Have the European Greens lost the plot?The Paris Declaration

We are living in delusional times. Our politicians and technocrats are on another planet. Angela Merkel in a speech to her Christian Democratic Union Party,stated that "If the euro fails then Europe will fail."The former central banker now in charge of Greece, Papademos in making his inaugural speech to parliament spoke of “Remaining in the euro zone is our only choice.”Similar noises are emanating out of many EU governments, and also in the Brussels bubble. .Olie Rehn the unelected technocrat running Euro matters has spoken in a similar vein.
The stakes are being raised. However ,these are the words of people with their backs to the wall and stripped bare save perhaps for a fig leave.(if that).

Against this backcloth, I read with incredulity the Paris Declaration of the European Greens issued in Paris just a week ago, which ends up essentially supporting the IMF,ECB, EC and Merkozism policy that is fixated with trying to make the Euro crisis a crisis of the European project.

The Paris Declaration http://europeangreens.eu/congress/?page_id=417
reads like the product of a schizophrenic mindset.On the one hand the analysis is clear and one with which I think most Greens would agree. So for example, it states:
“Unsustainable public finances or lack of competitiveness are not the main causes of the crisis we’re in: at the heart of the problem lies the global increasing inequality of incomes and wealth in the last decades and an over-leveraged and over-extended financial sector, addicted to debt and speculation and benefiting from implicit and explicit public guarantees.This has led to unsustainable credit growth and risk accumulation and a global increase of inequality of incomes and wealth in the last decades.”

In a similar vein it states:
"More equal societies perform better: all empirical evidence points at the fact that a more even income and wealth distribution is a key condition for individual and collective well-being; therefore, crisis solutions must turn-around the accelerating drive towards more income and wealth inequality."

This analysis is in my view spot on. However, the Declaration then flips into a mindset that ignores the above analysis. Incredibly, it states that :
“This entails that any scenario leading to the break-up of the Euro-zone, which would be the first step of the political disintegration of Europe is unacceptable to us.”
Having made the jump to equating the European project with Euro, the declaration then goes onto make a series of staggering recommendations: Whilst paying lip service to the Occupy movement and their support for these manifestations they come up with policy solutions that are in direct contradiction with their own analysis and indeed the demands of the Occupy movements.

The Declaration recommends:
"Recapitalisation of European banks : the amount – € 109 Bn – decided by the latest summits is at the lower end of what is actually need to make the European banking industry resilient; an amount of € 300 Bn is probably closer to the mark. Private sources must contribute first, but if public money is used, ownership rights and control must be transferred to the taxpayer (through temporary public control ‘thus enabling progress towards wider mutualisation within the European banking system)”.
And the need to
“ Rebalance the austerity-only approach: while we still see the need of sustainable public financing, according to the Treaties, some parts of the Troika emergency policies have been socially unjust; the conditionalities they impose must be rebalanced, insisting on effectively chasing revenue from the most affluent in society and breaking taboos and privileges such as immunity the defence establishment in Greece or for the Churches in countries such as Greece or Italy.”

In short , having correctly diagnosed that the problem is the dominant economic model and the policies currently being pursued, the European Greens end up with a watered down version of the same policies. Their policy mindset is driven by the idea that the Euro is the European project. What this forgets is that the Euro crisis has exposed the underlying reality, namely that we have created a bankers Europe that is profoundly undemocratic and unprogressive.

It is the Euro that is killing Europe, saving the Euro will kill off the European project.
The remedies being imposed to save the euro are blighting the lives of millions. Those responsible are still in control but their economic model is bust and no matter how they try to dress it up things will simply not work.The casino capitalism created by deregulation and liberalisation of the financial sector has created a financial Fukishima.

The “pass-the –parcel” (from Greece, to Portugal, to Ireland, to Spain , to Greece and now to Italy) crisis we are seeing is a fall out of the toxic shit we have allowed to be created in the very heart of our financial system.
Maybe bypass surgery might work, but this will; require the bypassing of democracy, which is what is taking shape in Greece and Italy. The way the remedies are being imposed is reinforcing the facelessness and unaccountability of EU institutions. The democratic deficit that has blighted the EU project is growing. That is the real deficit that needs to be reversed.Our politicians and technocratics are creating the fertile ground that will breed opposition to the EU project.

In short we have a recipe for disaster being presented as one that will save the Euro. We have to disentangle the Euro from the European project. Europe has existed for over 50 years, the Euro is but a baby of the European project not the same as the project. We need a movement of New Europeans to emerge and challenge the defunct vision of the current bunch of political pygmies and technocrats.