Ozlem Onaran (2015) “Should Greece Pay Back Its Debt?“, Social Europe Journal, 23 April 2015.
Financial speculators are nervously asking whether Greece will pay its debt or default. Political leaders from Europe to the US and the IMF are telling the Greek government to leave aside its democratic mandate and accept further austerity as a condition for getting credit to continue to pay back its debt. But the right question politically is: should Greece pay this debt.?
On 4 April the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou, set up the Debt Truth Committee – a special committee of the Parliament to investigate the truth about the increase in Greece’s public debt. Eric Toussaint of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt is the team’s scientific coordinator. The Debt Truth Committee currently includes 35 international and Greek experts in law, economics, accounting, banking from Europe as well as Zambia, Ecuador, and Brazil.
There are well-established concepts in international law that question the legality, legitimacy, sustainability or odiousness of a loan agreement if and when it deters a state from meeting its obligations to its citizens to ensure adequate access to health and education, a life with dignity, and the right to organise. There is a long history of states making use of these legal concepts to enter into dispute with their creditors over their sovereign debt starting with Cuba in 1898, the US in Iraq in 2003 and Ecuador in 2007.
Relevant posts:
- Daily chart – Payback time, The Economist Graphic Detail: Charts-Maps-Infographics, 14 April 2015.
- Stockman, D. (2015) “History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro“, David Stockman’s Contra Corner Blog, 02 February.
- De Grauwe, Ρ. (2015) “Debt relief for Greece is necessary to avoid a crisis in the Eurozone“, LSE EUROPP, 12 January.