Vote Down the EU Package in Parliament | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 77

Summary

GnS Economics CEO Tuomas Malinen returns to the channel just before the decisive vote on the EU recovery instrument and calls on Parliament to vote the package down. The episode’s central tension is between the government’s assurances that the arrangement is one-off and Malinen’s view that the fund is a gateway to a transfer union and an EU federation, at the end of which road lies the dismantling of the Finnish welfare state. Malinen works through the treaty articles the package breaks — 310, which forbids the EU from funding its spending with debt, and 125, which forbids fiscal transfers — and argues that once these are set aside, no article can be relied on again, security guarantees included. He also takes apart two consolations: that the package is an investment programme, and that the ECB will simply monetise the debt away. The conclusion is that EU taxes are already in the pipeline, and if the total tax rate is not to rise, the money comes out of domestic transfers — social security and pensions.

Chapters

• 00:00 — From rules-based order to arbitrariness
• 00:15 — Malinen returns to the channel after a long break
• 00:44 — Covid restrictions and a disagreement about medicine
• 01:04 — The recovery instrument in its final stretch after a year’s work
• 01:19 — The constitutional law committee and the two-thirds majority
• 01:53 — A subscriber poll on whether the package passes
• 02:10 — Malinen calls for the package to be voted down
• 02:41 — Scaremongering about reputational harm, and life in the periphery
• 03:03 — Who takes responsibility if the fund is enlarged
• 03:35 — The shift to a fiscal transfer union
• 04:14 — Transfers are based on differences in living standards
• 04:59 — The green transition and the claim of an investment programme
• 05:04 — State-led environmental projects are unproductive
• 05:09 — A rotten cake with a couple of strawberries on top
• 06:02 — Let us remember the names of those who decided this
• 06:12 — Would the package failing be the end of the world
• 06:31 — Market reactions and central bank purchase programmes
• 06:54 — Why is Italy being supported at all
• 07:12 — Cheap loans and the stability mechanism are available
• 07:30 — A grant does not fix over-indebtedness
• 07:48 — Italy’s possible exit from the euro
• 08:05 — The euro does not survive without transfers
• 08:35 — Vesa Kanniainen’s working group and the scenarios
• 09:00 — Budget support without an EU central budget
• 09:16 — A union should be built by amending the treaties
• 09:32 — Articles 310 and 125 explained
• 10:23 — The Pringle ruling and incentives for bad fiscal policy
• 10:47 — The economic articles are permanently trampled
• 11:15 — Security guarantees can be reinterpreted
• 11:30 — Legal scholars stay silent on an obvious problem
• 11:54 — The transfer of budget sovereignty is plain
• 12:14 — A slave mentality, and growing a backbone
• 13:07 — “The ECB will monetise it” — the claim that the debt disappears
• 13:21 — Target 2 claims are collateralised
• 14:10 — National central banks cover the ECB’s losses
• 14:47 — Central banks cannot buy the world clean
• 15:13 — Federal debt’s incentives and political allocation
• 15:44 — EU taxes are already in the pipeline
• 16:04 — A rising tax rate and cuts to social security
• 16:21 — The fund as a gateway to an EU federation
• 16:34 — MPs have a button to press

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Kaadetaan EU-paketti eduskunnassa | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 77. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.