“35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts… is no longer acceptable” – Bruno le Maire, who said he was going to collapse Russian economy, now wants the money of millions of EU citizens

Bruno le Maire’s ‘rant’

Bruno le Maire, arch-centrist French president Emmanuel Macron’s economy and finance minister, said in 2022 that France and the EU was going to collapse the Russian economy. Now, with Russia’s economy outperforming both the EU and US, le Maire has decided that the EU doesn’t have enough cash reserves and that he wants to raid the bank accounts of European citizens to get access to what he says is 35 trillion euros lying ‘dormant’.

And he wants them, at least in part, to fund war-readiness.

As French observer Arnaud Bertrand has pointed out, le Maire wants to “mobilize all the savings of Europeans” by taking their savings into a ‘European savings product’ – but while le Maire says that it will be ‘voluntary’ for EU nations to enter the scheme, there is no mention of ordinary people having the same freedom of choice if their country does enter it. In a video on the topic, le Maire says:

I am at the Council of Ministers of Finance in Ghent, Belgium, and I just raised a fuss because the capital markets union is not progressing. What is the capital markets union? It’s the ability to mobilize all of Europeans’ savings – 35,000 billion euros – to finance the climate transition, fund our defence efforts, and invest in artificial intelligence.

Since things aren’t moving forward with all 27 members, I proposed that we move forward on a voluntary basis with a small number of member states to propose a European savings product in the coming months, to propose European supervision of capital markets to ensure that regulation works well, and therefore to raise several tens of billions of euros to finance our growth and prosperity.

Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the climate turning point because it does not have sufficient financial reserves. Europe cannot miss the artificial intelligence turning point because it is unable to agree on this capital markets union and make Europeans’ savings work.

35,000 billion euros lying dormant today in European bank accounts instead of fostering Europe’s prosperity tomorrow, instead of financing artificial intelligence, instead of financing the climate transition, is no longer acceptable. That’s the gist of my rant this morning in Ghent.

Deducing, probably correctly, that ‘defence’ really means the Ukrainian military, Betrand called le Maire’s plan:

immensely ironical that mister “I’ll collapse Russia’s economy” comes back to us 2 years afterwards, telling us “Europe cannot economically weaken as it has been doing for several months”, we need to take your savings… When Russia’s economy, far from collapsing, has been growing faster than all European countries. All this in part to “fund our defense efforts”, likely a code for “send it to Ukraine”, the most corrupt country on the continent currently fighting an endless money pit war that it has no chance of winning. Pure madness.

Europe and NATO seem increasingly determined to have war, with Sweden reintroducing conscription, other countries discussing it, the UK and EU banging the drum about Russia, whitewashing Ukrainian nazis and misrepresenting military goals, and many of them seemingly ready to conscript the life savings of civilians in order to fund endless conflict.

If only the same resolve was directed toward the actions needed to stop the actual genocidal war being perpetrated by Israel on the civilians of Gaza as there is to fanning the flames of war in Europe.

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In a move that has so far flown under the radar, Ireland has launched a legal challenge against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over plans to grant immunity to those who committed murders and torture during The Troubles. 

The case, launched on 19 January, targets the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 – marking a rare instance of a country directly challenging another's primary legislation on human rights grounds. It was spotted by legal writer David Allen Green. 

The announcement was made quietly, through a tweet linking to a press release, but its implications could be far-reaching. 

This action by Ireland reflects the strong links between the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Good Friday Agreement, the landmark 1990s peace accord. 

The ECHR is integral to this agreement as it provides both nationalists in Northern Ireland and the Irish Government with the means to uphold basic human rights standards, independent of the UK Parliament and government's influence. 

Now, Ireland is arguing that the principle has been undermined by the green light given to acts of murder and torture through granting immunity to participants in The Troubles. 

Before the Act’s passing last year, the Irish Times noted that all of the North’s five main political parties, as well as relatives of those bereaved by The Troubles and victims and survivors’ groups and human rights organisations, opposed the legislation. The United States and United Nations also condemned the bill.

The looming legal challenge comes as the Conservative-right steps up its rhetoric calling for the UK to withdraw from the ECHR. Allen Green argues that they are doing so without fully considering or discussing the potential impact on the Good Friday Agreement and the UK-Ireland relationship. 

The legal action, an "inter-state" case, is an unusual form of legal challenge at the ECHR. Typically, cases before the court involve individual applicants against member states, rather than one member state confronting another. However, Ireland's decision to target the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 marks a direct confrontation with UK primary legislation. 

Former Taoiseach Micheál Martin, now Deputy Head of the Irish Government, said: “I regret that we find ourselves in a position where such a choice had to be made."

He hit out at the UK Government pursuing legislation “unilaterally” rather than working with the Irish Government or cross-party on the island. 

“The British Government removed the political option and has left us only this legal avenue," he said. "The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into Northern Ireland law is a specific and fundamental requirement of the Good Friday Agreement. Since the UK legislation was first tabled, the Government have been consistent that it is not compatible with the Convention. I used every opportunity to make my concerns known, and urged the British Government to pause this legislation.”

