Senior UK Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles has called for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry should the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) Hearing on 25 April not answer the many questions hanging over the Cyprus affair.
Bowles, who chairs the influential ECON Committee said:
We will have an ECON Committee hearing on 25 April with the Troika and Mr Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup to get to the bottom of the Cyprus bailout affair. If we find the answers insufficient the Liberal Group in the European Parliament will call for the immediate setting up of a Committee of Inquiry to report back at the latest before the summer recess.
It is critical that we fully understand the events that led to the unfolding of such a disaster and why there have been misunderstandings and poor communication, given that these appear to have influenced the outcome.
For more information on the procedure of setting up a Committee of Inquiry, take a look at this blogpost from Andrew Duff, the party’s European constitutional spokesperson, and MEP for the East of England.
Given today’s news that the cost of bailing out Cypriot banks has now increased by €6 billion to €23 billion, one suspects that any such Commission will have plenty of questions to ask.
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2 Comments
What bailout is that, then? So far as I can make out the Troika has placed such impossible demands upon Cyprus that they are literally impossible to fulfil. There is no-one in The City who remotely believes the IMF predictions for Cyprus GDP – down only 8% this year? Do me a favour!
It was enlightening today to watch Mario Draghi instruct the Cypriot Government that they have no authority to fire their own Central Bank governor – while simultaneously informing them that they were selling their gold reserves and the proceeds would be used to reduce their ELA. It was enlightening because it cast clear light on where the power resides – democratic mandates are a laughing stock and an irrelevance.
What’s the point of an “inquiry on Cyprus”? Surely the real question is the extent to which executive power is being removed from the periphery “governments” and increasingly resides in the corridors of Frankfurt. Eurosceptics routinely characterize the periphery as colonies. On the evidence offered in Dublin today it’s hard to dispute that.
So Sharon Bowles wants to get to the bottom of the Cyprus bailout affair.
It’s really quite simple. When EU times were good, Cyprus and the other southern ‘States of Europe’, were an asset. They took German and French goods and technology, paid for by loans from France and Germany’s banks. But now times have turned sour, and it is obvious that the South, cannot pay for the stuff they bought, on the ‘never never’. But pay they must..!!. And they must now pay the piper. And the piper is Angela Merkel. And she is happy to take, your savings, pension funds, gold bullion, or your first born child, in lieu of debts owed.
Welcome to loss of democracy, loss of sovereignty, loss of your savings. Welcome to Europe.