The aim of the EU discriminating bonds supplement

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The aim of the EU discriminating bonds supplement #

To inform the European Parliament that in the prospectuses of 10th December 2019 for the SURE bonds and that of 4th June 2021 for the NextGenEU bonds, jointly decided by the European Commission and Euratom, EU US bi national citizens are, according to the EU regulated prospectuses, prohibited from purchasing those securities since they are considered US citizens by the EU. The marketing material accompanying those bonds published by the Commission on 7th October 2020 and 15th July 2020 for the SURE bonds are equally discriminatory. The joint issuers for the SURE and NextGenEU bonds are the European Commission and EURATOM.

To say that this prohibition represents a gross breach of article 18 of the TFEU and article 21.2 of the Charter and that article 51 of the Charter applies given that the discriminatory institutions are both the Commission and Euratom should be superfluous. Apparently it is not : a study of the financial documentation of bond issues of the European Commission shows a systemic discrimination against EU US bi nationals - even pre FATCA - as can be seen in the following prospectuses:

  • 12th March 2015 (Juncker Commission)
  • 20th December 2012 (Barroso Commission)
  • 18th February (Barroso Commission)
  • 10th June 2010 (Barroso Commission)
  • 9th December 2004 (Prodi Commission)

This open discrimination by one of the three most important EU institutions is already raising eyebrows in the legal community. Régis Bismuth, professor at Sciences Po law school in Paris wrote this summer in the International Journal for Financial Services an unforgiving editorial on the topic. >English version, >French version.

The other aim of this petition is to ask the European Parliament to vote a motion of censure against the discriminatory, disingenuous and hypocritical von der Leyen Commission which is, according to social media and multiple press releases, horrified by the discrimination against LGBTQ+ in Hungary and Poland. Discrimination against EU US bi nationals is equally illegal in the European Union and equally immoral and reprehensible anywhere in the world and as such we call for the resignation of this Commission as soon as possible unless double standards regarding discrimination are to become the norm in the EU.

This time the discrimination is the work of the highest institutions of the EU and its sanctimonious president and not that of Member States held as convenient pariahs to deflect any and all attention from the gross breaches of EU law perpetrated by the Commission and Euratom themselves.

One might have naively surmised that a German president of the Commission would have been hell-bent to avoid any discrimination under her tenure - beyond mere words that is - and one would have been wrong obviously. (this thought however will no doubt cross the minds of millions of EU citizens and people around the world as Chancellor Merkel will probably guess; Ursula von der Leyen nomination having been put forward by the German Chancellor).