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Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:24:05 PM
About Italy: The populism is one worry in all this, but the bigger problem is the Euro. The reforms were also necessary to pull the Italian banks back from the brink. The longer the decisions in this matter get delayed, the higher the risk that Italy might slide down even further.
But at the end of the day, the EU and the Euro are two different things. The Euro might not survive this or it might become the currency of only a few states in the end, with Italy and Greece no longer being members of the Eurozone. How this will impact the EU is another matter.
Party Crasher
Damn right it doesn't want to. Why would any crisis-wracked Southern European country want to leave the EU right now? When even Great Britain can't seem to pull it off without being hit hard?
The point is, he doesn't have the authority to kick anyone out of the Eurozone. Yet his posturing keeps trying to make it seem like he does.
Zero sources for this drivel.
Greece has, for many years, leading the OECD in reforms ranking
◊ so I don't know what you're on about.
Oh, you mean like Christoforakos? Still waiting for Germany to extradict him.
Ironic, considering that Germany got one of the biggest debt reliefs in history during the 50's.
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
Oh, bother.
Oooh boy. This is getting a bit heated.
Question: Is leaving the Euro the same thing as leaving the EU?
edited 5th Dec '16 4:47:51 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Field Marshal of Cracked
the current Greek government had nothing to do with the debt, that was racked up over decades and hidden, they are the only people trying to get rid of it, and not through Austerity, which just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, but through good, Socialist economic policies, and they would work if he was allowed to implement them!
advancing the front into TV Tropes
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Technically not, as you can be in the EU and have your own currency. However, being a member of the EU does require you to eventually adopt the Euro. The treaties have exceptions and special conditions for individual countries though, which is common practice.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
It doesn't make sense to implement them before tackling the swamp which was the problem in the first place...and yes, Greece did a lot of reforms in the last years, all the result of the EU prompting them to actually do them instead of giving them an opt out by throwing even more money at them.
And the Eurozone and the EU are two different things. It is possible to be in the EU without being in the Eurozone. But being in the Eurozone makes you more attractive within the single market.
The problem is (at least it used to be perhaps that has changed) that there is no legal mechanism to leave the Euro. If one country wants to leave the Euro, it has to do it via leaving the Euro.
And every step required constant pressure by the creditors. It is easy to see why Schäuble is getting frustrated here.
@Logo: Well, what kind of authority does Schäuble have? He ist the finance minister of Greece's larget creditor. Without his approval, it is doubtful that the German parliament would have backed the third bail-out. He is ao well respected, that he could have overthrown Merkel at the height of the refugee crisis if he wanted. There is also a tacit understanding that he voices all the concerns other Northern Europeans country have. In short, he is someone Greek politicians better listen to.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:56:25 AM by Zarastro
The law in the night
Italy as been having a rough time staying with the EU.
The Economist: Italian voters have rejected Matteo Renzi’s constitutional reforms
After losing by 20 points, the prime minister will resign
IT WAS, said a hoarse, red-eyed Matteo Renzi, an “extraordinarily clear” result. His plan to reform Italy’s constitution was not rejected on December 4th by a margin of five or even ten percentage points, as the polls had suggested: the gap between No and Yes was a mortifying 20 points in Italy proper.
Official figures showed the rejectionist front winning by 60% to 40% in metropolitan Italy (and by 59% to 41% counting ballots cast by Italians abroad). And that was with a high turnout, which Mr Renzi’s advisers had believed would favour his cause. The humiliation came at the end of a 66-day campaign into which Mr Renzi threw himself with frenetic energy. He had little choice but to resign in the face of such an unexpectedly decisive outcome.
Mr Renzi had argued that that the reform was essential to make Italy more governable, and so more amenable to structural reforms. Anti-EU populists spearheaded the No campaign, though they were joined by establishment figures such as Mario Monti, a former prime minister, worried about the accretion of executive power sought by Mr Renzi through the combination of the constitutional reform (which would have emasculated the powerful Senate) with a lop-sided electoral law (which engineers a guaranteed majority for the largest party, even one with a small plurality, in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house).
Much of what was written before the referendum has been rendered irrelevant by the size of Mr Renzi’s defeat. The resulting political instability may be containable in the short term. The financial consequences, particularly the alarm over Italy’s weak banks, and the knock-on effect they may have on the stability of the euro zone, may be more difficult to control. On foreign exchange markets, the euro fell 1.5% to a 20-month low of $1.0503 before recovering slightly. Shares in Italian banks fell at the opening of trading on Monday, but most quickly recovered the lost ground.
