Archivo de la categoría: International @en

Gina Ekholt: Creditors are also liable for public debts (Epikaira, Greek weekly magazine)

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Fuente: Blog Leonidas Vatikiotis, miembro de ELE Grecia.

 SLUG Norway

New fact on the debt issue, even within Europe, creates the Norwegian Government’s decision to launch on August 15, 2013 official audit on whether the debt that a number of developing countries owe her, is legitimate. The “new” fact that the Norwegian Government introduces concerns the liability of the creditor. Also, it highlights, the moral obligation of the creditor to prove that the debt owed by other governments is indeed legal! This is a big step forward, which if it is applied by other governments, it may mark a radical change in the debt chart within the eurozone. A chart, that as it is now configured, is against the peripheral countries, who have been turn into debt colonies in the benefit of the center countries, who keep draining them. For instance imagine, the consequences of an audit of the debt that Greece owes to Germany, especially when it will examine the compatibility of the two loan agreements with the international law, with which Greece has been tied up, or the possibility of setting off what Greece owes today with the (multiple in value!) amounts that Germany owes to Greece since the Second World War. Indisputably, the move of Norway makes it difficult for Germany and the other countries who have loaned Greece to save their banks. It also gives new support to the countries that face debt crisis, to request debt audit, as a means to cancel part or even all of the public debt. Sigue leyendo →

Economic governance, the Troika and the struggles against European neoliberalism

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Follow the meeting & conclusions through Storify blog

The meeting intends to bring activists, organizations and networks that are addressing the undemocratic neoliberal crisis strategy and governance imposed from the EU – the EU shock doctrine – and discuss together which strategies have been more successful and to identify what are the common lines from which we can draw a genuine European movement.

Austerity, privatisation and attacks on social rights are being pushed systematically from the European level. While there have been many impressive struggles at the national level in Southern Europe, European coordination and its response is still small.

First steps towards more European coordination have been around sporadic action days. They have allowed in some countries to make resistances visible but have not managed to achieve a substantial turn around. At the same time new forms of action, organisation and campaigning are emerging, but often with little coordination between the social actors – from the more radical to the more traditional – that promote them. Sigue leyendo →

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The anniversary of broken promises

5 years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the beginning of the worst economic crisis in decades, the EU has not delivered on promises of strong regulation of the financial sector. A swift overhaul is needed. Together with other organisations (full list at the end), CEO has signed the statement below. 

The 15th of September marks the fifth anniversary of the most spectacular bankruptcy in the financial crisis of 2007-2008. On that day, renowned Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy due to disastrous investments in US real estate through financial products. At the time, European leaders made bold promises to reform financial regulation in the EU “to respond to crises, but also to avoid them in the future”, Commission President Barroso said. Five years on, the results are woefully insufficient. Sigue leyendo →

The PACD in the CADTM Summer University

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In the past days of June 28th, 29th and 30th, participants of the PACD attended the CADTM Summer University in La Marlagne, Namur (Belgium). An annual event facilitated by the CADTM that allows for people and organizations from a number of countries to meet in debate and training sessions about debt from different perspectives.

The CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt), founded in Belgium in the year 1990, is an international network of about thirty organizations active in more than 25 countries on 4 continents. Their main goal is the cancellation of the public debt on third world countries and the annulment of structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO) trio. Since slightly before the crisis, they have also started working on the public debt of the so-called North, with the final goal of exiting the current debt system, using the weapon of citizen audits to reach the construction of a socially just and ecologically viable society. Sigue leyendo →

We don’t owe! We won’t pay! Democracy and Debt

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Meeting of the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform – PACD in Portugal.


25th-28th April, Lisbon (Portugal)


Spanish activists meet in Lisbon with Portuguese groups to analyse the problem of debt and how it affects democracy.


For several days, members of the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform – PACDwill attend a series of events in Lisbon, starting with the celebration of the Carnation Revolution, with a public event on Saturday afternoon, and meetings with various groups the remaining days. Geographical proximity and similarities in the situation both countries are going through during the crisis, makes international coordination and exchange of experiences key for building constructive citizen initiatives. Sigue leyendo →

Declaration of the Assembly on Debt, gathered in Tunis, on the 29th of March 2013 (WSF)

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Considering that the Debt has been, since the 15th century, the main historical instrument of colonization to plunder, dominate, subdue, humiliate and destroy the People and their traditions,

Considering that the debt of the global south has already been paid back several times, and that it constitutes, for the South as well as the North, a wealth, resources and of labor power towards capital,

Considering that debt is the key lever of foreign intervention, and the intervention of financial powers, with the complicity of the powerful elite, giving way to the violation of states sovereignty, and to the overall impoverishment of people, and to the brutal degradation of their economic and social rights,

Considering that the multinationals and the industrialized countries, have triggered an irreversible upheaval distrusting the climate and environmental balance, and hence generating an ecological debt, which the entire humanity shall suffer from, and to which those countries have due reparations.

Considering the effect that the mechanisms of indebtedness have had all over the planet, aggravating especially the living conditions of women, tackling mainly their financial independence; a main stone for their social and political emancipation,

With determination,

We, Organizations and Social movements, inspirted by the example of the combatant Thomas Sankara, Struggling for the liberation of peoples from the enslavement and the slavery of debt:

Affirm that the Arab people and the Maghreb people have reignited the flame of the struggle of the people for reclaiming their destiny and their desire to emancipate according to their own standards of living freely and with dignity,

We Strongly and determinately Support all the struggles around the world to free the people from the servitude of debt,

Rejecting the austerity policies applied everywhere around the word,

Supporting all the citizen-led debt audit for the identification and the cancellation, without condition, all audios and illegitimate debt,

And calling for a feminist-oriented audit which will consider the social debt through which women were the creditors,

Rejecting all debt –swaps or conversions that we would consider laundering of the odious and illegitimate debt,

We strongly denounce all pressures, and attempts to prevent the adoption of the bill of debt audit in Tunisia and everywhere around the world.

We don’t owe…we don’t pay!

First signatures to the Declaration (in alphabetical order) : Sigue leyendo →