How will we deal with private property in Europe in the future
A highly complex debate follows from this question, one that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen interpreted in her own very particular way on Friday.
In a speech to French business leaders at the MEDEF’s La Rencontre des Entrepreneurs de France in Paris, the former defense minister talked about using EU citizens’ bank deposits to get the ailing eurozone, the European economy, back on its feet.
An unmistakable message: In the view of the EU’s chief Eurocrat, private property as a protective wall shielding citizens from an overreaching state has served its purpose as a pillar of civilization.
Central planning, subsidy madness – this is Brussels under the magnifying glass.
Certainly: In the face of towering government debt and capital flight from the old continent, in whose wake thousands of patents and tens of thousands of highly qualified professionals are being swept away, citizens’ wealth is bound to awaken political appetites. A ruthless expropriation or the decreed redirection of cash, as the finest bureaucratic German puts it, is supposed to solve the problems Brussels itself has caused through its stubborn climate policy, its overregulation and its continuing insanity of interventionism.
Von der Leyen was explicit before the business leaders: Europe has savings, she said, but unfortunately those savings are sitting on the sidelines. Ten trillion euros are sitting as cash savings in the hands of private households in bank accounts, lectures von der Leyen in the manner of a classic central planner who can no longer take her eyes off citizens’ wealth. The European economy must now put this capital to work for its companies, the chief bureaucrat decreed.
None of this merely sounds like Erich Honecker. Von der Leyen is increasingly turning into a socialist sister in spirit to this disastrous regime.
Von der Leyen is following the path of the German chancellor. Friedrich Merz, too, discovered the cash holdings of Germans as political capital for himself more than a year ago – thoroughly socialist, indeed almost dictatorial, the chancellor also pointed to the possibilities opened up by what he called an activation of this money.
Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz reveal not merely an ethical and ideological abyss; they are contemplating dictatorial control over the private wealth of citizens who are still sovereign.
Almost tragically comical is the economic ignorance of these two political protagonists of an EU that is now openly turning toward an illiberal ideology.
Bank deposits are by no means useless cash. From the perspective of the banking sector, customer deposits are a central source of refinancing and liquidity, embedded in the money and credit cycle and enabling the provision of loans. Bank credit in the modern monetary system does not simply arise from passing on existing deposits. Commercial banks create new bank money through lending, although this process cannot simply be understood as a mechanical “leveraging” of existing deposits. Customer deposits thus fulfill numerous functions, from private liquidity planning and cash holdings to the financing and management of banking processes.
Such a massive intervention in the highly complex and fragile liquidity and credit structure of the banking sector would not merely be a barbaric act of socialism – it would be a frontal assault on the functionality of the banking system as such.
Nevertheless, the EU will resort to massive interventions – financially, after all, they have run into a wall.
Starting in 2028, repayment of the €800 billion Eurobond “NextGenerationEU” will come due. Von der Leyen’s speech before business leaders was ostensibly directed at the private sector, but in reality it concerned the financing of the European debt club, which is now moving toward tapping every financial source that can help keep the Ponzi scheme of European credit alive – the activation of cash appears to be one of those sources.
France is caught in a debt spiral, with new borrowing amounting to 5.7% of GDP this year and a parliamentary deadlock that rules out any form of fiscal consolidation.
Germany, too, will post new borrowing of more than 5 percent next year if the municipal deficit, the special funds and the social insurance funds are included – making common financing through Eurobonds, the consolidation of the mountain of debt under the roof of the European Commission and under the active liquidity assistance of the ECB increasingly likely.
And here the circle closes.
The green subsidy machine alone destroys billions year after year. The final push over the economic cliff, however, will come from Europe’s rediscovered appetite for militarism. Military Keynesianism is not, however, an economic alternative to the free market. It is merely another fiscal grave that the political leadership is digging in its panic in these months.
The following final chapter is essentially known: Brussels will opt for massive capital controls.
The framework for this is already taking shape: In two years, the digital euro is to be introduced, initially as a pilot phase and, almost certainly at a later stage, as a monetary standard that will allow Brussels to exercise complete control over transfers abroad.
A ban on foreign bank accounts for EU citizens is also on the table and is being introduced step by step, just like the digital ID and the harsh regulation of the crypto sector. Slowly but steadily, the gates are closing.
Basically, this is how it always works in socialism: One day, the central planners will run out of other people’s money. Only then does the grinding machinery of repression by the powerful central authority begin.
