[Peace-discuss] FW: [recovery_human_face] Greece: Statement on the historic victory of the No

Mon Jul 6 07:18:34 EDT 2015

To: recoveryhumanface at socpro.list.ilo.org
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 07:42:28 +0200
From: eric.toussaint4 at gmail.com
Subject: RE: [recovery_human_face] Greece: Statement on the historic victory of the No

The beautiful historic victory of the No shows again that the Greek citizens refuse to accept the creditors’ blackmail. As shown in the preliminary report by the Truth Committee on Public Debt created by the Hellenic parliament, there are several legal arguments
 that permit a State to unilaterally suspend or repudiate its illegal, odious, and illegitimate debt. In the Greek case, such a unilateral act may be based on the following arguments: the bad faith of the creditors that pushed Greece to violate national law
 and international obligations related to human rights; preeminence of human rights over agreements such as those signed by previous governments with creditors or the
Troika; coercion; unfair terms flagrantly violating Greek sovereignty and violating the Constitution; and finally, the right recognized in international law for a State
 to take countermeasures against illegal acts by its creditors, which purposefully damage its fiscal sovereignty, oblige it to assume odious, illegal and illegitimate debt, violate economic self-determination and fundamental human rights.

As far as unsustainable debt is concerned, every state is legally entitled to invoke necessity in exceptional situations in order to safeguard those essential interests threatened by a grave and imminent peril.
In such a situation, the State may be dispensed from the fulfilment of those international obligations that increase the peril, as is the case with outstanding loan contracts. Finally, states have the right to declare themselves unilaterally insolvent when
 the servicing of their debt is unsustainable, in which case they commit no wrongful act and hence bear no liability.

People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable debt

Source: http://cadtm.org/Eric-Toussaint-s-STATEMENT-on-the

Eric Toussaint

Scientific coordinator of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

see: 
http://cadtm.org/Legal-foundations-for-repudiation 

http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth

From: recoveryhumanface-request at socpro.list.ilo.org
On Behalf Of Eric Toussaint

Sent: 02 July 2015 07:27

Subject: [recovery_human_face] Greece: Preliminary Report of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

Dear colleagues
Below the preliminary Report of the Truth Committee on Public Debt
http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth
Best regards,

Eric Toussaint

Scientific coordinator of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

see: 
http://cadtm.org/Legal-foundations-for-repudiation 

http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth

Preliminary Report of the Truth Committee on Public Debt
18 June by
Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt 

The Truth Committee on Public Debt (Debt Truth Committee) was established on April 4, 2015, by a decision of the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Ms Zoe Konstantopoulou, who confided the Scientific
 Coordination of its work to Dr. Eric Toussaint and the cooperation of the Committee with the European Parliament and other Parliaments and international organizations to MEP Ms Sofia Sakorafa.

Members of the Committee have convened in public and closed sessions, to produce this preliminary report, under the supervision of the scientific coordinator and with the cooperation and input
 of other members of the Committee, as well as experts and contributors.

Download the Preliminary Report of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

The authors are grateful for the advice and input received from other members of the Truth Committee on Public Debt as well as other experts, who contributed to the Committee’s work during the
 public sessions and hearings and the closed or informal consultations.

Legal foundations for repudiation and suspension of Greek sovereign debt
30 June by
Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt 

Chapter 9 of the 
Preliminary Report of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

The final chapter of the report of 18 June 2015, by the Truth Committee on Public Debt, shows strong legal arguments for suspending or repudiating Greek illegitimate, odious, illegal or unsustainable
 debts |1|.

Abstract :

Several legal mechanisms enable States to uni-laterally repudiate or suspend debts that are illegitimate, odious, illegal or unsustainable.

