They want our money, not democracy!

Now it is official. The SPD Federal Minister of Finance has announced what everyone already knew: The EU’s indebtedness is “such a great idea” that the EU should get even more into debt. His comrade, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Michael Roth, then immediately attacked Poland and Hungary to make sure they would not prevent the upcoming big debt orgy.
   East of the Elbe we were and are sceptical about any kind of Union. These come and go, but the nations remain. Hungary is now a member of the European Union, whose Kafkaesque centres in Berlin and Brussels are taking the bull by the horns (trying to escape) and, by saving the euro, to increase Europe’s international economic power.
   And why all this? After the Brexit, and in the event of President Trump’s re-election, the UK will most likely join the trade agreement between the US-Canada-Mexico – the successor to NAFTA – which will undeniably become the largest of the three poles of the world economy. At least the Dutch and the Poles will be interested to see whether the British have made a good choice.
   Berlin wants to keep the rest of the EU together at all costs, Brussels wants to extend its bureaucratic power. These two claims meet in the rescue of the euro and the euro zone. The European Central Bank has already shot its powder, its balance sheet total is approaching 50 % of euro zone GDP. So now the entire EU has to go into debt, so the member states outside the euro zone can also be turned into interest servants. The British did not want to wait for this.
   The 750 billion euro bail-out package was justified by the negative economic impact of the pandemic and presented as a one-off borrowing. According to Olaf Scholz, however, this is “a good idea” for financing the EU. There are more than enough ideas: the socialist Spanish government wants to introduce the basic income; the Italians want to build a tunnel between Messina and the mainland; Berlin wants the EU to switch from nuclear power to renewable energy and from diesel to electric cars, and so on.
   And why all this? Berlin and Brussels want to issue more, much more Eurobonds on the international financial markets, which is expected to have several political and economic advantages. The joint indebtedness would reach levels that would make their countries’ withdrawal unaffordable or at least very expensive even if Marine Le Pen (May 2022) or Matteo Salvini (2023 at the latest) were elected.
   Eurobonds would strengthen the global role of the euro and enhance the value of European stock exchanges. This is a good opportunity and a pretext for the “completion of the euro”, i. e. the harmonisation of deposit guarantees and bankruptcy procedures and, subsequently, the harmonisation of fiscal and social policies within the euro zone. Common taxes and direct EU revenues can then be introduced to pay off the common debts, which would preferably be voted on by majority vote.
   How do they intend to achieve this? Michael Roth is right. Time is running out. Most of all for the southern states of the euro zone. If there were no new EU budget, the old one would continue proportionally.
   The EU Commission has found the appropriate means with the democracy monitoring which debuted in autumn. All member states will be screened, but it is already clear that it will be an issue with the problem children in the East. Especially if the neoliberal NGO thief is set to catch a thief. George Soros sends his regards!
   It is grotesque that the German Foreign Office, so sensitive, was silent when Macron and Marc Rutte sent their police forces with rubber bullets against the yellow vests or with mounted units against peacefully demonstrating Dutch pensioners. They are already in the bag. They are all globalists. Not like us Central Eastern Europeans, who know that national currency and manageable national debt are as much a guarantee of our freedom and national sovereignty as unanimity in EU votes.     •

*  Zoltán Kiszelly (*1971) is a graduate political scientist from Budapest. He teaches at the János Kodolányi University in Budapest. In 2001 he was an OSCE election observer in Kosovo, in 2004 an OSCE election observer in Russia and in 2006 an observer of the US Midterm Elections at the invitation of the US State Department. He is a member of the Hungarian Society of Political Science and the Budapest Association for Monument Protection.