Before the start of the Eurogroup meeting this afternoon, Jörg Schindler, Federal Executive Director of the party DIE LINKE and Martin Schirdewan, Co-Chairman of the Left Group in the European Parliament and member of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, will speak. Jörg Schindler comments on the position of the Federal Government:
The cohesion of the EU depends on its solidarity. If, in the hour of need, the main interest of some EU states is to impose rules on other member states and bring their own flocks to dry land, the EU will not survive unscathed. If the EU is not able to act in solidarity even in the midst of this terrible pandemic, it never will be.
Mr President, today’s meeting of the Eurogroup is about nothing less than the future of the EU. The German government must abandon its blockade attitude against corona bonds. In doing so, it is not only helping its European partners, but also itself.
Germany, together with Austria, Finland and the Netherlands, is one of only four countries that rigorously rejects the solidarity solution, the corona bonds. And by far the most influential. If the grand coalition does not abandon its blockade stance against corona bonds, it will make itself the gravedigger of the European idea.
Martin Shirdewan explains:
It would be fatal if the Eurogroup can’t agree on corona bonds. But instead, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should probably fix it again. The ESM rightly has a bad reputation as an instrument to force debtor states into a policy of massive cuts and dramatic social dismantling. The states affected so far have not forgotten this.
The Corona crisis offers the chance to finally break with the wrong austerity policy and find solutions based on solidarity. However, if the Federal Government and others continue to build on their concrete wall and want to prescribe their wrong medicine again to the countries most affected by the pandemic, autocrats and right-wing populists threaten to be the laughing third parties.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Published at https://www.die-linke.de/nc/start/presse/detail/bundesregierung-muss-blockade-von-corona-bonds-beenden/
