Synthesis of responses from 10 countries: Italy, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal

1. What is the current social, economic and political situation?

Overall, the situation is poor and has been exacerbated by the impact of CoVid-19:

• The political colors governments vary by country; they are led by the Social Democrats in Portugal, Spain, Scandinavia and Croatia, the far right in Serbia, parties claiming to be center-right, as in France, or coalitions as in Germany until the elections in late September 2021, Belgium or Italy… Usually in the media and governments are dominated by right-wing ideology. No government has launched a real social policy so far. They are all more or less caught up in neoliberal logic. Most governments include technocrats who implement neoliberal, if not nationalist, ideology, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Hungary, and Poland. Embezzlement and corruption are the main problems in Serbia and Montenegro (also present elsewhere).
• The economic situation differ depending on whether we take into account peripheral countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, countries of the former Yugoslavia, euro area countries such as (Croatia, Greece, Spain, Portugal,…) or dominant economies such as Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria or again those in an intermediate position such as Italy. The general trend, however, is the worsening of the problems caused by the Covid pandemic, which has hit the economy hard, and the economic crisis that has started earlier.
• Consequently, social conditions are not conducive to the people. Most people are severely affected by job losses (or absences from jobs), loss of income, more precarious contracts, attacks by governments on workers ’rights and social rights in general.

2. Is a public debt crisis looming?

All countries have significantly increased their public debt, but the consequences are not the same everywhere. Roughly speaking, we can separate

• States dominant economies (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria): a sharp increase in debt. European and national recovery plans will often provoke new austerity measures at a later stage. In the short term, however, there is no public debt crisis. Countries considered economically (and politically) sound will continue to support the EU’s financial markets and institutions.
• States periphery (Spain, Italy and Portugal): debt increases significantly. European and national economic recovery plans mean new austerity measures. Deeply weakened by the 2008 financial crisis and interventions IMF
  IMF
  International Monetary Fund
  On the day of the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreements, the IMF was established together with the World Bank. Its first mission was to support a new system of standard exchange rates.

  When the Bretton Wood fixed interest rate system ended in 1971, the IMF’s main function became to be a police officer and firefighter of world capital: it acts as a police officer when enforcing its structural adjustment policy, and as a firefighter when it enters. to help governments at risk of debt default.

  As far as the World Bank is concerned, a weighted voting system works: depending on the amount paid by each Member State as a contribution. An amendment to the IMF Charter requires 85% of the vote (meaning that the US, with 17.68% of the vote, has a de facto veto on each amendment).

  Five countries predominate in the institution: the USA (16.74%), Japan (6.23%), Germany (5.81%), France (4.29%) and the United Kingdom (4.29%). .
  The other 183 Member States are divided into groups led by one country. The most important (6.57% of the vote) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1.55% of the vote) is led by Gabon and unites African countries.

  http://imf.org

  
  (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland), these countries have not yet fully recovered and can rely on less and less room for maneuver to restart their economies with banks that do not pay or do not pay at all.

• States former Yugoslavia in the EU (Croatia and Slovenia): a sharp increase in debt. European and national economic recovery plans mean new austerity measures.
• States the former Yugoslavia outside the EU (Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia): are developing countries. A sharp increase in debt, economies that are among the weakest on the European continent and are still recovering. Being outside the EU, they are not subject to restrictions nor can they benefit from equal funding opportunities. Corruption and chronicity absorb much of the funding. The IMF monitors them closely and is highly dependent on foreign creditors, such as China, to use them for its new Silk Road. In Montenegro, the never-completed “highway” financed by China has resulted in huge debt and the handing over of a significant part of the public heritage to the private sector.

