After the EIB, the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent bailout fund of the Eurozone, has taken its turn to come under the scrutiny of the NGO Transparency International. On Monday 6 March, the NGO expressed concern at the lack of transparency and democratic accountability of this inter-governmental institution, which many are calling eventually to be converted into a proper European Monetary Fund.
The presentation of the Transparency International report coincided with the publication, on 25 February, of an article in the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, reporting that the German government was in the process of working on a European monetary fund of this kind and was planning to discuss the matter with its French, Italian and Spanish counterparts in Versailles on Monday evening. The German MEP Sven Giegold (Green/EFA) claims that the German government intends to keep the ESM under the aegis of the national governments, in other words not to place it under Community law, whilst granting it new prerogatives, such as drafting and monitoring economic adjustment programmes in exchange for financial aid granted to countries in difficulty. Der Spiegel went on to report on an idea said to have the favour of Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, of conferring budgetary surveillance powers upon the future European Stability Mechanism.
A German government source declined to confirm this information. The Spiegel article also states that Germany is working on this scenario as an alternative to the involvement of the IMF in the third Greek bailout plan. The German government takes the view that the conditions are met for the IMF officially to be to come on board the financial assistance programme.
In its fifth scenario of the Commission's White Paper, the scenario based on full federalism, the Commission considers the idea of European Monetary Fund.
In any event, Transparency International stresses that giving the ESM more powers should go hand in hand with greater democratic accountability.
The ESM should be brought within the European treaties, the NGO advises, and a formal cooperation agreement should also be entered into with the Parliament (however, the report acknowledges the fact that the Director General of the ESM, Klaus Regling, regularly attends hearings in Parliament). Additionally, the ESM should be subject to the control of an independent external entity and its Director General should be required to publish his or her statement of interests. Furthermore, the citizens should be able to sign petitions for access to the documents of the ESM and the economic models and hypotheses of the ESM should be published, along with the minutes of the governing council of the General Council. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)