Jean de Belot is the founder, President of
Aria Partners
, specialist in communication and public affairs, and General Delegate of
CERC
.
It is like an incongruity to see the ECB placing, as it has been repeating for a year, the “
greening
” of its activities at the heart of its strategy.
Not that the idea is bad or because this objective is, for the moment, not in its mandate.
We know that the ECB has for several years left the rules governing its interventions;
the semantics of "
unconventional politics
" and "
whatever the cost
" show it so well that the community of experts hardly emphasizes it anymore.
No, if this is shocking it is that the very heart of the ECB's policy produces and increases deleterious effects of a precisely anti-sustainable development nature.
Ecologically unhealthy.
What was the initial promise of an independent central bank within the euro area?
It was to promote “
balanced
”
growth, it was
said at the time for “
healthy and sustainable
”, for the Member States and perhaps beyond.
The results are not mixed;
it is, one can say it, frankly bad.
The reasons had been explained from the start.
The first is structural: with both a single currency and, hidden behind the counterfeit semantics of the Single Market, competing fiscal, social and regulatory policies between member states, the gamble was difficult to sustain.
The single currency has fostered hyper-indebtedness in lax states and within states, inequalities between populations.
The second is strategic, in the pure sense of the term: the only Holy Grail in the fight against inflation reduced the effectiveness of the institution from the outset, when the challenges of our globalization were growth, sovereignty, innovation.
All the more so since the third factor: the calculations of inflation, which differ between Member States, are, and we know this particularly in France, fallacious as they drastically reduce certain essential costs and all those of housing.
Thus the device did not have the right objectives, nor an adequate or homogeneous exercise area, nor sincere measuring instruments.
One element should have alerted even the most affectionate: the supporters of the device, from Jean-Claude Trichet to our political leaders, all families combined, had, in terms of public accounts, growth, employment, "
track records
" which did not could only alert.
Read also:
But what is the ECB doing?
And indeed, what is the balance sheet?
The single currency has encouraged the hyper-indebtedness of lax states and, for some, of their social systems, widening the gaps between member states and, within states, inequalities between populations;
what hides measured inflation translates into a drop in the real standard of living for increasingly large sections of the population.
Various bubbles have multiplied as investment retreated.
Serious disability in a period of major technological change.
The ECB and its euro zone thus accumulate deficits in public and commercial accounts, over-indebtedness, and the histo-hysterical use of the printing press.
Social deflation and monetary debauchery.
And despite this, the convulsive laxity of unconventional policies has set in as the norm.
The ECB's balance sheet looks like a state-power central bank's balance sheet, like the Fed or Bank of China.
This is why the new "green" ambition of the ECB can only offend;
because what the ECB has been implementing for a long time, which it has been practicing intensively since 2008 and sickly for a year, is neither healthy nor sustainable, is disrespectful of citizens, savers or employees, and first of all of the youngest who are the first victims.
Read also:
"The EU, initially a center-right economic project, is tilting to the left?"
This mad race sees the ECB's balance sheet resemble the balance sheet of a state-power central bank, like the Fed or Bank of China, while the Union is not a state and above all does not want to be a power.
Shouldn't the ECB be the guarantor of reliability and seriousness?
The Covid crisis only imposes the observation, identified for a long time: the policies of the ECB and with it of the Union produce a formidable downgrading of the euro zone and its inhabitants.
So we would like that before greening its purchases, via criteria and standards which we know are still uncertain today, the ECB focuses on the terms of its mandate.
That it finally makes its decisions accountable, rationalizes its practices and respects its mission.
For the credibility of the euro, the reliability of our assets and the serenity of everyone, especially the most disadvantaged.