Head of the liberal SaS coalition party and parliamentary chairman, Richard Sulik, is standing firm in his rejection of the European Financial Stability Mechanism (ESM) and he is hoping that opposition party Smer-SD of former PM Robert Fico will back his position.
The ESM, which would pool around EUR 500 billion, is set to replace the former EFSF in 2013 for bailing out eurozone countries should their ship start to sink, and Slovakia could once again be the outsider, as it was before when it refused to provide a bailout loan to Greece. The new mechanism could cost Slovakia up to EUR 6 billion, something that Sulik refuses to swallow.
In his regular blog column, parliamentary Richard Sulik challenged Fico’s Smer-SD party by saying he hoped they would “not be all talk” and would take action when the time was ripe. His call was made as the Smer-SD party claimed earlier that it would only support the ESM if the four-party coalition was united, which it is not in this respect.
Sulik feels that the ESM is hoodwinking Slovak taxpayers and so refuses to support the mechanism as it stands. As an example, he said that the country could construct around 300 km of quality motorway with the EUR 6 billion instead of throwing it away on countries like Greece, Portugal and pensions for “God knows who”.
Sulik emphasised that the system is unfair because if banks generate profits, for instance, the money is enjoyed by the banks’ shareholders, while on the contrary, if the banks mess up then it is the common taxpayers that have to foot the bill.
Essentially, capitalism applies if there is profit, while socialism applies if there is a loss, meaning the system allows banks to have their cake and still eat it.