Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Okay. I wish first to denounce the handling of these crucial European Union issues in Dáil Éireann. The way the Government has approached the debate is scandalously inadequate. The European Communities (Amendment) Bill 2012 has had approximately four hours of discussion today and, incredibly, the European Stability Mechanism Bill has been allocated approximately four and a half hours tomorrow. This is incredible, given the serious import of these issues. The establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, ESM, and what it means for the citizens of member states are questions that should be addressed in significant detail. It is incredible, reckless and negligent of the Government to railroad the ESM through Dáil Éireann in the form of these two Bills in seven or eight hours. Had we had a debate on these issues during the course of the recent referendum campaign on the fiscal austerity treaty, it would have been a preparation ahead of finalising the debate in Dáil Éireann. Unfortunately, that was denied us as well because the Government refused to engage on the substance of the fiscal austerity treaty. Instead, it browbeat us with the threat of no funding being available to the State in the event of emergency funding being required unless we passed the austerity treaty. Although the gun to the head was couched in terms of access to the ESM, we did not get a chance to discuss the whys and wherefores of the workings of the ESM itself. Instead of the type of elucidation that could have occurred in the recent debate, the majority of ordinary people in this State have been let down badly by the Government.

The European Communities (Amendment) Bill 2012 provides for the implementation in domestic law of protocols relating to extra MEPs, but the provision with which we are most concerned is the European Council decision amending Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, including the creation of the ESM for the eurozone. The United Left Alliance, ULA, opposes the current way in which the ESM is structured and will be used. Since the Bill facilitates the establishment of the ESM, we oppose the Bill as well. We do not oppose the idea of a solidarity fund were it for the benefit of the ordinary people of Europe, but the ESM is not that fund. Rather, it is a fund to bail out and underpin the financial market system so that the latter can continue to exploit the majority of people and be an economic dictatorship over society, wielding inordinate power through unelected and faceless institutions and forces that are unaccountable to most ordinary people within the EU.

Be it in the US or Europe, everything that has been done by the political establishment since the financial crisis struck four or five years ago has been in the interests of the sharks who dominate the financial market system - the banks, hedge funds and various speculators. The European political and economic establishment has reinforced the situation, with the troika arriving on our shores to ensure that the significant burden of bad gambling debts that were incurred by European speculators was placed on the shoulders of the Irish people. Therefore, the establishment of the ESM as an emergency fund, potentially with a budget of €700 billion, is simply what happened to our people writ large across the participating states.

This Bill proposes the facilitation of the inclusion in domestic law of the amendment to Article 136 to allow the ESM to be established. The amendment is being made to square the mechanism's establishment with Article 125 of the same treaty, which strictly forbids bailouts and member states financing one another. Article 125 was no barrier to the European establishment when it wished to move rapidly to salvage its system through the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility, EFSF, which will continue in existence until the middle of next year.

It is clear that the amendment of Article 136 to allow for the ESM is an amendment of a fundamental treaty of the EU and requires unanimity among member states. Therefore, the ABC of it means that each state has a veto on the matter. Unfortunately, this point was not allowed to be clarified during the referendum debate because doing so would not have suited the Government's purpose. Clarification would have emphasised the truth that the Government had a veto over the changing of Article 136, but the Government wanted to use the blackmail clause, that is, the requirement that the austerity treaty be ratified and passed to allow access to the ESM. It was gravely dishonest to the Irish people to deny the fact that, in the event of a "No" vote, what was supposedly their Government could have told the EU that the latter would need to remove the blackmail clause if it wanted to proceed without its ESM plans being halted. The Government denied that this was possible and, in so doing, did a considerable democratic disservice to our people. The conduct of the austerity treaty campaign was scandalous in general, with the Government feeding fear at every turn. Hence, this rushed two-day discussion in Dáil Éireann minus a proper airing of the issue.

The Government is rushing the legislation through and, as usual, is being dragged along in the slipstream of the political and economic establishment of the EU and the largest political group in the European Parliament, namely, the European People's Party, EPP, to which Fine Gael is affiliated. Its economic policy is very right wing and neo-liberal and, accordingly, has a malign influence in the European Union, particularly through the agency of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, as the main policy dictating the economic measures in this State and across Europe. The European Stability Mechanism, ESM, is a fund not to benefit the ordinary people of Europe or to assist small enterprises which could employ millions across Europe. It is about salvaging the markets and banking system as we know them. This is a continuation of the process of the previous 20 years of what is called the financialisation of world capitalism where finance capital has come to have an inordinate predominance over manufacturing capital and other aspects to create the type of casino capitalism that has brought us the disaster into which the world is still plunged.

This has meant a savage austerity is now inflicted on working class people and the poor in many European countries. The Greek working class is being crucified in the name of bailing out the financial system, as indeed are our people. I heard a Member speaking earlier, along with much comment in the media, of the need to move to fiscal union to save the euro and the present system. Fiscal union on the basis of capitalism in the European Union is a pipe dream. It will never happen because the national interest of the big businesses and financial institutions in each member state will come between that. Europe is 150 or 200 years too late to establish some sort of a federal system as in the United States of America.

There is the socialist alternative. Several striking articles in The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times in March referred to the incredible amounts of uninvested profits that are being hoarded by European corporations. The ratio of investment to gross domestic product in Europe is at a 60 year low. Why? It is because companies sit on €2 trillion in uninvested profits across the eurozone and £750 billion in the United Kingdom. This is an incredible failure of the system. Massive funds sitting in banks, speculating etc. while 25 million people are unemployed in the European Union. The alternative to that is not the bailout of the financial market system as envisaged in the ESM. The socialist alternative is that this wealth should be taxed massively or taken into public ownership, like the major financial institutions, and run democratically in the interests of the greater good. This alternative is the only system that will get us out of this appalling vista of austerity which brings about more crisis and suffering. A socialist planned economy under a workers' democracy could bring a genuine international perspective and a genuine sharing based on solidarity with the peoples of Europe. On the basis of the present system, that is absolutely ruled out. In no way does this Bill reflect the interests of ordinary people in this country or in Europe. Accordingly, we are opposing it.

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