“The Franco-German proposal” stated Mr Mannion “will have no positive influence in stabilising the Euro, in reversing the stock market slide, or in relieving the massive financial burden on the peoples of Ireland, Portugal and Greece”.

 

“President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel are both playing to nationalist and xenophobic audiences and are both fighting for electoral survival. The proposed adoption of new powers for the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund, as well as new powers of oversight for the ECB and the Commission will merely place a stranglehold on fiscal independence and prevent the smaller economies like Ireland from growing their way out of the present crisis.”

 

“Merkel and Sarkozy have also failed to tackle the cabal of institutions which control and manipulate the markets. As we have seen so often in the past it is the senior dealers and management of these institutions who are the only beneficiaries of the economic destruction wreaked by their market manipulation. Even at the very faintest mention of the Tobin Tax on financial transactions they are manipulating the market downwards to increase the pressure on the Euro and the so-called peripheral countries”.

 

“The political implications of the Merkel Sarkozy deal are very wide-ranging and, at a time when many are already questioning the very basis of the EU and most especially the basis of the Euro, they propose an acceleration to even greater EU integration”.   

 

“As an initial step they suggest an enlarged role for EU president Von Rompuy - but he is scheduled to leave in 6 months. Are they suggesting that the anonymous Mr Von Rumpuy should continue in office or are they suggesting that the office itself would have these powers? In either event these proposed new powers are an exact throwback to the proposed role for the EU president as envisaged in the discredited and democratically rejected EU constitution. Are we now to get the EC constitution by the backdoor?

 

“It is widely accepted that we have lost our economic sovereignty and yet we are assured daily by this government that the massive cutbacks and hardship being suffered by the people is putting us on the path to rapidly regain that sovereignty. It is obvious that if and when these proposals filter through into reality that our economic sovereignty is surrendered in perpetuity. How long then until our final shred of independence in foreign policy is also gone?  Where is democracy in all this debate? Where is the right of people to participate in decision making? Will there be a referendum – will it be respected?”

 

“Germany and France have usurped the powers of  the Council of Ministers. These new proposals rapidly advance the scenario which we predicted during both the Nice and Lisbon Referendum campaigns of a powerful and unelected centre dominating the EU, eroding on the powers of national parliaments and increasing the democratic deficit. In the interest of democracy and the needs of the people of Ireland they must be defeated.”

 

Issued: Wed 17th Aug 2011