Fianna Fáil want more economic powers transferred to Brussels – Matt Carthy MEP
Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy has criticised the proposal from Fianna Fáil European election candidates to transfer even more economic decision-making powers from Dublin to Brussels.
Carthy, representative for Midlands North West, said: “It beggars belief that after the experience we went through with Troika-imposed austerity that any Irish party would be calling for a further transfer of our economic decision-making powers to Brussels.
“Fianna Fáil is clueless when it comes to the EU’s economic governance framework. In the party’s election manifesto they call for a Eurozone budget and joint bond issues as a step towards a full fiscal and transfer union in the EU. In practice, this means they are supporting the call by their EU political group (ALDE) and Fine Gael’s group (EPP) for the creation of an EU Finance Minister to control the budgets and spending of the member states.
“There is a persistent drive by the political groups of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to make any and all EU spending conditional and dependent on Member States implementing so-called structural reforms. These structural reforms are invariably bad for working people and the environment and usually involve privatisation, cuts to public spending and frontline services, and attacks on workers’ rights.
“Proposals for an EU Finance Minister and an increased EU Budget are part of the this drive for the Commission technocrats to be able to exert even more power than they already have when it comes to the surveillance and control of the spending decisions of democratically elected governments.
“Fianna Fail’s ALDE group’s election manifesto cals calls for cohesion policy to be ‘linked’ to the European Semester and the implementation of structural reforms. This means they want to see EU funds for the most disadvantaged and underdeveloped regions to be dependent on those areas selling off their publicly owned utilities and services and scrapping laws that aim to counter the exploitation of workers.
“Fianna Fáil, ALDE and the EPP group are also supporting the transformation of the existing intergovernmental bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, into a European Monetary Fund. This would potentially leave the Irish government without a vote in the fund’s decision-making process.
“The call in Fianna Fáil’s manifesto for a review of the fiscal rules, after urging Irish voters to support the Fiscal Compact being inserted into our Constitution, is hypocrisy of the highest order.
“Their candidates should have the decency to admit to Irish voters that they have got it wrong, time and again, when it comes to the EU’s economic governance system.” ENDS