A first range of mechanisms are dedicated to the repudiation of illegitimate, odious and illegal debt since they integrate subjective elements that take into account the behavior of the creditors.
 Unilateral repu-diation is justified by peremptory considerations of jus-tice and
equity, but is also founded on sovereignty and self-determination. This is the case where there is an absence of good faith based on Article 26 of the Vienna Convention
 on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) which pro-vides that treaties are binding and must be performed in good faith. Bad faith in the case at hand was to be achieved by rendering Greece financially subservient and by imposing measures violating fundamental so-cio-economic
 and civil and political rights of the Greek people as well as domestic legislation. Moreover, the sustained pressure on Greece to bypass its constitu-tion and violate its human rights obligations, as well as the creditors’ interference in the country’s political
 and economic affairs constitutes a form of coercion. Such coercion is in itself a ground of invalidity under Article 52 VCLT. The VCLT’s reference to “force” in Article 52 may be construed as including forms of economic co-ercion. It is then to be noted that,
 in the case at hand, statements made by creditors, even speculative ones which were known to culminate, or which would have knowingly had the effect of deteriorating/harming the Greek economy and the livelihood of the Greek people constitute a species of unilateral
 coercive measures. These are prohibited under international law and vi-olate the UN Charter. It is well accepted that when a country becomes the target of actions that are known to harm its economy (especially to the benefit of its lenders) and the livelihood
 of its people, it may resort to lawful countermeasures. Indeed, under customary and Articles 49ff of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility (ASR) an injured state may violate an otherwise international obligation against another (respon in-ternational
 lawsible) state if that other state has committed an internationally wrongful act. The violation committed by the injured state has the purpose of inducing the responsible state to comply with its obligations.

Finally, one should highlight the fact that the Greek people have not received an unjust advantage or any other benefit from the accrued debt, and thus Greece is under no obligation to repay that
 part of the initial capital (deemed odious, illegal or illegitimate) as a form of unjust enrichment.

A second range of mechanisms apply in respect of unsustainable debt. Contrary to the ones listed above, these are mechanisms that apply objectively, irrespec-tive of the creditor’s behavior. In
 such situations, the debt cannot be repudiated but merely suspended. In this respect, Greece may lawfully have recourse to two grounds that render its debt obligations invalid. The first concerns the state of necessity. In accordance with Article 25 of ILC’s
 ASR, the term “necessity” is used to denote those exceptional cases where the only way a state can safeguard an essential interest threatened by a grave and imminent peril is, for the time being, not to perform some other international obligation of lesser
 weight or urgency. In the case at hand, due to the economic and social crisis in Greece, the conditions required for the defence of necessity are satisfied. The second ground concerns the right to unilateral insol-vency. Although creditors are generally opposed
 to such possibility as it precludes them from being paid, sovereign insolvency is a reality in international affairs, acknowledged in both theory and practice. If a state then enjoys the right to become insolvent, it is clear that unilateral insolvency constitutes
 a circumstance precluding wrongfulness of the borrower’s international obligations, namely its borrowing obligations.

SECTION I: THE RIGHT TO UNILATERAL REPUDIATION OF ODIOUS, ILLEGAL AND ILLEGITIMATE DEBT UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
The existence of odious, illegal or illegitimate debt may justify its unilateral repudiation by the debtor state if such repudiation is not arbitrary, discriminatory and does not give rise to unjust
 enrichment. The absence of significant case law or a large body of unilateral de-nunciations is due to the fact that in most cases debt-or states (and their lenders) find it more appropriate, politically and financially, to come to other negotiated terms.
 Such negotiated settlements, however, do not di-minish the rule against odious debt and the entitlement of states to unilaterally repudiate it. Indeed, unilateral repudiation is justified by peremptory considerations of justice and equity |2|,
 but is also founded on sovereignty and self-determination. In the present report, the legal basis of a Greek unilateral repudiation of that part of its debt which is odious, illegal and illegitimate is pred-icated on the following considerations:

