Five Parliamentary Parties-One Policy: Statism

19.03.2008- Liberal Alliance press release

Liberal Alliance salutes Commissioner's McCreevy response to SYRIZA's MEP Papadimoulis' parliamentary question on how Governments of Member States of EU can limit private ownership of companies 'deemed of strategic importance' such as OTE (Greek Telecommunications Organization).

Commissioner MacCreevy outlines that the Commission cannot consent to any measures that may protect any state monopolies and whenever such measures are taken by Governments of Member States, the Commission must act to ensure compliance with what EU law states.

It is not widely known that the same answer for this matter, Commissioner MacCreevy and the President of the Commission Mr Barroso gave to Minister of National Economy Mr Alogoskoufis and the Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis respectively.
This happened during the most recent EU summit, where the Greek Government attempted cunningly to pass an amendment to bring EU law in line with the Greek law, limiting private ownership of 'Public Benefit State Companies' (DEKO) to 20%!
This preposterous attempt was, of course, unsuccessful.

The Government of the 'conservative' New Democracy supported by the 'left wing' SYRIZA and all the other Political Parties represented in the Parliament, are currently struggling to keep control of the DEKO, re-affirming that the five parliamentary parties are not interested in any policy other than pursuing an increasing control of the state over the economy and the society.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum, Liberal Alliance proposes the worldwide accepted position, that state protection of monopolies and lack of competition in economy will further undermine the quality of the provided services whilst increasing their cost.
Maintaining the state control of DEKO will have grave consequences for the consumer and the government budget, will obstruct foreign and domestic investment in Greece, and will postpone the job growth for young people who are particularly vulnerable to unemployment.