The Bail Out Business is the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the response to the 2008 financial crisis to understand who benefits from rescue packages in the EU. How effective were the bail out measures? What were the hidden costs to the taxpayer? and what was the role of the Big Four (audit firms) and financial consultancy firms in the business of designing and implementing bail out programs in EU Member States?
Privatisations of state-owned assets have become a central plank of EU/Troika agreements with debtor nations such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but there has been little examination of their track record nor an examination of who really benefits. This report puts a spotlight on the legal and financial corporate giants making millions out of the new wave of privatisations across Europe.
A combination of opposing privatisation and putting forward practical alternatives is helping water campaigners mount an effective challenge to austerity in Greece.
This working paper and infographic provide an overview of a great ‘fire sale’ of public services and national assets across Europe that is providing profits for a few transnational companies but is often fiercely opposed by its citizens.
Politicians like to argue that we are 'all in it together' when it comes to austerity measures but there are definitely winners and losers in the current Euro crisis.
Why are those responsible for the EU crisis profiting from it? Why are the same policies that caused the crisis being used to resolve it? An infographic expose of the EU crisis, its causes and its social impacts.
A useful pocket guide on how a crisis made in Wall Street was made worse by EU policies, how it has enriched the 1% to the detriment of the 99%, and outlining some possible solutions that prioritise people and the environment above corporate profits.
The European Commission is deliberately promoting privatisation of water services as one of the conditions of bailouts, it acknowledged in a letter to civil society groups.
TNI and other civil society organisations, in an open letter, have denounced the European Comission's admission that it imposes water privatization conditionalities as part of its 'rescue' package to crisis countries.
The financial sector through the Euro crisis hopes to further extract wealth from public sectors, driven by its goal to commodify the whole economy and nature itself.
European political leaders and the institutions of the European Union have reacted to the Euro crisis by creating conditional debt packages, in cooperation with the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Such “aid packages” typically prescribe severe austerity measures, similar to the structural adjustment programmes applied to many troubled developing countries, especially since the 1980s. The results have rarely been a success. 2
