The beginning of the end of parliamentary democracy in Europe is arriving. It started when, under pressure of ‘Brussels’, the Greek citizens were not allowed a referendum on the austerity they were facing and that is killing their society and their dignity now.
Do you realise what it means when you have to make a choice to buy food or necessary medicaments? That’s what happens in Greece at the moment. Not so long after that the Italians had to accept, under the same ‘Brussels pressure’, Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner and a former Goldman Sachs top employee, as their non-elected prime minister.
Last week the European Parliament embraced the famous twopack that gives the right to the European Commission to interfere in the national budgets of the member states.
Can you imagine? European civil servants, not elected not under democratic control, can decide about the budgets of member states.
It is clear, that national Ministers of Finance have their seat in their national capital, but there is only one who decides: a European Commissioner in the Berlaymont in Brussels.
And what to think of Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, never democratically elected and also a former top employee of Goldman Sachs (whose CEO once told people that he was sent by God himself). Draghi decides about European monetary policy where there is no such a thing as democratic control.
The political philosopher Thomas Decreus wrote recently that the Achilles heel of market thinking is democracy. Interesting! If Decreus is right a totalitarian derailment in the EU is not far away.
But it seems that European politicians are not really worrying about it …
By: N. Peter Kramer
