“The austerity packages as recipes against the crisis have no political or economic justification” - all speakers agreed on this point. Greece and Europe would not be two opponents, but were sitting in the same boat, caused by a certain neo-liberal form of globalisation, stated Sven Giegold, Parliamentarian of the European Greens. The globalisation had widened the income gap and resulted in an imbalance between the growth of wages and profits.

Guillaume Duval, editor of the French economic journal Alternatives Economiques put the Greek problem in a nutshell: the interest payments demanded of Greece were based on unrealistic assumptions and would definitely put the Mediterranean state in a position from which it would not be able to pay its debt. In the meantime, the austerity packages demand constrictions from all European workers in their daily life and would destroy Europe’s social structure. Those, who benefited from Greece’s boom years are not the same who are now required to foot the bill, said Duval.

Consequently, a restructuring of the Greek national debt was demanded to guarantee small investors the repayment of their deposits, whilst large-scale speculators, the only beneficiaries of the rescue packages, should bear the risk they had taken on themselves. In addition, policies had to be enforced at European level, which would make absorbing the negative social effects of the monetary union and European imbalances possible in future.

Apart from procedures to restructure debts, the discussion focussed in particular on the introduction of a Europe-wide Financial Transaction Tax. This would make speculations less appealing and generate incomes for future central projects. This conforms to the demands of the campaign on the introduction of a Financial Transaction Tax, to which among others the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour and the Austrian Trade Union Federal made major contributions.



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