1. Absence of good faith

Under Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) treaties are binding and must be performed in good faith |3|.
 The ILC Commentary stresses that good faith is a legal principle and forms an inte-gral part of
pacta sunt servanda. The principle whereby agreements are to be honored applies only where both parties act in good faith. In fact, Article 69(2) VLCT is adamant that “acts performed in good faith before the invalidity was invoked are not rendered unlawful
 by reason only of the invalidity of the treaty”; thus im-plicitly accepting that acts performed in bad faith are always unlawful. Although the absence of good faith does not automatically always lead to the invalidity of an agreement, it justifies in exceptional
 circumstances denunciation of the treaty under Article 56 (1) (b) VCLT (a right of denunciation implicit in the nature of the treaty). In the case at hand, the agreements entered into between Greece and its creditors were known to all parties to violate the
 Greek constitution. In addition,

it was known to all parties that they violated Greece’s treaty obligations under pertinent human rights trea-ties and customary international law. In the situation at hand, bad faith is additionally
 manifested through the ultimate aim of the creditors, which was not to secure Greece’s
liquidity (so-called bail out), but rather, among others, to transform private debt into public debt and thus salvage big private banks and their shareholders.

This was to be achieved by rendering Greece finan-cially subservient and by imposing measures violating fundamental socio-economic, civil and political rights of the Greek people. Equally, lender
 states and financial institutions with excellent credit rating and thus access to low
interest were able to lend to Greece with a much higher interest under the guise of a ‘bailout’, such as the
ECB’s purchase of sovereign bonds from secondary markets at half their nominal value but later demanding an extortionate rate of interest from Greece
 while all the time claiming to have bought Greek sovereign bonds in order to contribute to the Greek economy and bailout. In addition, Greece’s need for liquidity was met with a set of measures whose aim was to extinguish its economic and political sovereignty.

2. The legal effect of creditors violating domestic laws

Bad faith was further manifested in the blatant vi-olation of Greek law, particularly the Constitution. A characteristic example was the promulgation of Article 1(9) of Law 3847/2010, which effectively
 bypassed Ar-ticles 28 and 36 of the Greek constitution as regards the requirement of parliamentary approval in respect of foreign agreements. Such constitutional violations were clearly engineered by both parties as they paved the way for legislation recommended
 by the creditors (or agreements dictated by creditors) to be adopted as law without parliamentary approval. While generally obliga-tions under international law supersede contrary obliga-tions under domestic law, this principle is inapplicable where the parties’
 agreement knowingly and purposely violates fundamental provisions of domestic law (par-ticularly of a constitutional nature). This is because such an agreement violates the principle of legality, fails to satisfy good faith and breaches other parties’ legitimate
 expectations. Article 46(1) VCLT expressly states that the violation of domestic law regarding competence to conclude treaties is a ground invalidating that state’s consent if the violation, as in the case at hand, was ‘manifest and concerned a rule of law
 of its internal law of a fundamental importance’.

3. Precedence of human rights over other contractual obligations

As the present report has shown, Greece was effec-tively coerced into violating fundamental human rights obligations through a series of agreements, such as the 2010 Intercreditor Agreement and
 Loan Facility Agree-ment and MoUs whereas sovereign creditors have an obligation not to frustrate or force another party to violate its obligations. The violation of human rights through conditionalities affects the validity of the debt contracts |4|.

Such an obligation for creditors to respect human rights is first and foremost an ethical one, for no state can legitimately claim to be discharging its own hu-man rights obligations territorially
 while at the same time actively pressuring another state to violate its own obligations. Secondly, convincing a state to effectively and totally suspend or contract out of its human rights obligations constitutes a clear interference in its domestic affairs,
 irrespective if the latter formally consents. To the extent that Greece’s agreements with creditors are in conflict with
jus cogens norms (e.g. eco-nomic self-determination) these are void under Article 53 VCLT.

The primacy of human rights has been clearly en-shrined in Article 103 of the UN Charter but also in many reports and statements made by UN institutions. Ac-cording to Article 103 of the UN Charter:
 “In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail”. These obligations
 include the promotion of universal re-spect for, and observance of, human rights for all.