Martin added that the provisions in the Act, which allow for the granting of immunity, have the effect of “shutting down existing avenues to truth and justice for historic cases, including inquests, police investigations, Police Ombudsman investigations, and civil actions”. 

“Even in cases in which immunity is not granted, 'reviews’ by the proposed body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) are not an adequate substitute for police investigations, carried out independently, adequately, and with sufficient participation of next of kin,” he added.

The Irish Government’s case is that Westminster’s NI Troubles Act stands in direct opposition to key human rights principles in potentially sanctioning atrocities. 

But in a statement at the end of 2023, when it became clear the Irish Government would bring such a case, Westminster’s Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris MP said that the UK Government “profoundly regrets” the decision taken by the Irish Government, which he branded “unnecessary”. 

“The decision comes at a particularly sensitive time in Northern Ireland," he said. "The UK Government urged the Irish Government, before considering action, to engage directly with the [Reconciliation] Commission to understand better its plans for the implementation of the legislation.”

And he dismissed the Irish Government’s referral to the Stormont House Agreement, claiming that “the reality is that there was no cross-party consensus or agreement to the practical implementation and out-workings of that agreement".

He said the Irish Government’s case was undermined by the fact that “at no time since 1998 has there been any concerted or sustained attempt on the part of the Irish state to pursue a criminal investigation and prosecution-based approach to the past”.

Successive UK and Irish governments during the peace process “worked closely together on a range of initiatives which have provided conditional immunity and early release from prison,” he added.

Should the Strasbourg Court find that the UK has violated the ECHR with this primary legislation, the political fall-out could be significant. 

While the ECHR cannot nullify an Act of Parliament, a ruling against the UK would expect the Government to undertake remedial action – a prospect that would likely spark considerable controversy within the Conservative Party. 

This case is unlikely to be resolved quickly, with a judgment likely not due for three to four years from now – making it potentially a problem for a future Labour government. But it could become a fiery political debate in the meantime. 

Ireland’s Case: The ECHR Summary

“The application concerns [the UK’s] Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which was signed into law on 18 September 2023. The stated purposes of the Act are to address the legacy of the Troubles – a conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 – and promote reconciliation. 

“The Irish Government argues that certain provisions of the Act are not compatible with the European Convention. They rely on Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), 6 (right to a fair trial), 13 (right to an effective remedy), and 14 (prohibition of discrimination). 

“The Irish Government alleges, in particular, that sections…of the Act guarantee immunity from prosecution for Troubles-related offences, provided that certain conditions are met, contrary to Articles 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention.

“[In addition] Parts 2 and 3 of the Act replace current mechanisms for information recovery with respect to Troubles-related offences (including police investigations and coronial inquests) with a review by a newly-established Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, contrary to Articles 2 (right to life), Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy).

“[The Irish Government also argues] that section 43 of the Act prevents both the initiation of new Troubles-related civil actions before the courts and the continuation of civil actions not commenced before 17 May 2022, contrary to Article 6 (right to a fair trial) read alone and in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention (prohibition of discrimination).”

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In Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, Timothy Garton Ash reflects on European history and political transformation from the mid-20th century to the present. Deftly interweaving analysis with personal narratives, Garton Ash offers a compelling exploration of recent European history and how its lessons can help us navigate today’s challenges, writes Mario Clemens.

Homelands: A Personal History of Europe. Timothy Garton Ash. The Bodley Head. 2023.

Find this book: 

Almost ten years ago, I heard the then-German Foreign Minister (and current Federal President) Frank-Walter Steinmeier say that we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that in the near future, crises will become the norm. What sounded like a somewhat eccentric assessment now appears to be an apt description of our reality, including in Europe. How did we get here?

As Timothy Garton Ash argues in Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, Western Liberals made the mistake of relying on the unfounded assumption that history would simply continue to go their way. Post-cold-war-liberals failed, for example, to care enough about economic equality (237) and thus allowed Liberalism to make way for its ugly twin, Neoliberalism.

Western Liberals made the mistake of relying on the unfounded assumption that history would simply continue to go their way.

Whether we want to understand Islamist Terrorism, the rise of European right-wing populism, or Russia’s revanchist turn, in each case we find helpful hints in recent European history. What makes Garton Ash the ideal guide through the “history of the present” is his three-dimensional experience: that of a historian, a widely travelled and prominent journalist and a politically active intellectual.

What makes Garton Ash the ideal guide through the “history of the present” is his three-dimensional experience: that of a historian, a widely travelled and prominent journalist and a politically active intellectual.

Garton Ash started travelling across Europe fresh out of school, “working on a converted troopship, the SS Nevada, carrying British schoolchildren around the Mediterranean” (27). Aged 18, he was already keeping a journal on what he saw, heard and read.

