No freedom inside the EU

Whatever the problems of the European Union, and especially the eurozone, the recommended treatment is always more Europe.

The EU finance ministers' decision to place 200 of Europe's biggest banks - those with assets of over €30 billion -under the direct supervision of the European Central Bank (ECB) is a massive step towards banking union, as demanded by Germany.

As has become normal in recent times, the EU powers that be insist there is no need for agreement on a new treaty before this comes into effect.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have effectively blackmailed Berlin's EU partners into accepting that the major banks and entire economies will be run their way - or they'll refuse to bail out countries that are in trouble.

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This implacable approach has borne fruit in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal where national governments have piled up hardships on their people at the bankers' behest.

In Greece and Italy democratic government was suspended to allow so-called "technocrats" - in essence, bankers - to push through cuts in public spending, welfare benefits, pensions and salaries.

Elsewhere, conservatives, liberals and social-democrats have followed each other in and out of office as national electorates react angrily to the measures taken to degrade their living standards.

But irrespective of the colour of the rosettes worn by incoming governments, the austerity policies remain the same.

When Henry Ford said of his model T car: "You can have any colour you want provided it's black," he could have been drafting future policy for the EU.

"You can follow any economic direction you want provided that it's neoliberalism and austerity" is the EU golden rule.

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Bankers can scarcely believe their luck at the transformation of the global political situation since 2008 when any party advocating the public disembowelling of top bankers would probably have been swept to power in a landslide.

Politicians in thrall to the finance industry have played for time, waffled about regulation and demanded national sacrifices to restore the economy.

In all circumstances it is the working class that has been forced to make sacrifices while big business and the rich have been force-fed huge sums of public money to restore profit margins and protect their private wealth.

The ECB, delivering the script dictated by Schaeuble, has lectured debt-laden countries, especially Greece, on the need to cut living standards in return for so-called bailouts.

But attention is rarely paid to the reality that the bailouts are not acts of kindness to the Greek people but to the German and French banks that were dangerously overstretched as a result of their exposure to Greek debt.

As each bailout is haggled over before being passed on begrudgingly, the financial wellbeing of Germany's banks has improved.

Meanwhile Greek workers suffer greater unemployment, a higher cost of living and lower incomes.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) was alone in demanding that the Athens government repudiate the debts owed to foreign banks and leave the bankers' Europe.

The KKE was alone, but it was correct.

The EU that masqueraded for a time as a social Europe reveals itself openly now as a mechanism to boost profits at the expense of working people.