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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/furious-barroso-rounds-on-mep.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso erupted in fury over accusations" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/min-furious-barroso-rounds-on-mep.jpg" alt="European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso erupted in fury over accusations"/></a></p>
<p>European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso erupted in fury as Socialist MEP Joe Higgins accused Brussels of destroying Irish services and living standards.</p>
<p>Mr Higgins described an EU emergency support fund &#8211; used to help bail out the Irish government to the tune of 85 billion euros &#8211; as &#8220;nothing more than another tool to cushion major European banks from the consequences of their reckless speculation on the financial markets&#8221;.</p>
<p>Mr Higgins, speaking in a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, went on: &#8220;It is a mechanism to make working class people throughout Europe pay for the crisis of a broken financial system and a crisis-ridden European capitalism.&#8221;</p>
<p>He accused Mr Barroso and EU council president Herman Van Rompuy of effectively transferring tens of billions of euros of private bad debts &#8220;on to the shoulders of the Irish people&#8221;, adding: &#8220;Far from being a bailout, your International Monetary Fund/EU intervention in Ireland is a mechanism to make vassals of Irish taxpayers to the European banks.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Higgins continued: &#8220;You are destroying our services and the living standards of our people.</p>
<p>&#8220;Your Financial Stability Mechanism (which needs MEPs&#8217; approval to become a permanent fund in future), is a vicious weapon dictated by the markets, masquerading as something benign.</p>
<p>&#8220;We on the left in Ireland will insist that it goes to a referendum of the Irish people before it is passed.&#8221;</p>
<p>A furious Mr Barroso retorted: &#8220;To the distinguished member of this Parliament who comes from Ireland, who asked a question suggesting that the problems of Ireland were created by Europe, let me tell you: the problems of Ireland were created by the irresponsible financial behaviour of some Irish institutions, and by the lack of supervision in the Irish market.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Higgins was not the only MEP who upset Mr Barroso.</p>
<p>After others challenged the EU&#8217;s handling so far of the economic crisis, the Commission president responded: &#8220;I have heard some nationalistic, prejudiced comments that I am not used to hearing in the European Parliament. They were a minority, but those comments were made, trying to deepen divisions between so-called &#8216;rich&#8217; and so-called &#8216;poor&#8217; Europeans.&#8221;</p>
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