The UN Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, which although not binding as such but reflecting customary law where it iterates the human rights obligations of states, emphasizes
 that:

“All States have the obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. In this regard, they should en-sure that any or all of their activities concerning their lending and borrowing decisions,
 those of international, national public or private institutions to which they be-long or in which they have an interest, the negotiation and implementation of loan agreements or other debt instruments, the utilization of loan funds, debt repayments, the renegotiation
 and restructuring of external debt, and the provision of debt relief when appropriate, do not derogate from these obligations” (para. 6).

“International organizations have an obligation to respect human rights. This implies a duty to refrain from formulating, adopting, funding and implementing poli-cies and programmes which directly
 or indirectly contravene the enjoyment of human rights” (para. 9).

“States should ensure that their rights and obliga-tions arising from external debt agreements or arrange-ments do not hinder the progressive realization of eco-nomic, social and cultural rights”
 (para. 16).

4. Coercion in debt restructuring

The majority of the debt instruments encompassed a degree of coercion. Indeed, where a state is coerced into violating its constitutional, treaty and customary obligations in order to secure credit
 and liquidity, es-pecially where it is forced to forego a significant part of its legislative and socio-economic sovereignty, it is deemed as having consented under a high degree of co-ercion. In the case at hand this was further manifested through reprehensible
 conditionalities, combined with interference in constitutional processes (such as severe opposition to a proposed referendum in 2011 and un-veiled threats to the Greek electorate in all elections since 2010). Coercion as a ground of invalidity under Article
 52 VCLT refers to the threat or use of force. The VCLT’s reference to “force” may be construed as includ-ing forms of economic coercion and should not neces-sarily be limited to “armed force”. Indeed, a number of international instruments refer to economic
 pressure as a form of aggression |5|.

This type of economic coercion also qualifies as un-lawful intervention in the domestic affairs of a state which, although does not invalidate consent, may none-theless offer a basis for denouncing
 a treaty under Ar-ticle 56 (1) (b) VCLT.

The employment of coercion in the negotiation and signing of an instrument, whether a treaty or contract, gives rise to severe implications for the instrument in question as well as the parties’
 relationship |6|. Although Articles 51 and 52 of the VCLT refer to the coercion
 of individual state negotiators or coercion through the threat or use of force, it is clear that in situations where a government as a whole is forced to accept significant-ly unbalanced terms, lest be sanctioned with an acute (real or speculative) financial
 crisis (especially when its origin and effects are controlled by the other parties) |7|
 with unforeseen consequences, that the level of coer-cion is tantamount to that envisaged in Article 52 VCLT.

5. Unilateral coercive measures by creditors

The creditors’ bad faith and illegitimate pressure (coercion or duress) on Greece to accept the terms of the various agreements and instruments, as well as the financial consequences of unilateral
 acts, ultimate-ly culminated into a situation whose legal effects are tantamount to unilateral coercive measures. In the case at hand, statements made by creditors, even specu-lative ones which were known to culminate, or which would have knowingly had the
 effect of deteriorating/ harming the Greek economy and the livelihood of the Greek people constitute a species of unilateral coercive measures. Unilateral coercive measures are prohibited under international law, violate the UN Charter and are not considered
 lawful countermeasures |8|.

6. Lawful countermeasures

As has been demonstrated in the present report, the creditors have committed internationally wrongful acts by imposing upon the Greek government several meas-ures that violate rights enjoyed by
 the Greek people.

Furthermore, in the run-up to the Greek debt crisis, EU member states and the
IMF, among others, entered into negative statements about the Greek economy that had a direct adverse impact on the country’s capacity to
 borrow with lower interest rates. Further speculation through other statements about the country’s exit from the Eurozone had an analogous impact and among oth-er
 effects induced a significant number of Greek depos-its to flee abroad. The same is true of similar measures and statements following the election to power of a new government in 2015.

The outcome of these observations is that when a country becomes the target of actions that are known to harm its economy (especially to the benefit of its lenders) and the livelihood of its people,
 it may resort to lawful countermeasures. Greece is therefore entitled to pertinent countermeasures, especially by repudiating debts attached to, or arising from, the MoUs, the 2010 Intercreditor Agreement and Loan Facility Agreement.

