Brussels, 12/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 12 October, President of the Euroepan Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso commented on the Slovakian parliament's vote on Tuesday, refusing to grant more teeth to the EFSF bailout fund. “We remain confident that the Slovak autorities and the parliament remain fully aware of the importance of an enhanced and more flexible EFSF to preserve financial stability in the euro area. That is in the interest of all euro countries, including the Slovak people. Our common currency plays a crucial role in investment decisions, in growth, in jobs. This is about the prosperity of us all. We call upon all parties in the Slovakian Parliament to rise above the positioning of short-term politics and seize the next opportunity to ensure swift adoption of the new agreement”, explain the two politicians in a joint press release. Slovakia was the final eurozone country to vote on the 21 July eurozone summit decisions after Malta voted in favour earlier this week.
On Tuesday, the Slovakian parliament refused to endorse the plan to increase the EFSF's lending capacity to €440 billion and to allow it to buy up sovereign debt and lend money to countries to bail out their banks. Of the 124 parliamentarians who took part in the vote on Tuesday, 55 voted in favour of ratification of the plans to expand the EFSF, 9 against and 60 abstained. The Slovakian government thus failed to get the ratification passed by relying solely on the four coalition parties' votes because the liberal SaS party refused to back it. The government will now need the votes of the left opposition, which is demanding early elections in return for its support. The parliament is expected to vote again later this week.
Slovakia's failure to ratify the 21 July decisions has raised the old question of whether unanimous voting should be required for ratifying emergency decisions taken using the intergovernmental method (which is how the EFSF operates). A European Commission spokesperson said that national democratic processes had to be fully respected but also needed to strike a balance with the need to take effective emergency decisions in a hurry, and the Slovakian vote illustrated the limits of the eurozone decision-making processes. “After months of dithering, the intergovernmental method has brought us back to square one. If member states have not yet learned the lessons and costs of slow and inefficient decision-making, they will now. This is the fundamental weakness of eurozone governance, where crucial and timely decisions are at the mercy of 17 national parliaments and narrow political majorities can be exploited for equally narrow political interests”, commented the head of the Liberals at the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, adding: “In the long run, the EFSF should become more like a European Monetary Fund, operating independently of national governments”. The head of the EPP Group at the EP, Joseph Daul of France, slammed the attitude of the Slovak Liberals and Social Democrats, who had refused to endorse the changes to the EFSF. Hannes Swoboda (S&D, Austria) said the Slovakian government should make constructive proposals to the Slovak Left, such as offering new elections, in order to ensure a strong majority in parliament to vote through the changes to the EFSF. (MB/transl.fl)