He nurtured that journalistic impulse and soon merged it with a more active political one, eventually becoming the “engaged observer” (Raymond Aron) that he desired to be. In the early 1980s, he sat with workers and intellectuals in the Gdańsk Shipyard, where the Polish Solidarity movement (Solidarność) emerged. Later in the 1980s, he befriended Václav Havel, the Czech intellectual dissident and eventual President. Garton Ash chronicled and participated in the movement led by Havel, which successfully achieved the peaceful transition of Czechoslovakia from one-party communist rule to democracy. Since then, Garton Ash has consistently enjoyed privileged access to key political figures, such as Helmut Kohl, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair and Aung San Suu Kyi. Simultaneously, he has maintained contact with so-called ordinary people. All the while, he has preserved the necessary distance intellectuals require to do their job, which in his view “is to seek the truth, and to speak truth to power” (173). His training as a historian, provides him with a broader perspective, which, in Homelands, allows him to arrange individual scenes and observations into an encompassing, convincing narrative.

Garton Ash has published several books focusing on particular themes, such as free speech, and events, such as the peaceful revolutions of 1989. In addition, he has published two books containing collected articles that cover a decade each. History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s and Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name, which covers the timespan between 2000 and 2010. Homelands now not only covers a larger timespan, the “overlapping timeframes of post-war and post-wall” (xi) – 1945 and 1989 to the present – but the chapters are also more tightly linked as had been possible in books that were based on previous publications.

By the second decade of the twenty-first century we had, for the first time ever, a generation of Europeans who had known nothing but a peaceful, free Europe consisting mainly of liberal democracies.

“Freedom and Europe” says Garton Ash, are “the two political causes closest to my heart” (xi), and he had the good fortune to witness a period where freedom was expanding within Europe. Now that history seems to be running in reverse gear, he worries that this new generation don’t quite realise what’s at stake: “By the second decade of the twenty-first century we had, for the first time ever, a generation of Europeans who had known nothing but a peaceful, free Europe consisting mainly of liberal democracies. Unsurprisingly, they tend to take it for granted’ (23-24).

Thus, one critical aim motivating Homelands is to convey to a younger generation what has been achieved by the “Europe-builders,” men and women who have been motivated by what Garton Ash calls the “memory machine,” the vivid memory of the hell Europe had turned itself into during its modern-day Thirty Years War (21-22). While nothing can equal this “direct personal memory,” he argues that there are other ways “in which knowledge of things past can be transmitted” – via literature, for instance, but also through history (24), especially when written well.

A gifted stylist, Garton Ash makes history come alive by telling the stories of individuals

A gifted stylist, Garton Ash makes history come alive by telling the stories of individuals, for instance, that of his East German friend, the pastor Werner Krätschell. On Thursday evening, 9 November 1989, Werner had just come home from the evening church service in East Berlin. When his elder daughter Tanja and her friend Astrid confirmed the rumour that the frontier to West Berlin was apparently open, Werner decided to see for himself. Taking Tanja and Astrid with him, he drove to the border crossing at Bornholmer Strasse. Like in a trance, he saw the frontier guard opening the first barrier. Next, he got a stamp on his passport – “invalid”. “‘But I can come back?’ – ‘No, you have to emigrate and are not allowed to re-enter,’” the border guard replied. Horrified because his two younger children were sleeping in the vicarage, “Werner did a U-turn inside the frontier crossing and prepared to head home. Then he heard another frontier guard tell a colleague that the order had changed: ‘They’re allowed back.’ So he did another U-turn, to point his yellow Wartburg again towards the West” (146).

History, written in this way, “as experienced by individual people and exemplified by their stories” (xiii), may indeed help us to “learn from the past without having to go through it all again ourselves” (24).

Though he emphasises the wealth, freedom and peace in late 20th-century Europe, Garton Ash also reminds us that post-war European history, even its “post-wall” period, is not an unqualified success story.

Though he emphasises the wealth, freedom and peace in late 20th-century Europe, Garton Ash also reminds us that post-war European history, even its “post-wall” period, is not an unqualified success story. Notably, right after the Cold War, there were the hot wars accompanying the dissolution of Yugoslavia. He regards the fact that the rest of Europe “permitted this ten-year return to hell” as “a terrible stain on what was otherwise one of the most hopeful periods of European history” (187).

Garton Ash is equally alert to the danger of letting one’s enthusiasm for Europe’s post-war achievements turn into self-righteousness. “That post-war Europe abjured and abhorred war would have been surprising news to the many parts of the world, from Vietnam to Kenya and Angola to Algeria, where European states continued to fight brutal wars in an attempt to hang on to their colonies” (327).

While such warnings qualify and differentiate Homelands’ central message – that today’s Europeans have much to lose – they do not reverse it. But knowing that one is bound to lose a lot can also have a paralysing effect, as many of my generation currently experience. Here again, history can help: to understand our present, we need to know what brought us here. Garton Ash is convinced that we can learn from history; he, for instance, claims that the rest of Europe should “learn the lessons of Brexit” (279).

Those who seek orientation through a better understanding of the past should turn to this extraordinary, eminently readable exploration of recent European history.

Homelands: A Personal History of Europe perfectly complements Tony Judt’s extensive Postwar (published in 2005). While Judt’s work offers a detailed and systematic account of European history after 1945, Garton Ash’s book seamlessly blends personal narratives, insightful analysis, and astute critique. Those who seek orientation through a better understanding of the past should turn to this extraordinary, eminently readable exploration of recent European history.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

Image Credit: struvictory on Shutterstock.

The far right is on the rise in Ireland.