Indeed, under customary international law and Ar-ticles 49ff of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility (ASR) an injured state may violate an otherwise inter-national obligation against another
 (responsible) state if that other state has committed an internationally wrongful act. The violation committed by the injured state has the purpose of inducing the responsible state to comply with its obligations.

7. The absence of unjust enrichment

Bad faith, the satisfaction of self-interests, the ab-sence of legality and the detrimental effects of the con-ditions imposed on Greece to its economy and the liveli-hood of its people render
 the pertinent part of the debt odious, illegal or illegitimate. The Greek people have not received an unjust advantage or any other benefit – quite the contrary – from the accrued debt, therefore Greece, is under no obligation to repay that part of the initial
 capital (deemed odious, illegal or illegitimate) as a form of unjust enrichment |9|.
 The same is true in re-spect of interest (simple or compound) which arises as a result of odious, illegal or illegitimate capital in the form of loans, assurances or other. The case against unjust enrichment is further reinforced by the fact that while Greece
 has made a surplus and has dramatically slashed public spending its debt continues to grow.

SECTION II: THE RIGHT TO UNILATERAL SUSPENSION OF UNSUSTAINABLE DEBTS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
1. Unilateral debt suspension based on the state of necessity

The definition of necessity is provided by Article 25 of the ILC Articles on State Responsibility which has been widely used and recognized by international courts and tribunals |10|.
 As explained in the commentary to Ar-ticle 25, the term “necessity” is used to denote those exceptional cases where the only way a state can safe-guard an essential interest threatened by a grave and imminent peril is, for the time being, not to perform some
 other international obligation of lesser weight or urgency |11|. Pursuant
 to Article 25, four conditions are required for a lawful invocation of necessity. The Greek case satisfies them all. Greece can therefore suspend the unsustainable part of its debt.

a) The measure shall safeguard an essential in-terest of the State against a grave and imminent peril

In the Socobel case |12|, counsel
 for the Greek Govern-ment rightly stated that “doctrine recognizes in this matter that the duty of a Government to ensure the

proper functioning of its essential public services out-weighs that of paying its debts. No State is required to execute, or to execute in full, its pecuniary obligation if this jeopardizes the functioning of its public services and has the effect of disorganizing
 the administration of the country. In the case in which payment of its debt endangers economic life or jeopardizes the adminis-tration, the Government is, in the opinion of authors, authorized to suspend or even to reduce the service of debt” |13|.
 The Counsel for the Belgian government replied that: “a learned survey... Mr. Youpis [the counsel for the Greek government] stated yesterday that a State is not obliged to pay its debt if in order to pay it would have to jeopardize its essential public services.
 So far as the principle is concerned, the Belgian Government would no doubt be in agreement.”

An 
ICSID tribunal in the LG&E case has followed this view in finding that economic and financial interests can also be considered as essential interests. |14|
 In this respect, the tribunal pointed out several socio-econom-ic indicia which allowed Argentina to lawfully invoke a state of necessity |15|. These included:

Unemployment rate of 25%;Almost half of the Argentine population living be-low the poverty line;“Health care system teetered on the brink of col-lapse”;Government forced to decrease its per capita spending on social services by 74%.
In the Continental case, an ICSID tribunal shared this view and also set out a set of concrete factors:

“It is impossible to deny, in the Tribunal’s view, that a crisis that brought about the sudden and chaotic aban-donment of the cardinal tenet of the country’s econom-ic life, such as:

the near collapse of the domestic economy;the social hardships bringing down more than half of the population below the poverty line; the immediate threats to the health of young children, the sick and the most vulnerable members of the population….that
 all this taken together does not qualify as a situation where the maintenance of public order and the pro-tection of essential security interest of Argentina as a state and as a country was vitally at stake” |16|.
As it has been demonstrated in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the present report, it is clear that essential interests of Greece are equally under imminent peril.

