He can’t stop doing this. “This” what? To intervene in the Greek politics. Who? Martin Schulz, German social-“democrat” and President of the European Parliament. For one more time that his favorite party To Potami (4%) did not join Greece’s new coalition government, Schulz called elections winner Alexis Tsipras and -hear! hear! – lamented Tsipras’ decision to renew the coalition with Independent Greeks and Panos Kammenos.
The head of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, lamented on Monday the decision by Greek leftist Alexis Tsipras to renew a coalition with the small right-wing Independent Greeks party.
Speaking to France Inter radio, Schulz said he could not understand Tsipras’ decision to bring the Independent Greeks, who polled less than 4 percent of the vote, back into government.
“I called him (Tsipras) a second time to ask him why he was continuing a coalition with this strange, far-right party,” Schulz said.
“He pretty much didn’t answer. He is very clever, especially by telephone. He told me things that seemed convincing, but which ultimately in my eyes are a little bizarre.”
[…]Schulz said he admired Tsipras for the way he had navigated through the last year to get himself re-elected, but said Kammenos was a loose canon who always needed to be controlled.
“It’s politically and strategically something that you have to admire,” he said. “But after … this renewed mandate with this far-right, populist party, that I don’t understand.”
It is not the first time, Martin Schulz tries to intervene in Greece’s political decisions and government coalition. Just a week after the elections in January, Schulz came to Athens and openly said that Tsipras should make a coalition with to Potami, a small neoliberal political party of rather diffuse ideology and program.
Today, Schulz did not explicitly mention To Potami but made a very clear hint with his reference to ‘a party with 4%’.
What the President of European Parliament do not seem to accept is that:
No sovereign country and no democratically elected Prime Minister has to explain anything to any Schulz around the globe.
No matter how much this Schulz is obsessed with certain political practices.
Nevertheless, Tsipras could send Schulz the famous DVD series “Lessons on Democracy – Basics – Intermediate – Advanced” and thus free of charge.
PS if you see other reason to support SYRIZA-ANEL, then do it just for the sake of getting on the nerves of Martin Schulz 🙂
I dont understand this obsession with soverignity. Especially as in this case the man is just talking, which is miles of from dictating terms like the troika does.
In some parts of politics none of our nations is sovereign anyway, because we delegated it to the european level. In that context Ill say Schulz is your EP as much as mine, just like the greek commissioner for migration “belongs” to us all.
Furthermore if you look around the world for what this sovereignity argument is used it is mostly either ignored(by the big powers) when convenient or used to hide their bad practices behind it(take china and their problems with civil rights or tibet or the saudis and their super tolerant views towards other religions or women).
I realize that this concept once was a huge progress but times move on and Id say for anyone who is aware that we have one humanity living on one planet this concept of national soverignity(not the concept of citizens soverignity over the state which is different) is outdated.
Schultz would do a lot better getting “his” EP up to scratch and do something, anything… At the moment he presides over a very expensive, powerless talk shop which has absolutely no reason to exist. It reminds me very much of the old Randy Newman song “Short people” (with a little adaption to the topic on hand…)
do I have to moderate poems now? :p
The national sovereignty concept that you don’t get is exactly the same thing as the citizens sovereignty over the state that you deem so important. What’s the point for a citizen to control a state that can’t decide anything for himself? What’s left of a citizen’s power when everything is decided elsewhere by people nobody voted for (Schultz being an excellent example for that since he’s been elected after he FAILED in the European elections)?
Its not the same thing, which you can see by the fact that non democratic states claim national soverignity as well.
In the case of the EU citizens soverignity isnt necessarily infringed if it is delegated to the european level, same way we dont complain that decision on the national level “infringe” on the sovereignity of cities.
Also your example doesnt hold, he was elected for a seat in parliament and afterwards as its president. The part that he lost was the race for President of the Commission and he didnt get the job.
All that aside Id say there is a huge difference between dictasting terms like the troika did and just commenting on things.
Before the referendum people here were complaining alot about other european politicans, schulz among them, who had the audacity to note that a no in the referendum wouldnt change the greek negotiation position, whereas Tsipras painted a view that once Oxi was declared things would get cleared up within days. Why is being lied to by homemade politicians better then outsiders(who arent really outsiders since they are very much connected to the issue) telling(in this case at least) the truth?
If he was telling the truth he must have known before about the ECB-terror Greece is still suffering from and then it was no “opinion” but blackmail.
That Tsipras gave them the possibility to try their sovereignty with OXI therefore 1.9 million Greek voters rewarded him their Sunday’s vote. That this is no majority but only under 25% of the electorate is the fault of blackmailers like Schulz who destroy their “democracy” and make it a even more perfect crime than ever before.
Hopefully Tsipras sucks out from the EU ass much money ass possible and shows them a sticky brown finger and never pays “back” any interest, that would save Greece as the profit by interest for the “friends” makes up 3/4 of these odious debts.
I dont agree with the measures the troika is forcing on greece and those i might classify as breach of democratic sovereignity, only might because your elected governments were and are at any point free to say no to them so long as they also say no to the attached money.
