Stelios
Fotinopoulos / Katerina Anastasiou
Inge
Graessle is an MEP of Merkel’s CDU and holds the chair of the
committee of the budgetary control in the European Parliament. She
participated in a TV talk show along with Stelios Kouloglou, a SYRIZA
MEP (here). Once again,
her claims were not only untrue, but also mendacious. It’s part of
their plan for deconstruction concerning the Greek Government. But
really, who deconstructs whom?
In the first
minutes of the interview, she claimed that, “now that the chief
negotiator changed, we have someone who does not contradict himself
three times a week”. Let us reminder to Mrs Graessle that during
the Eurogroup of the 17th of February, it was the side of the lenders
who contradicted themselves. After Paul Mason’s reveal based on official EU documents, it is
quite obvious who was playing and for which purpose. It is a quite
familiar strategy on behalf of the lenders to reverse the reality in
order to deconstruct the opponent. The only thing they still do not
understand is that if this negotiation ends to a disaster, this will
be shared amongst both sides.
“Greek
Government is working for a Grexit”, she continued. But it is the
Greek Government who has already made huge steps of compromise in
order to achieve a mutual beneficial agreement. Who can say the same
thing for the other side of the table when they keep asking for
policies that have been actually canceled by the popular mandate of
the recent general elections? This is what Tsipras said and this is what the German Vice Chancellor said.
Maybe Mrs Graessle, a prominent EU MEP of the CDU, has to decide
whether she is working in order to keep Greece in the Eurozone, or
not.
“They do
not deliver what is necessary to do in order to be kept in the
Eurozone”. Does more cuts, monthly wages of 300 euro, impoverished
pensioners and further liberalization of layoffs (among many of the
lenders’ demands), apply to some fundamental roles or norms of the
Eurozone? We guess not.
“Do you
expect from the poorer tax payers of Slovakia and Lithuania, to pay
for your promises? You decided 3900 more state officials for a Greek
state which is bushed by officials.” Intentionally or not, Mrs
Graessle does not refer to the great reform that brought back to life
the Public Television (ERT). The last ERT’s budget was
approximately 3.7 million euros, while the Samaras’ experiment of a
non-democratic Government controlled Television had a budget of 13.8
million euros. Apart from that, the Public television, as Stelios
Kouloglou(Syriza MEP) rightly underlines is financed by the viewers’
contribution, not by the state. Who talked about overspending?
But let’s
have a thorough look at the percentage of the employment in general
government and public sector (http://tinyurl.com/qhr3mhu:
source ILO/OECD). It is obvious that even before the crisis,
Greece was one of the few countries with such a low percentage of
public officials in relation to the total amount of its labour force.
Even Turkey, Poland and Mexico do demonstrate larger numbers. On the
contrary, there are countries such as Norway, Sweden and France,
which have three times the Greek number of public employees but no
one asks from them to reduce it. Those who oppose Syriza’s reforms
are the same who defend the corrupted system of the past. No offence.
And since to
our understanding, politics serves the people, let us remind you that
the previous government dismissed 8500 people from the Greek
hospitals, which are right now in desperate need of stuff and
expendables. But we tend to forget whatever comes to our benefit.
Right? tinyurl.com
As for the
tax-payers of other European countries:
a) Greece
has been paying back its loans with interest for the past years and
hasn't received a cent since August 2014.
b)The Greek
public debt has been growing since the beginning of the Memoranda
from 127% to 180%. SYRIZA proposes is a European Congress on public
debt since this is not solely a Greek problem (eg. Italy, Spain,
France, etc.) and it was mainly caused by the political decision of
your establishment to save the banks.
c) Even the
european parliament has concluded that the politics of austerity that
you promote, have failed and are anti-democratic tinyurl.com
“You need
to stick to the commitments the Greek Government did in 2010”.
Graessle speaking. But this is 3 elections back! Hopefully, we still
have general elections as a fundamental democratic process that gives
to the people a power to have a say in their future.
Day by day,
more Europeans understand that Austerity is not just an abstract
economic doctrine, but in order to be imposed, it needs a special
type of democracy. This type of democracy in which the people are
unnecessary and in which the politics have to succumb to markets. And
the CDU MEP is here to remind us that democracy needs daily struggle
in order to continue its existence, as a process and as a culture.
“The
Greek Government believes that no reforms are the right way to come
out of the crisis. (…) How can you expect from communists to do a
reform?”. Inge Graessle and the European People’s Party,
obviously has not accepted yet that the Berlin wall doesn’t exist,
using a 25 years old hated language. In any case, we feel thankful
for reminding to the Europeans, how the neoliberal political elite
strongly opposes the values that the European left and the new Greek
Government defend.
More
democracy, laws against economic inequalities, respect to the public
space such us the Health System and Education, anti-corruption bills
and justice for all, are reforms that Mrs Graessle unfortunately
opposes. But it’s not her political position that provokes
disappointment, rather than her commitment to reproduce a narrative
that falls completely out of reality.
Seventeen
minutes of interview: So little credibility, yet so many lies. It is
evident who undermines the negotiations. Next time, we hope that the
MEPs who defend austerity, to be more informed and less provocative.
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