b) The measure must be the only way to safeguard the essential interest in question

It is clear from the ILC Articles commentary that the state can take several measures, and thus the ex-pression “only way” shall not be construed literally. In the LG&E case the tribunal stated
 that a state may have several responses at its disposal to maintain pub-lic order or protect its essential security interests. As these austerity measures have directly culminated in serious and flagrant human rights violations and have, as such, jeopardized
 essential interests of Greece, it is evident that the suspension of that part of the debt which is odious, illegal or illegitimate is now the only solution for Greece in order to safeguard the interests at stake. As has been well demonstrated, the violation
 of human rights is closely linked to the economic and social environment, which is the result of a debt crisis.

During the past five years, measures implemented were seen by most of the international economic actors as the only way to prevent Greece from defaulting, and this continues to be the case. This
 means that in the eyes of Greece’s creditors there exist merely two options: im-plementing austerity measures or defaulting. A default would have harmed the banks’ inerests.

c) The measure shall not impair an essential in-terest of the State or states towards which the obligation exists, or of the international commu-nity as a whole

This condition means that the interest of the other states threatened by the non-fulfillment of the obliga-tion has to be inferior to the essential interest of the first state. In the case of Greece,
 as we have shown in the present report, the consequences to be borne by the creditors of Greece are substantially low, and cannot, in any case, be seen as essential interests.

d) The state shall not have contributed to the situ-ation of necessity and the international obligation in question shall not exclude the possibility of in-voking necessity

The commentary to Article 25 makes it clear that the contribution to the situation of necessity must be “sufficiently substantial and not merely incidental or peripheral” |17|.
 In the case of Greece, it is clear that the Troika is responsible for the economic and social dis-aster that has engulfed the country. As we have shown, the margin
 of appreciation at the disposal of Greece was very narrow and did not enable it to freely imple-ment any meaningful economic and social programme.

We have shown that Greece was effectively forced to accept such conditionality through political and eco-nomic pressure, mainly undertaken by two of the more powerful countries in the EU (France
 and Germany). In this context, Greece cannot be seen as having substan-tially contributed to the situation.

2. The right to unilateral sovereign insolvency

There is no rule under international law that prevents states from becoming insolvent by unilateral means. This is especially true when a state becomes factually insolvent, whether because its
 debt is unsustainable, because it is unable to meet the fundamental needs of its people, or because of other circumstances. The prac-tice of states that have actually defaulted constitutes some practice regarding the unilateral nature of such an entitlement.
 Sovereign insolvency has received minimal attention in international law and practice, although it is well documented and was in fact rather prevalent in the early part of the twentieth century |18|.
 This right to unilateral insolvency is further corroborated by the ILA’s Sovereign Insolvency Study Group whose 2010 report proposed four policy options for debt restructuring, one of which was in fact full bankruptcy. In 2013 two work-ing groups were established,
 one of which analysed the possibility of treaty-based solutions to debt restructur-ing |19|.
 As a result, sovereign insolvency is a reality in in-ternational affairs that is acknowledged in both theory and practice, albeit fiercely resisted because the assets of insolvent states are protected by immunities and sovereign privileges against their creditors.
 Debt-re-structuring, short of insolvency, therefore, is an artificial mechanism which effectively allows creditors to exploit the income-generating sources of states, namely tax-es, customs/tariffs, natural resources royalties, forced privatisations and others.
 The idea that Greece could somehow become unilaterally insolvent was resisted by its creditors through unilateral coercive measures.

Even though it would have been beneficial for Greece to become insolvent, especially in the wake of the crisis, its creditors continued to sustain her unsustainable debt, effectively prolonging
 an unsustainable debt.

