυτόχρονα, θείο δώρο και μεγάλη απειλή.

Θείο δώρο ήταν, αναμφισβήτητα, ως η τελευταία ελπίδα του βαθέος κατεστημένου να υποστηρίξει ότι ο εθνικολαϊκισμός (που έφερε το Brexit και μια σειρά από ακροδεξιές εξάψεις, π.χ. σε Ολλανδία και Αυστρία) αναχαιτίστηκε αποφασιστικά στη Γαλλία. Με την εμφατική νίκη του Μακρόν επί της Λεπέν απεφεύχθη όχι μόνο το τέλος της Μέρκελ (στην οποία θα χρέωναν οι δικοί της την απώλεια της Γαλλίας και της Ε.Ε.,) αλλά και η εκκίνηση μιας διαδικασίας εντός της Ομοσπονδιακής Δημοκρατίας για Gerxit – για τη σταδιακή απαγκίστρωση της Γερμανίας από την ευρωζώνη, που έτσι κι αλλιώς θα αποδομείτο μετά από μια νίκη της Λεπέν, και ίσως από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ενωση.

Η νίκη του ευρωπαϊστή φιλελεύθερου Μακρόν επί της Λεπέν ήταν, συνεπώς, θεόσταλτη για το Βερολίνο, ιδίως δεδομένου ότι ο Μακρόν δημοσίως διακήρυττε την προσήλωσή του στη γερμανική συνταγή για απορρύθμιση των εργασιακών δικαιωμάτων των Γάλλων εργαζόμενων.

Σύμφωνα με την πρόταση Μακρόν, τα κοινά κονδύλια θα δαπανούνταν από την κοινή μας, ομοσπονδιακή, αρχή άμεσα και άνευ όρων | AP / JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT

Παράλληλα, όμως, ο Μακρόν αντιπροσώπευε και θανάσιμη απειλή. Το σχέδιο του Σόιμπλε για την ευρωζώνη, το οποίο ποτέ δεν αμφισβήτησε η Μέρκελ, μπορεί να συμπεριληφθεί σε μία φράση που τον έχω ακούσει να λέει με τα αυτιά μου – όχι μία φορά αλλά δις: «Θέλω την τρόικα στο Παρίσι!»

Το σκεπτικό του Σόιμπλε που κρύβεται πίσω από τη φράση εκείνη είναι απλό: Δεδομένου ότι, στα μάτια του γερμανικού κατεστημένου, μια πραγματική ομοσπονδία δεν είναι εφικτή, το αντίτιμο που πρέπει να καταβάλει το Παρίσι στο Βερολίνο για να συνεχίσει να χρησιμοποιεί το μάρκο (του οποίου το ευρώ, κακά τα ψέματα, δεν είναι παρά μια μεταμφίεση) είναι η παραχώρηση του ελέγχου του γαλλικού κρατικού προϋπολογισμού, τον οποίο θα ασκεί για πάρτη του Βερολίνου η… τρόικα. Μέσα από το πρίσμα αυτό, ο Μακρόν αποτελούσε απειλή επειδή στόχευε να χρησιμοποιήσει την αύρα της εκλογικής του νίκης ώστε να αναχαιτίσει το σχέδιο Σόιμπλε κρατώντας την τρόικα μακριά από το Παρίσι.

Ας τα πάρουμε όμως τα πράγματα, σχεδόν, από την αρχή: Το Βερολίνο κάποτε ήθελε (συμπεριλαμβανομένου και του Σόιμπλε) τη μετεξέλιξη της ευρωζώνης σε ομοσπονδία, με ομόσπονδο υπουργείο Οικονομικών, κοινό ομοσπονδιακό χρέος κ.λπ. Αυτό όμως σε θεωρητικό επίπεδο. Στην πράξη, Σόιμπλε, Μέρκελ αλλά και λοιπές κατεστημενικές δυνάμεις (π.χ. η κυρίαρχη τάση των σοσιαλδημοκρατών και, βεβαίως, το Κόμμα των Φιλελεύθερων Δημοκρατών) δεν εμπιστεύονται το Παρίσι και τη Ρώμη φοβούμενοι ότι, στον δρόμο προς μια ομοσπονδία, οι γαλλικές και ιταλικές ολιγαρχίες θα εκμεταλλεύονταν την ευκαιρία ώστε να φορτώσουν τεράστιο παθητικό στους ώμους της κυοφορούμενης ομοσπονδίας – το οποίο τελικά παθητικό θα επωμιστεί η Γερμανία.

Ο Σόιμπλε πρότεινε τη μετεξέλιξη του Ευρωπαϊκού Μηχανισμού Στήριξης (ΕΜΣ) σε Ευρωπαϊκό Νομισματικό Ταμείο (ΕΝΤ), ώστε τα κονδύλια να συνοδεύονται από… μνημόνια | EPA / FELIPE TRUEBA

Ως αποτέλεσμα, ομολογούν κατ’ ιδίαν Γερμανοί αξιωματούχοι, αυτό που προέχει για το Βερολίνο είναι ο έλεγχος των κρατικών προϋπολογισμών Γαλλίας και Ιταλίας απ’ ευθείας, και με απόλυτο τρόπο (δηλαδή με δικαίωμα βέτο).

