It should be noted that the proposed change to Spain's constitution to enshrine budgetary stability, mentioned at the beginning of this piece, is already the case in Germany, where the so-called "Schuldenbremse" ("debt brake") has been written into the constitution.
----
Europe: A strategy to break with the Europe of Capital Daniel Albarracín Soon the Spanish Government, through an agreement with the Popular Party, will pose the question, unprecedented since entry into the EU, of reforming the Constitution to enshrine budgetary stability, further tightening the criteria of the Euro Pact. Thus the current PSOE government, together with its presumed successor, the PP, are again posing as exemplary champions of rigor, submitting to the demands of the financial oligarchies and the governments of Merkel and Sarkozy. The chosen path of approval, at the end of a moribund legislature of an unrepresentative Parliament under a disoriented government without consultation through a referendum shows once again the compliance of institutional political power with the requirements of European economic power. And as is increasingly clear, that “what is called democracy is not so...”. The social response is an outcry, ever louder as society shows its outrage and until now unarmed actors express their rejection. Also, this social rage materializes in the visualization of horizons of emancipation and solidarity-based alternatives. To sketch these new horizons, we need to explore new divergent paths out of the quagmire that the current European policies are pushing us into. In what follows we are going to try to synthesize some political-economic interpretations given by the left in recent times. We will try and to identify a possible course free of the shackles of the EU model and its oligarchical political management. 1. The EU model and the trend towards the abyss at its periphery. Different authors like, among others, Costas Lapavitsas [1] or Pedro Montes [2] have developed a diagnosis of the existing European model and its consequences. A model which has been established since at least Maastricht and continued in its many successor treaties (Lisbon, Euro Pact, and so on). The EU model has promoted and institutionalized freedom of movement of capital and goods within a single market and a monetary policy at the service of the central countries. All this without observing the heterogeneity of a large and mixed group of countries on which the same policies do not have the same effects. All this without any significant solidarity balances which could counteract the imbalances inherent to the market economy; or provide for just compensation for the most dependent regions or those with lower productivity; without real convergence projects and shared investments; and, last but not least, with a derisory public budget unable to correct the divergent tendencies which the said model causes. Structural dependency, the practical oligopoly of the Central European economies and capital, the divergence between centre and periphery, seem to have no limits. The presence of the single currency, with a single interest rate for countries with production capacities of different scope and efficiency, with a chain of value and profitability dominated in its strategic phases by the core countries (Germany, France, United Kingdom and so on) that reinforces this hierarchy, in structurally divergent inflationary contexts, leads to a permanent imbalance in the balance of payments between countries. The financing needs of the peripheral countries become chronic, while the core countries become creditors and, therefore take ownership gradually of the wealth of the economically most vulnerable regions, in collusion with local oligarchic capital that can also take advantage of its space of profitability.
Full article: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2358