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COMMENT: In FTR #‘s 746, 788, 855, we looked at the Greek economic/political crisis against the background of long-term (two hundred years or so) German plans for the economic and political colonization of Europe as a vehicle to effect world domination. It is against that same background that we examine the purchase of Greek regional airports by a German company. (Never forget that, as seen in FTR #305, corporate Germany is controlled by the remarkable and deadly Bormann capital network.)
The Greek government has rowed back on a promise to halt the fire sales of the country’s strategic assets by approving the sale of its airports to a German company.
Operating rights to 14 regional airports, including those on popular holiday destinations such as Crete, will now fall under the control of Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt airport.
The €1.23bn deal represents a significant climbdown for Alexis Tsipras who had denounced attempts by the Troika to force various Greek governments to de-nationalise the country’s ports, electricity networks and airports.
But the embattled prime minister has been forced into a number of concessions in return for an €86bn aid package to keep the country in the euro for the next three years. The deal comes as Germany’s Bundestag prepares to vote on the package on Wednesday.
Bidding for the airports was won by the German firm in November but the process was suspended by Syriza amid claims the tender broke competition rules. Fraport will operate the airports for the next 40 years under the licence agreement.
Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has attacked the sales for entrenching the country’s oligarchic elites and hurting the government’s coffers through under-priced sales.
In a line-by-line critique of the demands, he dubbed the privatisations as “a major disaster in every conceivable way – from the prices fetched to the rate at which the privatisations that occurred were overturned by the European competition commission and the Greek Council of State”.
The sale comes as a host of eurozone parliaments are preparing to ratify the terms of the new rescue package — Greece’s third bail-out in five years.
Germany’s Angela Merkel is battling to fight down a rebellion in her ruling Christian Democrat party. As the eurozone’s largest creditor state, Germany holds a blocking minority vote on European Stability Mechanism loans.
Although the package is likely to gain the necessary votes, more than 60 of Ms Merkel’s parliamentarians voted to reject new bail-out talks in July. The rebellion is set to escalate to around 100 out of her 311 MPs.
The Chancellor has sought to convince sceptical lawmakers that Greece will be able to carry a the raft of onerous economic reforms in return for a first disbursement of €26bn due to be made by Thursday.
Disquiet in Berlin has also grown over the position of the International Monetary Fund, which is only likely to release its own funds to Greece in October.
...
With Greece still forced to privatized its top state assets, here’s a reminder of that the lovely private sector that’s supposed to magically rid Greece of all its inefficiencies and corruption has been contributing to and profiting from Greece’s inefficiencies and corruption for years. And those lovely private entities weren’t just Greek:
“But observers note that the fines are usually nowhere near the value of the government contracts in question, effectively rendering them useless as a deterrent.”
If only there was something we could do about that.