DiEM25’s message to Berlin and Frankfurt

Italy’s banks are in free fall because the Eurozone has created a banking union in name in order to violate the principle in practice. Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Europe’s oldest bank, is the one clearly under stress. But it is not the only one. Most Italian banks are on the brink. Berlin, Brussels and Frankfurt are insisting that MPS gets ‘bailed in’ according to recently agreed rules. But they would not be saying this if it were some German or Dutch Bank. The facts are now brutal: As a result of Italian banks’ practice of selling unsecured debt to unsuspecting customers, a ‘bail in’ will cause low middle and working class people to lose their savings.

• DiEM25 says that Prime Minister Renzi is right to want to violate the ‘bail in’ rules to stop this.

• DiEM25 demands that the European Commission and the European Central Bank STOP forcing Rome to impose rules that reflect their failure to put together a proper banking union (and which Berlin would not tolerate if the victims were citizens of the Federal Republic).

At the same time, Brussels is threatening Spain and Portugal with a withdrawal, or suspension, of structural funding because their national budgets have overshot another unenforceable, macro-economically senseless, benchmark.

• DiEM25 demands that the European Commission ceases and desists from all threats to punish the Spanish and the Portuguese governments with punitive measures. Such measures will only deepen the these countries’ economic crisis and drive more Europeans into the anti-European camp.

On the anniversary of the Greek OXI referendum, and a few days after the UK referendum, Europeans are reminded that the authoritarianism of Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin are the main solvents of the European Union.

The European Union will be democratised and its economic policies will be humanised. If not, it will disintegrate.

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