(MintPress) – While the city of Chicago became the focal point of demonstrations this weekend during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, more than 20,000 protesters took to the streets in Frankfurt, Germany in a display against austerity and economic policy. The demonstrations acted as a mirror image of America’s Occupy Wall Street movement that has pushed back against income inequality and called for banking regulations on an industry they perceive as corrupt.
On Saturday in Frankfurt, protesters made efforts to black access to the European Central Bank (ECB), thus dubbing themselves the “Blockupy” movement. But the demonstrators were met by 5,000 police officers assigned to the protests, which resulted in the temporary detainment of 400 people for unauthorized actions on the ECB property.
Group organizers said the movement’s goal was to send a “clear and visible signal of international solidarity against the authoritarian crisis management and the poverty inducing policies of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
Austerity measures have become a policy staple in many European countries, which has taken deficit-cutting practices and reduced benefits and public services while raising taxes to lessen spending. In 2009, United Kingdom Prime Minister Dave Cameron said Europe had entered the “age of austerity,” where conservative spending measures and budget cuts would take hold of the economies.
“Over the next few years, we will have to take some incredibly tough decisions on taxation, spending and borrowing – things that really affect people’s lives,” Cameron said.
Greece has been one of the hardest hit countries in the Eurozone, cutting public sector job salaries, education, healthcare and pensions. In Ireland, five austerity budgets have passed in the country since 2008. While wages in the country have been reduced by 15 percent, sales tax has increased by 23 percent.
In Britain, after Cameron’s push for austerity, the government has passed spending cuts of nearly $167 billion through 2017, causing a sharp reduction in government jobs proposed strikes by workers unions. At the tail end of April, it was reported that Britain had fallen into a double-dip recession.
Protests in Frankfurt were less about actions taken in Germany, but rather austerity as a whole within Europe, a measure in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel has supported for the region.
“30,000 people say here today in the banking center of Germany loud and clear: This European-poverty policy is not done in our name, we are in solidarity,” Blockupy Frankfurt wrote on its website. “Europe with the people in Greece and other countries that already suffer existential under the social cutbacks. We need a bailout for the people, not for the banks.”
Portugal, Greece and Ireland have all received international rescue loans to avoid default.
Critics, however, argue that austerity over the past years have returned little to nothing for taxpayers. In a column for the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that the revolts against the economic policy have stemmed from its failure, but also the persistence of Europe’s leaders to keep it alive.
“Claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years,” Krugman wrote. “So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.”
A new approach?
The “Finance and Development” publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published research that demonstrated rapid consolidation and spending reductions in many countries facing budgetary shortfalls had consequences felt by the middle class.
“Evidence from data over the past 30 years shows that consolidation lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more of a hit than others; it also raises unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment,” the article said.
In France, austerity measures have raised the sales tax, slashed budgets for local governments and raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. Protests, such as those seen on May Day, have resulted in tens of thousands of people demonstrating against the economic policies that have created tax breaks for the wealthy while cutting pensions.
“It’s a massive protest to take care of our problems, speak about unemployment, purchasing power. Give us answers to our problems,” said Francois Chereque, head of French CFDT labor union.
French voters recently showed their dismay when they voted out Nicolas Sarkozy from the presidential seat in favor of socialist and anti-austerity politician, Francois Hollande. At the point of his election, many within the Occupy movement in Europe began to speculate the start of new economic policy and the beginning of the end for austerity.
Hollande has said that he will push for new negotiations for a fiscal pact between European countries currently under the constraints of austerity, saying “austerity need not be Europe’s fate.”
“In Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy, everyone agrees that austerity alone will not bring back balanced budgets,” For this reason alone I believe the French election campaign has been invaluable, and this is why it has been watched from well beyond our borders.”