Mr Renzi was due to call on Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, on December 5th formally to tender his resignation. He will stay on pending the formation of a new government. Mr Mattarella, whose job is to minimise political uncertainty, had hoped that, in the event of a defeat, the prime minister himself might have been persuaded to form a fresh government with a limited mandate: to reform Italy’s electoral law and hold new elections. As matters stands, there is one law for the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and another for the Senate.
But after recognising his defeat, Mr Renzi reportedly dismissed that idea in an after-midnight telephone conversation with the president. Instead, Mr Mattarella is expected to speak with representatives of Italy’s political parties to float the idea of a caretaker government. This might be headed either by a member of the outgoing cabinet, such as the finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, or the arts and heritage minister, Dario Franceschini, or some widely respected institutional figure. The name most often voiced is that of Piero Grasso, a former anti-mafia prosecutor and speaker of the Senate. But nowadays, terms such as “widely respected” and “institutional” have a different ring than they did before the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in America.
“Democracy has won,” declared Beppe Grillo, the comedian who leads Italy’s second-biggest party, the maverick Five Star Movement (M 5 S). He called for an immediate general election under the current rules, which are likely greatly to benefit his party. Matteo Salvini, the leader of the right-wing populist Northern League, did the same. They have a persuasive case. Polls showed that an overwhelming majority regarded the referendum as a chance to render a verdict on the Renzi government’s performance and, in particular, its economic record.
Much will depend on the reaction of the third of Italy’s opposition leaders, its disgraced former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He will be uneasily aware that his Forza Italia party is much weaker than in 2013, when the last election was held.
Many observers had expected a No vote, if a narrower one, and markets have already priced in some of the risk. But the defeat worsens the problems of Italy’s banking system, and particularly of its shakiest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), the country’s third-largest. The government has solicited institutional investors to recapitalise MPS, but many had made investment conditional on a Yes vote. Some will see the result as proof that Italy is incapable of reform, and may pull back.
Italy could soon face an agonising choice between three options. One would be to nationalise MPS. The second would be to rescue it under new European Union rules that would heap losses on to investors, among them retail investors who hold most of MPS’s subordinated debt. Or, faced with the prospect of having to impoverish these voters, the government might simply decide to break the rules, whatever the cost to the credibility of the single currency and its nascent banking union.
"Five Star, the left-wing populist party"
Ohhh boy, that's the funniest thing I've read today! Because it was a joke, right? 5S only take some causes of the Left: they are unclear and often do flip-flops in their positions because they need to make a wide, transversal electorate content. Truth is, however, than a big chunk if not most of their voters, originally voted for Berlusconi or The Northern League (of course, there are ex-PD voters who, however, look currently very confused to me). Many "Grillodrones" I see today, speak with the exact same style and derogatory words I saw used against people of the Left at the time of Berlusconi's governments. They have just found a new "messiah" after Berlusconi ceased being palatable and they try to find a new political virginity under the Stars (apparently all 5S voters never voted before the 5S came to enlight them, yeah yeah...). That they constantly insult only PD and the Left and Center-Left in general, while speaking rarely of the Right parties at all, is already a big giveaway of the direction they mostly lean towards.
I'll say it again: 5S are people who want to introduce imperative mandate in the Italian constitution. If this makes them left-wing and pro-democracy, I don't know what to say.
By the way: for months they have attacked the new electoral law saying it's antidemocratic and unconstitional, still a few weeks ago they said it can't be modified but only outright cancelled in favor of a completely new law, and now? Of course, they say we should vote immediately with that law - before the Constitutional Court even says anything about it (should happen soon though; they voluntarily decided to wait until after the referendum). That's their coherency.
edited 5th Dec '16 1:52:24 PM by GendoIkari
Imperative mandate is democratic. Direct democracy. Ideally, Five Star wants to get rid of Parliament and have everything voted on by the people as a whole.
The thing with Five-Star is that it's a vote against "the system," not in favor of anything specific. It's a rejection of the idea that voters vote for elected representatives who make the decisions for them. Hence their muddle of a platform when it comes to government policy - they're not running on policy.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
It is not democratic. It forces you to never give a vote of conscience or criticize the party's line; if you do it, you have to resign and another person will just take your place and be even more submissive to the party (be it for the luck of landing a seat in the parliament, or the fear of ending like you did). What happens, for example, if you are pushed out not because you are against the party's line, but because you are the only that still respects the original line while the party has imposed a 180° turn? Do you think it's still democratic? It's only a velied attempt to mask full-on authoritarianism as "will of the people".
Of course, there were and still are parliamentaries that have abused the lack of imperative mandate. However, it was not put into the constitution for a good reason - Italy was just out of fascism.
Are their even democratic countries that have imperative mandates?
