International

In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the EU is creaking at the joints. Support for it is crumbling away. And what are the banks doing? Engaging former president of the European Commission Jose Barroso as the new man at Goldman Sachs. At the same time a ‘top economist’ from Deutsche Bank is implying that the EU tax payer will have to fork out €150 billion to rescue the Italian banks, or the crisis will threaten to spill over to the rest of Europe. How dare they? For the banks it’s apparently ‘business as usual’, but they must have reckoned without the popular fury which is rising to boiling point in almost every member state and which could lead, if things continue in this way, to the end of this European Union.

For ex-Commissioners there exist clear agreed rules: for eighteen months following their departure they may take on no functions bearing on policy areas for which they were responsible during their term of office at the Commission. After that period they are still required to consider questions of integrity and the general interest. Yet for former Dutch Commissioner for Competition Policy Nellie Kroes this was no reason not to go to work for online transport corporation Uber. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, former Commission president Jose Barroso announced this week that he was taking up a post at Goldman Sachs, the bank which was directly involved in the cause of the financial crisis, the bank also which was happy to extend cheap loans to Greece because there were profits to be made. This was the bank which merrily took part in issuing false financial packages with mortgages which could never be repaid. In short, this is the bank which can be blamed for the millions of people who are unemployed in the EU. At this point words fail me.

But things could get even crazier. David Folkerts-Landau, a so-called ‘top economist’ at Deutsche Bank, wrote in today’s German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, that taxpayers’ money simply must be pumped into the banks yet again. Without this is would be impossible to rescue the Italian banks and if the banks there fail, others will follow suit. Would we not be spared this kind of shock with the new banking union? Wouldn’t we have rules that the first parties to provide the necessary finance would be the shareholder s and major investors, before any possible call could be made on the community’s money? And would there not in addition be a fund to which the banks themselves would contribute in order to spare the taxpayer? Evidently these were all no more than fine words and it will be ordinary people, if it’s up to this ‘top economist’, who will once again have to foot the bill.

Anyone who, in the wake of the Brexit referendum, thinks that Europe’s public will carry on putting up with all of this, must be completely blind and deaf to reality. The SP wants to see rapid transformation of the EU and the entire European Commission sent packing once and for all. If there are still people who doubt the logic of our proposals, the bankers have now provided the strongest evidence that the European Commission in its present from simply isn’t fit for purpose. Frans Timmermans can have as many fits of temper as he likes, but one banker says more than a thousand words from that Commissioner.