Drastic social cutbacks unveiled throughout Europe

[Hannah Bell]

In the wake of the $1 trillion euro bailout agreement reached at the beginning of this week, governments throughout Europe have unveiled austerity measures that include sweeping attacks on jobs, wages and basic social rights.

It has now become abundantly clear that the nearly $1 trillion package... was not merely aimed at staving off the bankruptcy of Greece and other European Union member states gripped by sovereign debt crises. It was designed to effect a massive transfer of social wealth from the masses of the population to the international banks and investment firms. And it is to be paid for by compelling governments across the continent to implement the kind of draconian attacks that have brought hundreds of thousands of Greek workers into the streets in strikes and mass protests.

An unannounced corollary to the agreement on the bailout package reached in Brussels early Monday was the immediate implementation of austerity measures in Spain and Portugal, whose public deficits have made them the targets of international financial speculators seeking super profits by bidding up interest rates on the countries’ debt offerings.

After the Spanish stock market rose a dizzying 14.4 percent on Monday, “It has belatedly dawned on Spaniards that the Iberian peninsula, not Greece, is the main target of the financial ‘bazooka’ unveiled by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund,” the Financial Times commented Wednesday...

The country’s social democratic Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero went before parliament on Wednesday and announced a series of austerity measures, including: a 5 percent pay cut for public employees, followed by a wage freeze; the freezing of most pension payments; the elimination of the so-called cheque-bebé, a 2500-euro government subsidy for families with new babies; elimination of a program funding elder care and public funding for prescription drugs.

Also to be slashed are over 6 billion euros in public investment, including on public transportation projects. Billions more will be eliminated in funding to local governments and development aid, necessitating still further layoffs and cutbacks.

Under conditions in which the country’s official unemployment rate already stands at over 20 percent, the austerity program will mean millions more being thrown on the unemployment and a further turn by the country’s economy towards slump as consumption is curtailed...


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/euro-m14.shtml