Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

I am sharing time with Deputy Stephen Donnelly.

The meeting of European Union leaders on Thursday and Friday will be the 20th meeting since the eurozone crises started in earnest in Greece in early 2010. Since then, the political and economic ruling classes within the European Union have floundered in the face of a catastrophic crisis of their system. The abject failure of the political leadership in the European Union to find a solution arises, of course, from the failure of Europe's major capitalists to overcome the contradiction within their economic system. It is a system through which a tiny corporate elite, including the speculators in the financial markets, rules.

The abject failure of European political and economic leaders is most horrifically expressed in the fact that 17 million people are currently unemployed in the eurozone and an horrific 27 million people are unemployed in the European Union. The youth in Europe are the foremost casualties of mass unemployment, with an unprecedented level of over 50% in Spain alone. The President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, is to present a report to the EU summit this week, including what he says is a vision that can best contribute to growth, jobs and stability. Unfortunately, it is a mammoth contradiction to speak of growth, jobs and stability on the one hand and, on the other, to continue to implement a savage regime of austerity, which is designed to salvage the capitalist economic and financial system, particularly the financial markets, from the crisis on the backs of the ordinary working class people of Europe.

How disastrous austerity is for the working class, the poor, the youth and the pensioners of Europe is seen most graphically in Greece where, most tragically, society is being destroyed. To satisfy the bondholders, people in Greece are being driven into penury. Children are hungry in the classrooms while workers, both manual and professional, queue for soup kitchens. Tragically, the suicide rate has shot to the highest in Europe as people see no way out. Greece is being pauperised and turned into a country with what used to be described as Third World conditions. This is happening in the European Union, whose leadership used to lecture us and boast about what a model of solidarity the European Union was.

The Taoiseach talks about getting investment flowing in the real economy. In reality, he is looking to corporate Europe for investment. He referred to an increase of €10 billion to the European Investment Bank's capital, which will leverage a further €60 billion. He then mentioned a figure, and we do not know where it comes from, of €180 billion in investment, which is relying on the corporate private sector. The Taoiseach has not been reading the financial press. If he had been, he would have seen striking articles in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal on the fact that the proportionate rate of investment to gross domestic product in Europe is at a 60 year low. Within the eurozone €2 trillion lies uninvested by major corporations. They are uninvested profits because the corporations are not confident that they can make further profit if they invest. That is €2 trillion that could and should be invested in massive job creating enterprises, major and necessary infrastructure and services that would take millions of workers from the unemployment wasteland and put them into productive employment, remaking and regenerating our society.

What is the Government's approach to corporate profits? It says that corporations have a sacred right to make whatever profits they wish and to do anything they wish. It will not even consider further taxation. The Irish Government, pathetically, will not even support a tiny tax on speculation in the financial markets, the financial transaction tax. We should have an emergency tax, of at least 50%, on the €2 trillion of uninvested profits lying in corporate cash hoards throughout the eurozone. It should go into investment in job creation, rebuilding society and creating hope for young people and people who are under so much pressure at present. What Herman van Rompuy's document promises, in fact, is even more draconian regimes than covered by the austerity treaty we debated over the last few months. It is clear that the central agenda is to give the markets what they want once again; what is being acceded to is their agenda. It is more austerity to bleed more from the ordinary people of Europe to satisfy the greed of the bondholders and the speculators. Unfortunately, the Irish Government falls on its face in front of this agenda and the financial markets. Ongoing austerity to bleed the resources of society to feed the bondholders and the speculators is what Mr. Von Rumpuy is proposing rather than any fundamental break or plans of growth and investment.

On 19 May The Independent newspaper in Britain carried a banner headline on its front page - "Capitalism at a Crossroads" - referring to a global crisis of this system. It is critical and clear that an alternative to this disastrously failed system is desperately needed. We need socialist policies, socialist planning and a socialist alternative to replace the chaos of the financial market system, with policies that put human beings at the centre of society before private profit. The working class people in France, Greece and many other countries have shown by their actions, movements and votes in recent months that they want an alternative, and their power must be used to mobilise to change society rather than relying on yet another meeting of floundering EU leaders.

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