JOHN MAJOR paraded his internationalist credentials for all to see when he addressed the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's annual meeting in London last month.
We in wester Europe have a clear and inescapable moral duty to demonstrate in practice our solidarity with those who lived under communism, who had the courage to overthrow it, paying the price of its political and coobled functionaries gathered within the EBRD's now-infamous marbled corridors were enjoined.
Luxury offices
Helping castern Europe is, of course, precisely will EBRU was set up to do. year existence, it has so far spent £201.5 million on its own running costs, including £55.5 million on constructing the luxury offices in the City of London quet of 'the Glistening Bank".
This is more than double the £101 million it has managed to put out to those it is supposedly assisting.
Sitting in Major's audience was a man who has made the transition from being a top banking official under the old order to being a top banking official within the new one. Presumably, he even joined in the applause for Major's denunciation of the very system in which he once gladly played a promiBut later on in the procedines. Viktor Geraschenko. chair of Russia's central bank, stood up and renoco ine money tis country had so far received from EBRD as "paltry". His point was certainly valid; the sum in question is just £4.97 million.
Let us consider another example of the west's boundless generosity to Geraschenko's country. Remember all the press hype accompanying the 5900 million food aid package Bill Clinton, the US president. Walesa's prayers and grovelling have failed promised to his Russian counierpart Boris Yeltsin at their summit meeting in Vancouver, month? Look at the small print.
The bulk of the package is made up of $700 in concessionary loans, from which Russia is supposed to buy grain, paying above world market rates for both the grain itself and the freight charges.
The "give-away" portion of shipping speculators drove up the already-expensive rates for chartering US-flagged vessels, in the knowledge that it is a legal requirement for US ships to deliver 75 percent of all food aid.
i now scams probabie that none of the food which Clinton seemingly put on the plates of Russia's hungry will ever rive, because America's businessmen demand not just profit but superprofit before the starving can be fed.
Capitalism has already sorted central and easter Europe into sheep and goats. The Confedcration of Independent States, the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and most of what have been written off by the world's bosses as not worth investing in for the foresecable There will be mineral exploiLation joint ventures where a spectacular rate of retur can be guaranteed, and plenty of privatisation scams and impor/expor: deals of dubious propriety:
The wost's main concern will be to preven: those hailed elsewhere in Major's speech as 'heroic people" from getting past the barbed wire-fenced border posts of the post-Maastricht European Community: But there are no Communists left to blame for the new iron curtain.
*Fast track' On the other hand, there is tion into the world capitalist system. Democratic Republic, as part of a united Germany, is in already in the BC, and Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia will eventually to be allowed to join.
Even in the these countries, infant capitalism's first footsteps have proved slow and faltering. Despite Poland's big bang attempt to introduce a free market virtually overnight, the state sector still accounts for around 60 per cent of industrial output. Inflation, though slowIt now sooms probable that none of the food which Clinton seemingly put on the plates of Russia's hungry will ever arrive, because America's businessmen demand not just profit but superprofit before the starving can be fed. ing, was 45 percent last year, and unemployment has shot up from near zero to 14 percent.
In Hungary, less than 20 per cent of state owned industry hac been transferred to private hands. Wester companies such as General Electric and Electrolux have airezdy cherrypicked most of the more attractve consumer goos compa nies.
Meanwhile, welfare programmes are under attack. Auserity measures were recently introduced to stop the country's budget deficit hitting a projected 13 per cent of national output.
Crochoslovakia has seen investment from top German industrial groups such Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz Siemens and Krupp. But the would-be free market Crech Republic and the more interventionist Slovak Republic will inevitably undermine the remaining customs union and common currency.
Footing the bill
Everywhere, it is local labour, rather than imported capital, that is footing the bill for the transition to the free market. According to The Privatisation Process in Central Europe, a recently published academic study. last-available statistics show that real wages have fallen from a January 1990 baseline of 100 to 95.9 in Poland, 925 in Hungary and just 76.2 in Crochoslovakia Two weeks before the EBRD met, the United Nations Eco. nomic Commission for Europe (ECE) published its annual economic survey.
The report reveals that bilatcru and midtera ancis for castern Europe and the former Saviet Union toiled just $40,000 million in 1992. That's roughiy £25,000 million, or to put it another way, about the same as Britain's annual miliLary expenditure. Little of this money was in grant form; about