Καθώς αυτό δεν είναι εφικτό ούτε πολιτικά ούτε και επικοινωνιακά, τείνουν προς την αμέσως καλύτερη, για αυτούς, λύση: την τρόικα στο Παρίσι! Πιο συγκεκριμένα, το σχέδιο Σόιμπλε, που έχει αποδεχθεί επί της ουσίας όλο το γερμανικό πολιτικό φάσμα Χριστιανοδημοκρατών (CDU-CSU)-Σοσιαλδημοκρατών (SDP)-Ελεύθερων Δημοκρατών (FDP), προβλέπει τη θεσμοθέτηση του προέδρου του Eurogroup ως κομισάριου της ευρωζώνης με το δικαίωμα, άνευ δεύτερης συζήτησης ή διαπραγμάτευσης, να ασκεί βέτο στους κρατικούς μας προϋπολογισμούς, και με τον πρόεδρο του EuroWorkingGroup -το οποίο αποτελεί πεδίον δόξης λαμπρόν για τα στελέχη της τρόικας- να επιτηρεί το Παρίσι, όπως σήμερα την Αθήνα.

Γνωρίζω καλά ότι ο Εμανουέλ Μακρόν ήταν γνώστης του σχεδίου αυτού, το οποίο μάλιστα έχει χαρακτηρίσει ως κήρυξη ενός νέου «θρησκευτικού πολέμου» μεταξύ Γερμανίας και Γαλλίας – αναφερόμενος στον εκατονταετή πόλεμο καθολικών-διαμαρτυρομένων. Πολύ πριν αναδειχθεί πρόεδρος της Γαλλικής Δημοκρατίας, σκεφτόταν τον βέλτιστο τρόπο αντίδρασης της Γαλλίας στο γερμανικό σχέδιο για μια ευρωζώνη-σιδερένιο κλουβί, με βασικό έγκλειστο το Παρίσι.

Αντίθετα με τον Ολάντ, ο Μακρόν είχε καταλάβει ότι, το 2015, το Βερολίνο πάσχισε να κατακρεουργήσει την Ελληνική Ανοιξη ως πρόβα τζενεράλε για την εφαρμογή του σχεδίου αυτού. Ετσι, κατέληξε στο δικό του σχέδιο αποτροπής του βερολινέζικου σχεδίου: να απαιτήσει τη δημιουργία κοινού, ομοσπονδιακού προϋπολογισμού, από τον οποίο θα προέκυπταν κονδύλια για επενδύσεις και επιδόματα ανεργίας, με αντάλλαγμα τις γερμανικής έμπνευσης αντεργατικές «μεταρρυθμίσεις» στην αγορά εργασίας της Γαλλίας.

Για το Βερολίνο αυτή η πρόταση θεωρείται απαράδεκτη και έπρεπε να καταρριφθεί φλεγόμενη αλλά, παράλληλα, και με τακτ – δεδομένου ότι ο Μακρόν, που την καταθέτει, είναι τόσο χρήσιμος στο γερμανικό κατεστημένο.

Ο λόγος διττός: Πρώτον, το Βερολίνο εξακολουθεί να μην εμπιστεύεται ότι η γαλλική ελίτ και η ιταλική κλεπτοκρατία δεν θα εκμεταλλευτούν τη διαδικασία ομοσπονδοποίησης ώστε να φορτώσουν τεράστιες ζημίες στον Γερμανό φορολογούμενο. Και, δεύτερον, επειδή το Βερολίνο συνειδητοποίησε, ιδίως από τότε που ξέσπασε η κρίση του ευρώ, ότι η μετατροπή της ευρωζώνης σε ομοσπονδία θα συρρίκνωνε τη σημερινή απόλυτη κυριαρχία της Γερμανίας καθώς μια δημοκρατικά εκλεγμένη ομοσπονδιακή κυβέρνηση δεν θα ελεγχόταν τόσο αποτελεσματικά όσο το Eurogroup – δεδομένου ότι το γερμανικό εκλογικό σώμα αποτελεί μειοψηφία (κάτω του 30%) ενός ομοσπονδιακού εκλεκτορικού σώματος.

Το μέγα πρόβλημα που αντιμετώπιζε το Βερολίνο τους τελευταίους δύο μήνες ήταν πώς να απορρίψει την πρόταση του Μακρόν για ομοσπονδοποίηση, χωρίς να τον εξευτελίσει ή να τον υπονομεύσει ανοιχτά. Τη λύση έδωσε ο κ. Σόιμπλε, με πρόσφατη τακτικιστική του πρόταση. Με στόχο να φανεί ότι πηγαίνει με τα νερά του Μακρόν, την ώρα που τορπιλίζει τις προτάσεις του με εξαιρετική βιαιότητα και ακρίβεια, ο Σόιμπλε πρότεινε τη μετεξέλιξη του Ευρωπαϊκού Μηχανισμού Στήριξης (ΕΜΣ) σε Ευρωπαϊκό Νομισματικό Ταμείο (ΕΝΤ).

