Excessive Public Debt and Social Rights in the Eurozone Periphery
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1502200407 |
| Author | Kostas Chrysogonos,Anastasios Pavlopoulos,Triantafyllos Zolotas |
| Published date | 01 August 2015 |
| Date | 01 August 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
592 22 MJ 4 (2015)
EXCESSIVE PUBLIC DEBT AND SOCIAL
RIGHTS IN THE EUROZONE PERIPHERY
e Greek Case
K C*, T Z**
and A P***
ABSTRACT
In recent years a number of Eurozone Member States that had accumulated excessive
public debt during the last decade were forced to apply for nancial assistance in the
form of loans from the International Monetar y Fund (IMF) and other Eurozone Member
States. e bailout programmes have been accompanied by extremely strict conditions,
which have led to the devastating curtailment of social expenditure. In turn this has led
to disproportionate infringements of social and economic rights. is paper examines the
reconcilability of its auster ity measures using the example of the most heavily indebted
state, Greece. e measures were nally incor porated in acts of secondary European law,
with the rights entrenched in the Char ter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. e authors
conclude that the strict austerity dictated by the Troika has undermined the European
social constitutional order to the ex tent that it could be described as a fraude aux Traités.
Keywords: Charter of Fundamental Rig hts; Eurozone and Greece; proport ionality;
social rights; sovereign debt
§1. THE ORIGINAL SIN
Since 2010, ve Eurozone Member States (Greece, Ireland, Portuga l, Spain and Cyprus)
have had nancial assistance from the rest of the Eurozone, because they were faci ng
* Professor of Const itutional Law and Human R ights, Aristotle Universit y of essaloniki; Membe r of
the European Parl iament.
** Trainee judge, Greek Nat ional School of Judges; Ph.D. in L aw, Leibniz University of Hannove r.
*** Ph.D. candidate , Aristotle University of essaloniki.
Excessive Public D ebt and Social Rig hts in the Eurozone Peripher y
22 MJ 4 (2015) 593
huge publ ic de cits, heavy interest payments and /or ex piring debt. Eurozone assi stance
was granted under strict conditions, including a diagnosis of how these states came to
the verge of bankruptcy. e scal crises were said to be the outcome of overspending
and overlending.
In this ar ticle, we focus on the impact of nancial a ssistance on social and economic
rights in Greece. Greece wa s the rst Eurozone country to receive assistance, and has
allegedly been t he country upon which the harshest conditions were imposed: it still
remains under na ncial surveillance due to the fa ilure of economic programmes.
e authors’ aim is to reconstruct the strict conditions imposed on Greece in order
to receive nancial assistance, a nd to examine these conditions from a constitutional
perspective. More concretely, the authors choose to focus on whet her austerity measures
violate fundamenta l rights enshri ned in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU
(th e Cha rter) .
is question should have been a pressing question already back in 2010. By now it
has become an urgent issue. One institut ional voice a er the other raises serious doubts
about the constitutional soundness of the way scal crises within the Eurozone were
dealt with. e UN Independent Ex pert on foreign debt and human rights ex pressed
his serious concerns about the compatibility of the adjustment programmes with basic
social rights.1 e C ommittee on Economic and Monetar y A airs of the European
Parliament, in its recent enquiry report on the role and operations of the so-called
‘troika’ (European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission (Commission) and
International Monetary Fund (IMF)), found inequalities in income distribution as well
as increasing povert y levels, which it attributed to the retrenchment of the welfare st ate
and the swelling u nemployment rate.2
In this paper we exa mine the Greek austerit y measures from a Europea n constitutional
perspective, using t he proportionality standard as it has been applied by nationa l and
international jurisdictions.3 We t hen consider the available lega l remedies at the EU
level, paying particu lar attention to their e ectiveness. We come to the conclusion that
there is a ver y strong case to a r m that many auster ity measures were u nconstitutional;
so many that we can speak of a radical transformation of European law, which will
amount to a fraude aux Traités.
1 See Report of the I ndependent Exper t On e E ec ts Of Foreign Debt And Ot her Related Internation al
Financial Obl igations Of States On e Fu ll Enjoyment Of All Human R ights Particula rly Economic,
Social And Cu ltural Rights (U N Doc A/HRC/25/50/Add.1, 7March 2014).
2 Dra Repor t of the Committee on Ec onomic and Monetary A airs On e Enquiry On e Role And
Operations Of e Troika (ECB, Com mission and IMF) With Rega rd To e Eu ro Area Programme
Countries, 2 013/2277(INI), 28February 2014, para. 17–18.
3 For a scrutiny of t he conditions, under which t he relevant loans have been g ranted, throug h the lens of
international c onventions, such as the UN Char ter, see A. Fischer-Lescano, ‘Human R ights in Times
of Austerity Polic y: e EU ins titutions and the conclusion of Memora nda of Understanding’, ETUC
(2014), www.etuc.org / les/press-release/ les /legal_opinion_huma n_rights_in _times_of_austerit y_
policy_ nal .pdf, p.10 et seq.
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