The Heads of State and Governments of the EU met in the Council today to refine their project of an "international agreement for an economic union." Far from allowing an exit from the crisis, this agreement marks an aggravated submission to financial logics which lead to chaos.

With the "golden rule" that engraved in stone the criteria of the Stability and Growth Pact, which provides for automatic penalties and obligations for states to negotiate austerity plans with the EU, they persist in political choices that kill growth, put people in misery and dismay. This treaty is the assured disembarkation of the "Troika," the plundering of the public services and the destructions of social rights in all EU countries.

With the transfer of the national parliaments’ budgetary powers to the commission, they call the sovereignty of the people into question, without any public debate and consultation of European citizens. This is an unprecedented attack on basic political rights of the European peoples, a regime change towards the dictatorship of the markets.

To have a clear vision of the Europe they prepare, one has only to turn our attention to Greece, which Angela Merkel wants officially to be brought under the control of the commission, or to France, where Nicolas Sarkozy has just announced a third austerity plan increasing indirect taxes and breaking collective agreements on working time to fund new gifts to the employers.

In the end, the destruction of the European Union is underway. The EU cannot be built against the peoples and in a climate of permanent suspicion between member states. European institutions will never have the legitimacy they claim by taking authoritarian and harmful decisions to people. The idea of ​​a union will never be preserved if a state may request the guardianship of another. There will be no union in division and competition between peoples.

The Party of the European Left rejects this international agreement and will campaign in all EU countries against its ratification.

Party of European Left

Brussels, 30 January 2012