Για να δείξει ότι συμμερίζεται τις αγωνίες του Μακρόν, π.χ. την αίσθηση ανάγκης για ένα κοινό ταμείο από το οποίο θα προκύπτουν κονδύλια για την ενίσχυση των ανέργων αλλά και επενδύσεις, ο Σόιμπλε πρότεινε o ΕΜΣ-ΕΝΤ να μπορεί να χρηματοδοτεί, ιδίως σε περιόδους ύφεσης, άμεσες επενδύσεις και επιδόματα ανεργίας στις χώρες που έχουν πληγεί περισσότερο.

Φαινομενικά, η πρόταση Σόιμπλε δεν διαφέρει πολύ από του Μακρόν – καθώς κοινό χρέος, και στις δύο περιπτώσεις (είτε μέσω του ΕΜΣ-ΕΝΤ είτε μέσα από έναν ομοσπονδιακό προϋπολογισμό), θα διοχετεύεται ως επενδύσεις και επιδόματα στις ελλειμματικές χώρες, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της Γαλλίας. Ομως, αν τη δούμε προσεκτικότερα, η πρόταση Σόιμπλε διαφέρει όπως η μέρα με τη νύχτα από εκείνη του Μακρόν. Πράγματι, μια σύντομη ματιά στο καταστατικό και στη λειτουργία του ΕΜΣ αρκεί για να διακρίνει κανείς σε τι στοχεύει ο Σόιμπλε με την πρότασή του.

Αν γινόταν αποδεκτή η πρόταση Μακρόν, τα κοινά κονδύλια θα δαπανούνταν από την κοινή μας, ομοσπονδιακή, αρχή άμεσα και άνευ όρων – όπως ακριβώς η ομοσπονδιακή κυβέρνηση των ΗΠΑ δαπανά κονδύλια στην Αριζόνα ή στο Αϊντάχο χωρίς να θέτει όρους στις πολιτειακές κυβερνήσεις. Σε αντίθεση, υπό το σχέδιο Σόιμπλε, τα κονδύλια θα πήγαιναν από τον ΕΜΣ στα κράτη-μέλη. Πώς θα συνέβαινε αυτό;

Κατ’ αρχάς, να σημειώσουμε ότι το διοικητικό συμβούλιο του ΕΜΣ, που θα λαμβάνει αυτές τις αποφάσεις, έχει ακριβώς την ίδια σύνθεση με το… Eurogroup και πρόεδρός του είναι ο πρόεδρος του Eurogroup. Δεύτερον, απαράβατος όρος για να δοθεί έστω κι ένα ευρώ σε κράτος-μέλος της ευρωζώνης από τον ΕΜΣ είναι η υπογραφή Μνημονίου και η συνεχής αξιολόγηση της εφαρμογής του από το EuroWorkingGroup, δηλαδή την τρόικα.

Εν συντομία, ακόμα κι αν ο ΕΜΣ διαθέσει κάποια ποσά σε ελλειμματικές χώρες για επενδύσεις ή για επιδόματα ανεργίας, ουσιαστικά θα έχει τεθεί υπό τη βαριά μπότα της τρόικας κι ενός Μνημονίου. Να πώς ο Βόλφγκανγκ Σόιμπλε έλυσε τον γρίφο τού πώς, από τη μία, να φανεί ότι πηγαίνει με τα νερά του Μακρόν, ενώ, από την άλλη, να εφαρμόσει κατά γράμμα το σχέδιό του για την «τρόικα στο Παρίσι».

Τις τελευταίες εβδομάδες φαίνεται ότι εντός της γαλλικής προεδρίας επικρατούν οι γραφειοκράτες που επέλεξε ο Μακρόν να τον περιβάλλουν, απομονώνοντας πολιτικούς του συμβούλους και συνεργάτες με τους οποίους είχαν κάνει τον σχεδιασμό των προτάσεών του για ομόσπονδη λύση. Η νέα προεδρική αυλή, μαθαίνω, ωθεί τον Γάλλο πρόεδρο προς την αποδοχή της πρότασης Σόιμπλε.

Αν τελικά κυριαρχήσουν, ο Εμανουέλ θα έχει πέσει άδοξα, και πολύ γρήγορα, στα δίχτυα του εντιμότατου δρος Σόιμπλε. Και το χειρότερο; Οι μεγάλοι κερδισμένοι θα είναι η Λεπέν κι όλοι εκείνοι που καραδοκούν για να ενισχυθεί ο ξενοφοβικός εθνικισμός σε όλη την Ευρώπη.