This stresses that the entire adjustment program imposed on Greece "was and remains a politically orientated program," while challenging arguments that the policies imposed on Greece aim to improve its capacity to pay back the debt. It concluded that Greece was the victim of an "premeditated and organised" attack and of a "violent, illegal, and immoral mission" to shift private debt onto the public sector.
"All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt first and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troika's arrangements is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious," the report said.Among others, the report notes that the unsustainability of Greece's debt was evident to all involved from the outset, yet Greek authorities and other EU governments, with the assistance of the media, had "conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in order to protect financial institutions."
The report is divided into nine chapters, the first of which analyzes the growth of Greek debt prior to the advent of the troika, after the 1980s. This asserts that the increase in public debt was not due to excessive public spending but "extremely high rates of interest to creditors, excessive and unjustified military spending, loss of tax revenues due to illicit capital outflows, state recapitalisation of private banks, and the international imbalances created via the flaws in the design of the Monetary Union itself."
Chapters 2 and 3 look at Greek public debt during 2010-2015, concluding that the first loan agreement of 2010 aimed primarily to rescue Greek and other European private banks.
The 4th chapter looks at what it calls a "Debt System Mechanism" set up by the agreements implemented since May 2010, claiming that they created "a substantial amount of new debt" and generated "abusive costs" that deepened the crisis further.
Chapter 5 examines the conditionalities attached to the loan agreements, claiming these "led directly to the economic unviability and unsustainability of debt."
The following chapter then looks at the human rights impact of the programs, finding that the measures directly violated rights that Greece and its partners are "obliged to respect, protect and promote under domestic, regional and international law."
The legal issues associated with such violations, as well as violation of the Greek Constitution, are examined in the next chapter, which concludes that:
"The agreements contain abusive clauses, effectively coercing Greece to surrender significant aspects of its sovereignty," and cites a series of reasons why these agreements are rendered invalid.The next chapter assesses the debts in terms of whether they are odious, illegitimate, illegal and unsustainable, finding them guilty on all counts. Among others, it says the debt to the IMF is illegal "since its concession breached the IMF's own statutes," while those to the ECB were similarly suspect because it "over-stepped its mandate by imposing the application of macroeconomic adjustment programs via its participation in the troika."
"Debts to the ECB are also illegitimate and odious, since the principal raison d'etre of the Securities Market Program (SMP) was to serve the interests of the financial institutions, allowing the major European and Greek private banks to dispose of their Greek bonds," the report said.Debts to the EFSF are judged illegal on the grounds that they violate treaties on the functioning of the European Union, while bilateral loans are seen as illegal because "they violate the procedure provided by the Greek constitution," and illegitimate "since they were not used for the benefit of the population, but merely enabled the private creditors of Greece to be bailed out."
"The debt to private creditors should be considered illegal because private banks conducted themselves irresponsibly before the Troika came into being, failing to observe due diligence, while some private creditors such as hedge funds also acted in bad faith," the report said.The final and 9th chapter deals with "legal foundations for repudiation and suspension of the Greek sovereign debt" presenting options for its cancellation.
ANA-MPA
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