3. What are the current major struggles? Are victories or defeats important?

In general, protest movements were hampered by restrictive “health” measures. Although there have been some protests for climate justice – such as the mobilization during COP26 in November 2021 with around 100,000 protesters on the streets of Glasgow – and for social justice (in all its forms) as well as for the defense of workers ’rights, these are not mass radical movements could force governments to do so yield
Yield
Return on investment income. This refers to interest or dividends received from a security and is usually expressed annually as a percentage based on the cost of the investment, its current market value or its nominal value.
. We must not forget, however, that in Western Europe in 2020 we had significant decolonial and anti-racist mobilizations (Black Lives Matter). In Poland, women mobilized against the anti-abortion law.

We can see a significant decline in citizens ‘trust in parties and trade unions in favor of more self-organized “citizens'” movements. There has been a noticeable change in this area in the last 5 to 10 years, but so far it has not brought any real victory.

4. Is there a fight against illegitimate debt (either public or private)?

In general, in EU countries, there is no important questioning of public debt, its payment, much less a real struggle to disclose illegitimate public debt. But NGOs in several countries argue that the debts (and illegitimate debts) of countries in the south have been written off.

On the other hand, we can observe the questioning and mobilization against illegitimate private debts in the areas of housing, health care, education, etc., with an emphasis on the role they play hawk stocks
Vulture warehouses
Vulture warehouse
Investment funds that buy on secondary markets and at a substantial discount bonds once issued by countries with repayment problems from investors who prefer to reduce their losses and take the price they can get to relieve the risk from their business books. . Vulture Funds then prosecutes the issuing country for the full amount of debt they have purchased, without hesitation in seeking decisions before, usually British or American courts, where the law is favorable to creditors.
.

The current crisis has revealed the transversal nature of debt and civic movements, including young people mobilizing on the ecological issue, are increasingly taking the debt issue into account.

5. What are the main initiatives of the various organizations that are members of the CADTM network?

• Political interpellations to write off the debt of the southern countries and to fight private creditors, in particular the vote on the law (Belgium / France)
• Debt Studies (Italy)
• Persistence on the issue of public debt in a political and alterglobalization context

6. Are there inland or multi-organization initiatives in the same region?

Indebtedness in the EU

From March 2020 in connection with the multidimensional crisis affecting European countries, governments, the European ECB
ECB
European Central Bank
The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, established in 1998, to which the euro area countries have delegated their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by fighting inflation within the area. Its three decision-making bodies (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of the governors of the central banks of the Member States and / or recognized experts. Under the statute, he is politically ‘independent’, but is under the direct influence of the finance world.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html adopted a “whatever it may cost” policy, to use the phrase of French President Macron. Strict rules against the fiscal deficit have been suspended and governments have made extensive public lending, resulting in a 15 to 20 percent increase in debt in most countries.

Some leftists cheered. Governments with socialist participation, such as Spain and Portugal, welcomed the possibility of calling for new European funds either as loans or as grants. In fact, grants are very limited and conditional on the implementation of new neoliberal structural measures. CADTM condemns illusions about EU financial measures (see French https://www.cadtm.org/La-centralite-du-capital-financier-dans-la-solution-europeenne-a-la-crise) . As early as April 2020, CADTM Europe proposed another approach: http://www.cadtm.org/We-Won-t-Pay-for-Their-Crises-Anymore.

EU external debt policies:

In the context of the health crisis, Europe has joined the call of the IMF and Paris Club
Paris Club
This group of lending countries was established in 1956 and specializes in dealing with defaults by developing countries.

pause debt service
Debt service
Sum of interest and depreciation of borrowed capital.
most indebted countries for an initial period of 6 months, later extended to one year. This is not enough for several reasons:

• At the end of this period, they will still have to repay the debt service, which means that this measure is only a temporary palliative that does not solve any structural problem.
• – A large part of the expenditure during the pandemic was the exceptional expenditure of public funds to deal with the health crisis.
• Difficulties in accessing vaccines, mainly due to patents that have not been revoked, have also exacerbated inequalities between the North and the South, especially in terms of trade asymmetry. EU policies create future debts in the South by failing to strengthen their production capacity or demand the abolition of patents (on the contrary, they oppose the abolition proposed by 105 countries in the South) and maintain aggressive foreign trade policies.