'Threat?' Sounds to me more like an inducement to vote No, but plenty
of EU-loving Greek commentators are already calling it a threat.
But here is one point the economic bullies from Brussels and their
acolytes among the Brussels commentariat won't be in a hurry to point
out to the Greek voters they are trying to frighten: according to
official eurozone policy, it is a legal impossibility for a member of
the single currency either to quit or to be forced out.
I have on my desk right now one of a series of legal working papers
published by the European Central Bank, called 'Withdrawal and expulsion
from the EU and EMU [economic and monetary union]' published in
December. It was written by -- how perfect -- Phoebus Athanassiou, a
Greek billed as 'legal counsel, ECB.'
His conclusion is that it is impossible for a member to leave the
currency. Here is just some of his legal argument -- dry stuff, but this
is the official thinking:
'Unlike the Charter of the United Nations, Article 6 of which
expressly provides for the possibility of a UN member being expelled for
persistently infringing the principles of the Charter, there is no
treaty provision at present for a Member State to be expelled from the
EU or EMU. [at which point Athanassiou adds a footnote: 'This is hardly
surprising, considering that the creation of the acquis' -- the body of
EU law -- 'has been cumulative, with the institutional "ratchet effect"
denying the possibility of reversals of course (and, implicitly, of
withdrawals.)]'
'The closest that Community law comes to recognising a right of
expulsion is Article 7(2) and (3) TEU [note from me: look, chaps, I read
this stuff so you don't have to], allowing the Council to temporarily suspend
some of a Member State's rights (including voting rights in the
Council) for a "serious and persistent breach by a Member State of the
principles mentioned in Article 6(1) of the Treaty...'
'If a right to expel Member States from the EU or EMU does not exist,
could such a right be asserted or should it be introduced? Several
considerations are relevant here, all of which militate against the assertion, by way of interpretation, or otherwise, of a collective right of expulsion from the EU or EMU.'
What this means is that the EU, in trying to construct treaties that
would bind future parliaments and governments in member states from ever
trying to escape from the euro, have in fact constructed treaties that
do no allow the eurozone powers to expel an unwanted member.
Of course, the Greeks can leave the euro if they want to. All they
have to do is say 'We're out of here,' sandbag their windows and just do
it. Because the ECB and whose army, exactly, are going to stop them?
