Preliminary report
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The Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) was established on April 4, 2015, by a decision of the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Ms Zoe Konstantopoulou, who confided the Scientific Coordination of its work to Dr. Eric Toussaint and the cooperation of the Committee with the European Parliament and other Parliaments and international organizations to MEP Ms Sofia Sakorafa. Members of the Committee have convened in public and closed sessions, to produce this preliminary report, under the supervision of the scientific coordinator and with the cooperation and input of other members of the Committee, as well as experts and contributors.The preliminary report chapters were coordinated by:
Bantekas
Ilias
Contargyris
Thanos
Fattorelli
Maria Lucia
Husson
Michel
Laskaridis
Christina
Marchetos
Spyros
Onaran
Ozlem
Tombazos
Stavros
Vatikiotis
Leonidas
Vivien
RenaudWith contributions from:
Aktypis
Héraclès
Albarracin
Daniel
Bonfond
Olivier
Borja
Diego
Cutillas
Sergi
Gonçalves
Alves Raphaël
Goutziomitros
Fotis
Kasimatis
Giorgos
Kazakos
Aris
Lumina
Cephas
Mitralias
Sonia
Saurin
Patrick
Sklias
Pantelis
Spanou
Despoina
Stromblos
Nikos
Tzitzikou
SofiaThe authors are grateful for the advice and input received from other members of the Truth Committee on Public Debt as well as other experts, who contributed to the Committee’s work during the public sessions and hearings and the closed or informal consultations.The authors are grateful for the valuable assistance of Arnaoutis Petros Konstantinos, Aronis Charalambos, Bama Claudia, Karageorgiou Louiza, Makrygianni Antigoni and Papaioannou Stavros.
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Executive Summary
I
n June 2015 Greece stands at a crossroads of choosing between furthering the failed macroe-conomic adjustment programmes imposed by the creditors or making a real change to break the chains of debt. Five years since the economic adjust-ment programme began, the country remains deep-ly cemented in an economic, social, democratic and ecological crisis. The black box of debt has remained closed, and until a few months ago no authority, Greek or international, had sought to bring to light the truth about how and why Greece was subjected to the Troi-ka regime. The debt, in the name of which nothing has been spared, remains the rule through which neoliber-al adjustment is imposed, and the deepest and long-est recession experienced in Europe during peacetime.There is an immediate democratic need and social responsibility to address a range of legal, social and economic issues that demand proper consideration. In response, the President of the Hellenic Parliament established the Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) in April 2015, mandating the investigation into the creation and the increase of public debt, the way and reasons for which debt was contracted, and the impact that the conditionalities attached to the loans have had on the economy and the population. The Truth Committee has a mandate to raise awareness of issues pertaining to the Greek debt, both domestically and internationally, and to formulate arguments and options concerning the cancellation of the debt.The research of the Committee presented in this preliminary report sheds light on the fact that the en-tire adjustment programme, to which Greece has been subjugated, was and remains a politically orientated programme. The technical exercise surrounding mac-
roeconomic ariables and debt projections, gures
directly relating to people’s lives and livelihoods, has enabled discussions around the debt to remain at a technical level mainly revolving around the argument that the policies imposed on Greece will improve its capacity to pay the debt back. The facts presented in this report challenge this argument.All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay
this debt, but also should not pa this debt rst and
foremost because the debt emerging from the Troi-ka’s arrangements is a direct infringement on the fun-damental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious. It has also come to the understanding of the Com-mittee that the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to the international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet, the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in order to pro-
tect nancial institutions. The corporate media hid
the truth from the public by depicting a situation in
which the bailout was argued to benet Greece, whilst
spinning a narrative intended to portray the popula-tion as deservers of their own wrongdoings. Bailout funds provided in both programmes of 2010 and 2012 have been externally managed through
complicated schemes, preenting an scal autono
-my. The use of the bailout money is strictly dictated by the creditors, and so, it is revealing that less than 10% of these funds have been destined to the gov-ernment’s current expenditure. This preliminary report presents a primary map-ping out of the key problems and issues associated with the public debt, and notes key legal violations associated with the contracting of the debt; it also traces out the legal foundations, on which unilateral suspension of the debt payments can be based. The
ndings are presented in nine chapters structured as
follows:
Chapter 1,
Debt before the Troika,
analyses the growth of the Greek public debt since the 1980s. It concludes that the increase in debt was not due to ex-