EU summit
Stopgap summit outcome creates new uncertainty and fails to respond to immediate crisis
Commenting on the outcome of the EU summit on economic governance and the Euro crisis, Greens/EFA co-presidents Rebecca Harms and Dany Cohn-Bendit said:
“This stopgap outcome has prevented summit failure but the proposed intergovernmental treaty raises as many new questions as it answers. In terms of responding to the immediate sovereign debt and credit crisis, the summit is a fiasco, with EU leaders totally failing to deliver the necessary emergency financial backstop to extinguish the fire facing Eurozone sovereigns.
"While it is clear that the UK's unrealistic demands could not be acceded to, the new proposed treaty represents the ultimate failure of the flawed intergovernmental approach to the crisis over the past two years. Quite apart from the legal uncertainty that will ensue from a new treaty, any new mechanism outside the EU treaty, from which the directly-elected European Parliament is excluded, will lack democratic legitimacy. The Greens will now push for the European Parliament to come forward with alternative proposals on treaty change to provide for a Euro based on stability and solidarity, and will use all available legal instruments to ensure the democratic process and the role of the parliament is respected.
"It is astounding that EU leaders continue to keep their heads in the sand as regards the immediate sovereign debt and credit crisis. With Italy and Spain facing considerable refinancing needs in the near future, a credible and commensurate backstop is needed to ward off the circling wolves in the sovereign debt markets. Instead, EU leaders have delivered yet another insufficient fudge. Not only are the proposed IMF contributions not enough, relying on the IMF as a backstop is the ultimate symptom of the failure to deliver an EU response. Supporting the ECB to back-up the Euro, granting the EFSF-ESM a banking license, with a view to ultimately creating a system of Eurobonds, is the only path that will draw a line under the crisis once-and-for-all. This summit's failure means we will return to the same debate as soon as January."