United Earth
Citation Needed. I don't know much about SYRIZA, but Podemos did excellent work. To be precise, it's doing the job that the PSOE abandoned as it gentrified over the years. And, as far as I can tell, the policies they propose make a lot of sense. Ada Colau is from that party and now Mayor of Barcelona, and her initiatives are kickass.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A quick research shows that the only European country where imperative mandate is applied is Portugal, and the only other democracies where it's present are Panama, Bangladesh and India. Strangely, also because of EU pressure Ukraine removed it in 2010 (they had introduced it in 2004) but Portugal has been never criticized for it apparently, but I don't know their political scene. Heck, do we ever heard of Portugal at all...
use political terms to describe, not insult
Their links with the former government of Argentinanote , whose problems I've described here raise a lot of red flags about them for me.
Quag 15 is Portuguese, you could ask him.
Edit: unrelated to the above, here's Renzi's resignation speech if anyone wants to read it.
edited 5th Dec '16 3:11:33 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
(Avatar by Coffee)
@Ramdiel: there's a reason why nobody uses direct democracy — it's simply impractical.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Switzerland and they vote on everything. Although the Federal system apparently keeps away the worst excesses.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
And because Switzerland votes on everything it was one of the last Western countries which gave voting rights to woman...because enough woman were against it that it took some time to get a majority for it.
Anyway, Switzerland is very small and it usually tries to avoid to get tangled up in World politics.
Appenzell is many things, but it's not the whole of Switzerland. 
Vaud led the way on the cantonal level (finally) in 1959 about 90 years after Swiss women started pushing for suffrage. Individual communes in Basil and other cantons had started sooner with their local elections and referendums, some towns and villages even experimenting as far back as in the 20s. It's generally held that women's suffrage could have rolled out much eariler in Switzerland... but, both World Wars stymied the times momentum got built quite decisively as the Swiss went into tortoise-mode across the board and entrenched — when they do that, they tend to break out in heavy conservatism. :/
The 50s was when everything shifted. The federal level almost always lags behind the most progressive cantons, but yay, the 70s. And, then there's Appenzell... which finally caved in in '91, the slowpokes.
Insert Appenzell joke here.
edited 6th Dec '16 9:52:58 AM by Euodiachloris
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
Women couldn't vote to give themselves the vote, a majority of men had to be for it. But yeah, there were quite a few anti-suffrage women.
Also, we don't vote on everything. We do have a government and a parliament and are a semi-direct democracy. It's just that we can hold a referendum when enough people give their signature for it. Or launch a popular initiative, again with a requirement of signatures beforehand.
(Avatar by Coffee)
What I mean is that Athens-style actual direct democracy where the "people" (in Athens' case, rich-ish male citizens) actually vote on everything isn't practical when you have a lot of people in your "people".
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
@Gendo: Well, this goes back to the question of "what is a representative?" Is a representative a delegate of the voters who's there to do as the voters tell him, or is he a trustee who is expected to act in the interests of his constituency according to his own judgment?
Five Star, pretty uniquely, wants the former. They want their representatives to obey the will of the party as expressed through direct vote. In such a vision of Parliament, there is absolutely no room for a representative to cast a vote of conscience, because it is not that representative's job to think for himself. It's his job to obey the voters. It's fine to say that direct democracy is inefficient and problematic and that their idea is unworkable, but I definitely think that it's "democratic."
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Pablemos's praise wasn't vague at all. Example
◊, although the most damning would be the CEPS' counseling of the PSUV on how to best undermine democracy.
They deserve all the scorn they've gotten over it.
Edit: Ignoring that, yeah, that lot has said quite a few things that should raise alarms to those here who are worrying about populists 'avengers'.
edited 6th Dec '16 5:44:20 AM by Stormtroper
And that's how I ended up in the wardrobe. It Just Bugs Me!
use political terms to describe, not insult
Schäubel has given a number of suggestions for Greece which would nearly all benefit the common people by cracking down on corruptions. Let's not forget that he is the guy who has ensured that Germany hasn't piled on more debt in the last year, he isn't expecting more from Greece than he is expecting from his own government.
In addition Schäubel put together a transition plan in case that Greece decides to leave the Euro. The plan in on the table. Greece doesn't want to use it.
So claiming that he is just threatening and never making any suggestion is as far from the truth as possible...hell, he did half of the job the Greece finance minister should haven take care of. The problem is that the Greece government only reforms just enough to get the next bail out, and has so far avoided to really tackle the big fishes when it comes to corruption.
And while the Greece population might hate Schäubel for his position, the German population generally doesn't because we have traditionally not a lot of patience for people who pile up debt and then don't pay up.