Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Any analysis of the most recent EU leaders' summit must be done against the background of yesterday's OECD report on the world economy which showed the eurozone plunging into recession. It indicated that the eurozone economy will contract by 0.4% in 2012 and another 0.1% in 2013. Furthermore, the OECD commented that diverging financial conditions and the debt crisis threatens to pull the eurozone apart. The threat is in no way lessened by the arrangement arrived at by the Eurogroup of Ministers on the Greek economic crisis and Greek debt. The alleged easing of debt pressure on Greece in fact makes a mockery of the Greek people - crucified by vicious austerity to satisfy international bondholders, their society has been pressed to the very limits of endurance. Now we have a proposal that merely recognises the impossibility of Greece ever paying its unsustainable debt but maintaining most of that debt burden and the crushing austerity on the shoulders of the Greek people that goes with it. The fate of Greece is like a man plunged into a lake with a millstone tied around his neck and concrete blocks to his ankles. As he sinks inexorably to the bottom the eurozone Ministers jump in and cut the concrete weights and tell him to swim with the millstone still in place.

The EU summit has not even recognised the depth of the crisis in the eurozone. The President of the EU Council, Herman Van Rompuy, outlined in a post-summit statement: "Everybody also agrees on another point: This must be a budget for growth. A budget that focuses on jobs, on innovation, on research." That is insulting lip service to the tens of millions of European citizens suffering the dreadful consequences of the disastrous austerity agenda driven by Mr. Van Rompuy and the EU establishment. It is a mockery of the 25 million people suffering unemployment in the European Union, including millions of young people. It is a continuation of the smothering economic policy of austerity.

European capitalism is a sick and dysfunctional system. European big business currently sits on €3 trillion of accumulated profits which it refuses to invest in creating new production and jobs because it is not confident of getting sufficient further profit in return.

Investment is the motor force of capitalist development. This strike of capital dooms that system to ever-deepening crisis, shows no way out of the economic depths and condemns the working people and the poor of Europe to further unemployment and poverty. As evidenced by the recent summit, the EU political establishment is a mere onlooker as this process takes place, a mere creature of European big business and the financial markets. It is and will be helpless as the crisis develops, because this system inevitably will force Greece out of the eurozone. With its unsustainable debt, Ireland will most likely follow in the future.

On 14 November tens of millions of workers in Greece, Spain and Portugal went on strike against austerity, demanding strategies of investment and jobs. European workers are realising they can rely only on their own power to force change in policy. A socialist approach would be that the financial markets, rather than being dictatorships over our economy and our people, should be taken into public ownership and democratic control, offering investment based on the needs of society. It is the same with the massive resources on which big business is sitting at the present time. On this basis, a democratic plan for investment in production would create the tens of millions of jobs that are needed, boost the public services, create a future for youth and a decent future and security for the peoples of Europe. That is the way we must go, not relying on the EU elites as they sit in Brussels at their very frequent summits.

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