In consultative session (Maastricht)
Commission I (Constitutional Affairs)
Thursday 15 October 1992, 12.05 am – Chair of the Vice President Nicola SAVINO
Bill:
Ratification and execution of the Treaty on the European Union with 17 protocols attached and with a final act containing 33 declarations, made in Maastricht on February 7, 1992 (1587).
Opinion to the III Commission (Foreign Affairs)
( omisssis )
The deputy Raffaele TISCAR (group of the DC) observes that the examination of the bill ratifying the Maastricht Treaty raises some perplexities. Given that he is a firm supporter of the need for European integration, he nevertheless notes that the Maastricht Treaty is based on the primacy of the economy over politics. This represents the failure of a great political ideal, namely that of a politically united Europe: in fact, Europe is rising instead only on the commonality of economic-monetary interests but the economic interest, in his opinion, fails to support the political one. The Maastricht Treaty records a deficit of democracy in that it distances decision-making bodies from the consent of citizens, as the European institutions are even more distant from the citizens than the national ones and all this is in contrast to the prevailing trend today to achieve a bringing institutions closer to citizens. Furthermore, the government of money is completely separate from politics: in Germany, the chancellor is unable to control interest rates. History shows that the government of money must be connected to that of politics and the economy : a release is very dangerous not only for the economic consequences, but above all because the decisions of the monetary authorities are completely divorced from the consent of the citizens. All this is not conducive to European unity.
(… the reading of the parliamentary acts reserves fascinating surprises and confirms us in our awareness of not being particularly original. But let's get back to the news: in the meantime the guidelines on the Pandemic Crisis Support of the MES have been released. Surprise, surprise! debt is perfectly sustainable! Would you ever have expected it? Well, in the meantime there is a credible government: with a premier who at the beginning of February says that COVID 19 is not contagious, a minister of justice who frees cartloads of mafia members of a certain rank, a minister of agriculture who has only them in mind, a minister of innovation or whatever is serene as the rainbow draft that the app that protects us from the #virus that kills has been chosen by the secret services ( for heaven's sake, there can be a thousand good reasons for this modus operandi: the problem is the draft! …), an emergency commissioner who argues with the head of the task force and blocks everywhere the masks that companies they procured for their own business, etc. Credibility, as you can see, abounds!
But there is also another small detail: according to article 13, paragraph 1, letter b of the Treaty establishing the ESM , if the Italian debt were not sustainable, we would not be allowed to go into debt with the ESM! Got it, no, how does it work? Sustainability is a political decision, because it depends on what the ECB decides to do. In my opinion, what will happen is quite obvious: we will have to enter the program, and for this they will make us indebted to the MES despite the situation advises caution. After that, others can monetize. I accept bets: afterwards I will need money too, like all of us, although certainly less than many of you – but you know that I am aware of it …)
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2020/05/in-sede-consultiva-maastricht.html on Thu, 07 May 2020 16:55:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.