But to devise and pressure those measures on greece is something completly different from the fact that voting oxi would do nothing to change those demands. Tsipras and Syriza pre referendum kept telling voters that oxi in the referendum would mean the creditors would have to soften the demands up to the point where some people were saying vote no on sunday and within 48 hours everything will be resolved, which anyone knowing the procedures of those negotiations knew would be a lie. Nearly every other politician in europe said that no or yes demands wouldnt change. And, oh wonder, thats exactly what happened.
Look back at what was promised pre-referendum from the oxi faction and what was said by schulz and politicians from other european countries and then compare to what actually happened after the vote(and that doesnt even touch the other problem with this referendum such as not enough time fo rpublic debate and an unclear question).
You’d better visit a Greek embassy, a Greek community centre or even any restaurant and ask for these original “promises” and if they would politely translate it for you to see that you’re just full of German Lies.
Martin Schulz, and others like him hsve invested a lot of time & money into the success of the European Union.
He wants it to work, his interferance tells me he may end up bankrupt if it all falls apart.
When someone is so eager it speaks PERSONAL MONEY INTERESTS TO ME.
Schulz got kicked out of his party because he lamented the coalition with drunken far-right populists CSU
How is THIS intervening? He voices his opinion, there is no order, no law, no edict that influences anything in regards to Greece.
The man literally just says what he thinks O_o
Odd! nobody asked him his opinion.
So? Neither did anyone ask for your opinion or mine, yet here we are sharing our opinions, a crazy world isn’t it?
don’t play with the words, you know what we both + Schulz mean
Frankly I don’t know what you mean. I am under the impression that you see a nefarious plan to force Greece into some sort of submission, which in the end was done by Tsipras in the end, despite him telling you and your people that he would honor the OXI.
So now jumping at Schulz who criticizes the government for it’s choice of partner seems a bit odd.
To the point that it seems that whoever criticizes Greece, no matter how legitimate the criticism might be, gets a ream from you.
Maybe that is the result of your country’s struggle and the toll that had to be paid, I don’t know. I do know however that you interpret much much more into this particular news than there is to it, at least from my point of view.
my point is clear: the EP President should be impartial and mind his own business concerning the governments of eu countries
So you mean he should let Tsipras do what Tsipras wants to do, because otherwise you think that your country’s sovereignty would be impaired?
I can see that but did he really actively do something to change the outcome? To be honest I can’t see that here unless you regard asking about a choice of partners to be an act of policy making.
If you do, well that is your point of view and I simply have to agree to disagree 🙂
lol that would be the tip of the iceberg: if he would have done something ‘actively’.
To give hand and smile to the murderer of 142 innocent victims is hard work, as is to keep talking to the bastards that – except from Saugosch – never said anything and also never listened, sent their translators home. Talking to a wall of blind ignorance and cowardly compliance that never planned to change anything is also hard stuff, esp as the only “move” of Greece that was accepted by them was to knee-jerk even more.
The 45% of the electorate who boycotted this show might think it all a bit different, as they all knew before that Tsipras wasn’t only breaking any “promises” he never made but showed also that it’s impossible to make any – he’s only representing 20% of the voters anyway. He can’t even promise to implement the terror measures the ECB and Märklins EU-Mafia forced him in by blackmail, embargo and sanctions more powerful than the ones on Iraq, as lots of the 45% already preparing on huge general-strikes to show the Bastardokratia who really gots the power.
The most interesting question to me is: Is ANEL far right, or just right wing? Schulz seems to imply the former, while I would guess the real far right in Greece is the Golden Dawn.
Badmouthing the junior partner on Syriza’s coalition could be a form of interference.
I’d rather call ANEL ‘patriotic, conservatives”. they are form New Democracy anyway.
ANEL: “Beyond insulting the Greek people and the party of Independent Greeks, he must, at last, understand that he cannot, without consequence, call any party that doesn’t take commissions from the defence industries that fund him ‘extreme right'”
“The dogs are barking – and the caravan moves on.”
To criticize Schulz is one thing (Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten! Wer war dabei? Die Linkspartei! Wer hatte Recht? Karl Liebknecht!) To support the proimperialist, racist and antisemitic Anel is another thing. Look at http://www.spartacist.org for the trotskyist position on Greece!
Racist because the coast-guard is getting thousands of refugees out of the water, imperialist because he is bowing to the German imperialist onslaught on Greece and anti-Semitic:”…Buddhists, Jews, Muslims are not taxed, the Orthodox Church is taxed and in fact is at risk of losing its monastery assets…” and anti-Semitic was also one of his first actions: Manoeuvre with Israel.
There’s also something in German regarding this brainwash to be find under “Nonsensjournalismus zu Griechenland: Glauben reicht”
That reminds of the Souda-based British and US Special Forces who arsoned the synagogue in Chania, totally anti-Semitic Greeks especially as there was the Cretan museum located but the latter no-one was reporting outside of Greece.
Revolutionaries hate Trotzky because he was betraying the revolution by destroying the anti-state, anti-national and anarchist Machno Movement after it was fighting exhaustingly against the White Guards and other scum from 1919-22, sometimes even in coalition with the “communists” until his Red Army was build up and ready to kill the revolution.
oh nooooo not the history of communism again. pleeeeease!
Be thankful that he is not preaching about marijuana run economies, solar powered super-bikes and turbine powered spaceships.
he doesn’t have the skills to think that big