Politische Kartelle

Summary

The article focuses on political cartels with special reference to the EU. It is argued that political cartels are harmful principally not less than are economic cartels of private companies because both impede or do away with competition. It is often argued that political cartels - contrary to economic cartels - are beneficial because political agents principally act benevolently. But, as is known, Public Choice and empiricism evidently tell the opposite: Politicians - like private agents - are self-interested agents. This is the reason for arguing that political cartels, by analogy to economic cartels, need a supervisory authority for sanctioning strategies against political competition in the EU. These strategies are manifold of which this article focuses on two: the late “rescue screen” for Greece (and the Euro) of May 2010 and the creeping tendency towards harmonization and centralization in the EU-governance.

It is argued that the rescue package is pure political cartelizing at the disadvantage of the European tax payer to whom - off from the creditor banks - the risk of ultimately paying the bill for insolvent countries is transferred. This has been done by neglecting especially article 125 of the Lisbon-Treaty which strictly outlaws to bail out encumbered countries. Contrary to the political agents’ official announcements that there was “no alternative” to their rescue package, in this article some incentivecompatible non-cartel alternatives are presented.

The political cartelization implied in the creeping tendency towards harmonization and centralization in the EU is controversial to the application and enforcement of the basic principle of subsidiarity in the Lisbon-Treaty. It is argued that a supervisory authority (“Senate for Political Competition”) should be established to control political cartelization in the EU as regards their doing away with political competition by neglecting the essential subsidiarity principle.