Draghi took advice from a private company before the open financial coup against Greece in summer 2015
Did
the European Central Bank (ECB) act within its mandate when it shut
down Greece’s banks in June 2015? Were the ECB’s actions that led
to the imposition of capital controls in Greece legal? These are
central questions to which DiEM25 co-founder and Greece’s former
finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and Die Linke member of the
European parliament Fabio De Masi, want an answer.
The
institution led by Mario Draghi was not certain about the legality of
its actions at the height of the negotiations between the Greek
government and its creditors in the summer of 2015 – to close a
member state’s banks – so it commissioned a private law firm to
examine whether those actions were legal. When De Masi approached the
ECB president to obtain a copy of the private law firm’s legal
opinion, Draghi rejected the MEP’s request on the grounds of
‘attorney-client privilege’.
Varoufakis
and De Masi have joined forces to take this matter to the next level
by filing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request before the ECB to
make the legal opinion it commissioned public. The two holded a press
conference on Wednesday, March 8 at the European Parliament in
Brussels to explain their initiative.
As
Varoufakis pointed during the press conference:
The European
Central Bank (ECB) has exorbitant power compared to any other central
bank in the world. It is the capacity as it happened in the June of
2015 to close down all the banks of a member-state.
Let's face
it: it is the euro crisis which is causing the European Union to be
at an advanced state of disintegration.
In June
2015, when the decision by the governing council led to the closure
of the Greek banks, it is apparent that the president of the ECB
did not feel that he was on solid, legal ground in proceeding with
the closure of the big banks. We know this because we know
that on the 18th of June, he commissioned a legal opinion from a
private law firm on this matter. It is a legal opinion about the
extent to which the ECB can be independent of the eurogroup and its
political priorities. It is a legal opinion on whether exorbitant
power bestowed upon the ECB can be made compatible with democratic
process and with independence of the ECB.
Exorbitant
power without transparency, without your right, the right of
Europeans to have access to legal opinions that were commissioned
with their money. This combination of exorbitant power and lack of
transparency does not comply with the basic requirements of
democratic processes and liberal democracy.
De Masi
revealed that:
In October
2014, so prior to the election of SYRIZA government, I was at the ECB
with a delegation body economics and monetary affairs committee. A
member of the board of directors of the ECB told me very bluntly:
well if the Greeks decide to elect SYRIZA, we will basically drain
the supply of euros. We will not accept any more Greek government
bonds as central bank collateral.
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