{"id":998,"date":"2019-03-10T16:35:49","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T16:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=998"},"modified":"2019-10-21T01:11:26","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T00:11:26","slug":"the-myth-of-maastricht","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/the-myth-of-maastricht\/","title":{"rendered":"The myth of Maastricht"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
September 1997, Belgium<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Pity the poor inhabitants of Maastricht. Six years ago no one outside of Holland and\nthe neighbouring areas in Belgium and Germany had heard of the name of their town. Now,\nthroughout Europe, it is a by-word for austerity, budget cuts and social regression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all goes back to February 1992 and the choice by the Dutch government, whose turn it\nthen was to hold the presidency of the European Council of Ministers, to have Maastricht\nas the site for the final round of negotiations and the signing of a treaty to further\nintegrate the economies of the Common Market countries. These countries aimed to move from\na single European market without customs and other barriers to trade to an “Economic\nand Monetary Union” (EMU) in which there would be a single European currency to be\ncontrolled by a single European central bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the various rather less sordid economic names it has gone under–and the Treaty\nof Maastricht changed the official name from European Community to European Union–the\nCommon Market has always been essentially that: a project to bring about one unified\nbarrier-free market in Europe. In other words, a purely capitalist project of no concern\nto ordinary people. That was why, in the referendum in 1975 on whether Britain should stay\nin or pull out of the Common Market, Socialists wrote “Socialism” across the\nballot paper rather than voting either “yes” or “no”. That remains our\npolicy for any future referendum on the subject. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project itself goes back to the immediate post-war period when the capitalists of\nFrance, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries realised that they would be handicapped\nif they tried to compete with America on their own and decided on the long-term goal of\nmerging their economies into a single European economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has been a long, slow process which has been going on for over 45 years now.\nFirst, the coal and steel industries were made subject to common rules. Then this was\nextended to all other industries and, at France’s insistence, to agriculture. A common\nexternal tariff was erected, then all internal customs and tariffs between the member\nstates were abolished, then non-tariff barriers to trade (different technical and other\nstandards which had to be harmonised) were tackled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the leaders of Europe at least one barrier to a fully integrated common market still\nremained: currency fluctuations. These distort trade by the effect they have on prices. If\na country’s currency is devaluing this makes its exports cheaper and so gives its\nexporting capitalists a competitive advantage over those from other countries. As this\nadvantage does not arise from employing more efficient productive methods it is seen as\nunfair by the other member states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ignominious exit<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Common Market has tried to get round this problem with various schemes to fix\nlimits to the extent to which member state’s currencies are allowed to fluctuate in\nrelation to each other. This hasn’t worked all that well, as shown by the devaluations\nover the years of the French franc, the Italian lira, the Spanish peseta and the British\npound (which ignominiously left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism one famous Wednesday\nin September 1992). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Treaty of Maastricht adopted the ambitious aim of establishing a single European\ncurrency as the solution to this problem. The first step is due to be taken on 1 January\n1999 when the exchange rates between the currencies of those Common Market states which\njoin will be fixed, in theory for ever. For instance, the French franc would from then on\nalways exchange for, say 3.4 Deutschmarks. If this works, then “franc” and\n“mark” will in effect be different names in different countries of what is\nessentially, from an economic point of view, already the same currency. The plan is that\nin 2002 these different names should be dropped and the same name “euro” be\nadopted everywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is not as simple as that. Devaluation is a downward adjustment of the external\nvalue of a state’s currency reflecting a deteriorating relative economic performance or\nthe fact that its currency’s internal value has declined faster than that of other states\ndue to its government pursuing a more inflationary monetary policy. So at least one\ncondition for lasting fixed exchange rates is that each state should pursue the same\nmonetary policy. As governments generally inflate their currencies to pay for their\nspending including on the National Debt, the Maastricht Treaty placed restrictions on the\nlevel of both government spending and government borrowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are the famous “Maastricht criteria” which all governments hoping to be\nin the first wave of countries adopting the Single European Currency are striving to meet.\nThose who blame the resulting austerity on the Common Market overlook the fact that at the\nmoment world competitive pressures are forcing governments everywhere, not just Common\nMarket governments, to cut back on government spending and impose austerity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is global capitalism that is to blame not the Treaty of Maastricht as such.\nMaastricht only comes into it because it was when and where the member states of the\nCommon Market decided to coordinate and harmonise the austerity measures that capitalism\ncurrently dictates should be taken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is an illusion to imagine that, if there had been no Maastricht Treaty, there would\nbe no austerity measures, or that Britain or France or Sweden or wherever could avoid them\nby withdrawing from the Common Market. Maastricht is merely one way of applying capitalist\nausterity, not its cause. Austerity is capitalism’s current order of the day and no\ncountry can escape from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s why you don’t find Socialists standing on the White Cliffs of Dover alongside\nBritish ‘Euro sceptics’ such as Tony Benn, John Tyndall, Arthur Scargill, Lord McAlpine\nand the others waving Union Jacks and chanting “Maastricht, Out, Out, Out”. We\nare fair to the people of the Dutch town and place the blame for austerity where it really\nlies: on global capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Socialists are not among those sad individuals who feel their identity threatened by\nthe disappearance of the pound. What does it matter what name a capitalist state’s\ncurrency goes under? If anything, while capitalism lasts a single European currency (if\never it comes) would bring a slight advantage to workers as, when we go abroad to work or\non holiday, we would no longer have to pay a tribute to the money-changers as we do today.\nBut Socialists don’t want capitalism to last. We want it and all its currencies to go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: ALB<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Please email your comments about this article to feedback@worldsocialism.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Back to the Politics Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Back to the World Socialist Movement home page<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
September 1997, Belgium Pity the poor inhabitants of Maastricht. Six years ago no one outside of Holland and the neighbouring areas in Belgium and Germany had heard of the name of their town. Now, throughout Europe, it is a by-word for austerity, budget cuts and social regression. It all goes back to February 1992 and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-998","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/998\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}