People’s News No. 65

People’s News No. 65

From now to the forthcoming referendum we should be informing and organising ourselves, our neighbours and friends, trade unions, social and community groups about what the grandly named “Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union“ means for the future of this country and about the antidemocratic and anti-social dangers that it poses.

The treaty has been quite properly renamed the “Permanent Austerity Treaty.” It provides for a permanent balanced-budget rule or debt brake of 0.5 per cent of GDP in any one year to be inserted in euro-zone members’ constitutions or the equivalent.

But it has an equally obnoxious brother—the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Treaty—which the Government will not be holding a referendum on and will be trying to push through the Oireachtas in the next few weeks with an absolute minimum of public scrutiny. It is in fact a virtual coup, with equally disastrous consequences for the country.

Democrats of all political persuasions should be very concerned.

Read more at http://www.people.ie/news/PN-65.pdf