International

With our campaign ‘The Talons of Europe’, the SP is trying to expose the fact that on 24th June Dutch Premier Mark Rutte, during the meeting of the European Council (the heads of EU governments), will actually transfer powers to Brussels in the areas of wage policy, pensions and state spending . He may have stated the opposite, but if you read the papers you’ll know better. Even this, however, can’t be compared to the misleading statements of Finance MInister Jan Kees de Jager: scarcely a year ago, he said that loans to Greece were a useful investment from which we would even make a profit. And now he threatens hell-fire and doom if we don’t fork out again. It’s high time that this cabinet learnt that you, the voter, can’t be led repeatedly up the garden path. When it comes to Europe, at least, this government excels at half truths and misleading remarks, to the extent that it has in my opinion lost all credibility.

This week the business daily, Het Financieel Dagblad laid the whole thing out. What did De Jager say a year ago when he wanted to persuade us of the need to lend €110 billion to Greece, of which €4.7 billion would come from the Netherlands? “The Greeks will pay everything back….That’s the firmest guarantee I can give” and “we’ll even earn money from this.” Of all this tough talk nothing remains: the Greek economy has collapsed and the country is as good as bankrupt. So the European Union passes the hat round again and De Jager plays along: if we don’t help Greece now, disaster will follow, because – yes, here we go again – banks could fail and we will see a new financial crisis.

When it comes to giving a loan within the already agreed amount of €110 billion, the damage will be limited and no new obligations will be created. But this loan is only enough to last through 2012. From 2013 a supplementary loan would have to be extended and sums of up to around €60 billion are now being touted. According to De Jager, that will also, once again, be a good investment, but in my view it would be throwing good money after bad, into a bottomless pit.