I’ll tell you facts and nonsense about the Mes
What is said and not said about the Mes. The article by Tino Oldani for Italy Today
Catching everyone by surprise, Silvio Berlusconi said no to the reform of the ESM, the bailout fund, of which he was a tacit supporter, and reiterated his yes to the Sanitary Mes, of which he is still an enthusiastic champion. Basically, the leader of Forza Italia behaves as if there were two Mes, one bad (the save states), and one good (the pandemic, with its 36 billion). A distinction made their own instantly by the Forza Italia parliamentarians.
But is it really so? Not at all. It is enough to read the analyzes that some independent jurists have dedicated to the reform of the MES, at least to the clauses made public, to realize that the MES has always been one, and that two distinct MES have never existed, with all due respect to who gave credit to the mitigated conditionalities of the Mes sanitary
To justify the no to the MES saving states, Berlusconi said: «The money paid by Italy can be used elsewhere even against the Italian will. Furthermore, the Fund will be European only in form because the EU Parliament will have no supervisory power and the European Commission will be called upon to play a purely notarial role ».
All true. The hypothesis that the money paid by Italy can be used by other countries, even against the Italian will, is a detail that the Minister of Economy, Roberto Gualtieri, Pd, took great care not to report to Parliament before saying yes. to the reform in the Eurogroup on Monday 30 November. Yet, according to the jurist Fiammetta Salmoni on the website ilsussidiario.net , this is "a fundamental aspect of the modification of the Mes Treaty, since with it the existence of second-class and second-division countries is definitively decreed".
Explanation: "Virtuous states that comply with the criteria set out in Annex III (deficit-GDP ratio below 3%, debt-GDP ratio below 60%, etc.) will be able to access a 'precautionary conditional credit' line simply by sending to the Mes a letter of intent, where they undertake to respect the aforementioned criteria. States that do not comply with those criteria, on the other hand, will only be able to access a credit line subject to enhanced conditions, for which the negotiation and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding is required, which must contain the conditionalities to which they must comply ".
In practice, countries such as Germany and the Netherlands ("virtuous states"), should they ask for the intervention of the ESM to save their banks, could limit themselves to sending a letter of intent to obtain the necessary credit lines. While Italy, a second-tier country for its high debt, should submit to the severe reinforced conditionalities of the Mes, including the possible restructuring of the public debt, with the dire consequences that ItaliaOggi recalled yesterday.
As for Berlusconi's hypothesis that the money paid by Italy to the state-saving ESM can be used by other countries against the will of Italy, it should be remembered that the ESM has a capital of 704 billion authorized and can be activated at short notice in case of necessity, of which 80 billion paid. Eurozone countries contribute to it based on GDP and population. Germany is the largest contributor and contributes 26.9% to it. Italy's share is 17.8%, which corresponds to 14 billion paid-in capital and 125 billion authorized, to be paid even in the very short term if requested by the German director of the MES, Klaus Regling, a hawk with a very bad reputation. Thanks to the reform, he would end up having more sanctioning powers than the EU Commission itself and the European Parliament on compliance with the parameters of the Fiscal Compact by national budgets. An insane thing, an insult to democracy.
However, the proponents of the thesis according to which the sanitary mes is less binding than the saving-state mes, therefore less dangerous, do not seem to worry about the latter aspect. A fake news, by unanimous judgment of the independent jurists who have examined the question.
Wrote Fiammetta Salmoni, professor of public law institutions at the Guglielmo Marconi University of Rome: "There is no sanitary Mes and a non-sanitary Mes: there is a single Mes, with its founding Treaty, with its rules governing all forms of financing disbursed, including that to which the name of Pandemic crisis support has been given, which is a credit line that has always existed at the ESM and is called Eccl (enhanced credit line), as the secretary of the ESM himself pointed out on April 22 last ».
This credit line, Salmoni specifies, “is subject to all the conditionalities provided for by the MES legislation. Therefore, the State that will benefit from the pandemic credit line will be subject to enhanced surveillance, contrary to what those who recklessly and deceptively claim that enhanced surveillance will not be applied to the Health Mes. And there will be conditionalities, because, as unequivocally written in the ESM legislation, the States that benefit from an Eccl, such as pandemic assistance, will have to adopt all corrective measures, aimed at avoiding problems regarding access to financial markets. , and ensure constant compliance with the parameters on the basis of which the credit line was granted ».
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/vi-racconto-fatti-e-fesserie-sul-mes/ on Sun, 06 Dec 2020 07:08:42 +0000.