If a state then enjoys the right to become insolvent, it is clear that unilateral insolvency constitutes a circumstance precluding wrongfulness of the borrower’s international obligations, namely
 its borrowing obliga-tions. This is clearly the case when a state of necessi-ty may be demonstrated under Article 25 of the ILC’s

Articles on State Responsibility, as already explained. It would be inconceivable for a domestic court to compel a person to service his or her debt if his or her earnings did not suffice for the
 basic sustenance needs of his or her family. These observations are consistent with a recent award issue by an investment tribunal in Postova Banka AS and Istrokapital SE v Greece, where it noted that there is no guarantee for the repayment of
sovereign debt.

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Footnotes
|1| See the
Executive Summary of the report from the Debt Truth Committee and the final
Press Conference at the Greek Parliament.

|2| R Howse, The Concept of Odious Debt in Public International Law, UNCTAD Paper 185 (July 2007).

|3| The agreements between Greece and its creditors are not treaties, so the VCLT does not formally
 apply. It is used here because the majority of its provisions reflect general principles governing agreements between state entities.

|4| Among the many sources, Bedjaoui, who was the ILC’s rap-porteur on the Vienna Convention on
 the Succession of States in respect of state property, archives and debts, and hence his opinion is decisive, noted that a debt is considered odious if the debtor state contracted it “with an aim and for a purpose not in conformity with international law”.
 M Bedjaoui, Ninth Report on Succession of States in respect of matters other than treaties, UN Doc A/CN.4/301 (1977), reprinted in YB ILC, at 70.

|5| Art. 32 of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, GA Res. 3281 (XXIX) (12 Dec.
 1974), Declaration of the Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, GA Res. 2625 (XXV) (24 Oct. 1970);

Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of their Independence and Sovereignty, GA Res. 2131 (XX) (21 Dec. 1965); Moreover, the Fi-nal Act of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties includes a
 declaration, initially tabled by The Netherlands (in reaction to a request by developing countries that consent to a treaty under economic pressure be considered as “coercion”), stating that : “The United Nations Conference on the Law of Treaties... condemns
 the threat or use of pressure in any form, military, political, or economic, by any State, in order to coerce another State to perform any act relating to the conclusion of a treaty in violation of the principles of sovereign equality of States and freedom
 of consent” (Draft Declaration on the Prohibition of the Threat or Use of Economic or Political Coercion in Concluding a Treaty, adopted by the Conference without a formal vote (Draft Report of the Committee of the Whole on Its Work at the First Session of
 the Conference, U.N. Doc. A/Conf. 39/C. 1/L. 370/Rev. 1/Vol. II (1969), at 251-252)).

|6| The same is also true as a general principle of contract law. In the common law, for example,
 duress renders the con-tract voidable if the pressure is illegitimate, which depends on the nature of the threat and the demand. Universe Tankships Inc of Monrovia v International Transport Workers Federation, [1983] 1 AC 366.

|7| One minor dimension, for example, is the ability of creditor states and institutions to instill
 fear in the markets and hence force credit ratings down as well as people to withdraw their savings and deposit them in foreign banks (typically in the cred-itors’ territory) or otherwise invest it in real estate in creditor territories.

|8| See Arts 49-50 ILC Articles on State Responsibility.

|9| ICJ, 25 September 1997, Gabcíkovo-Nagymaros Project, BVerfG, 2 BvR 120/03 of 4/5/2006 ; French
 Supreme Court, 23 October 1987, Nachfolger navigation company ; Decision on Annulment Enron v. Argentina, 30 July 2010, ICSID Case No. ARB/01/3 §356 ; Decision on Annulment Enron v. Argentina, 30 July 2010, ICSID Case No. ARB/01/3 ; Decision on Annulment Sem-pra
 v. Argentina, 29 June 2010, ICSID Case No. ARB/02/16; LG&E

|10| Argentina, 3 October 2006, ICSID Case Nº ARB/02/1 ; Conti-nental v. Argentina, 5 September
 2008, ICSID Case N° ARB 03/9.

|11| ILC Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts: Commentary,
 available at: http://legal.un.org/ilc/ texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001.pdf, at 80.

|12| Societe Commerciale de Belgique, (1939) PCIJ Ser A/B, No 78.

|13| Cited by R Ago, Addendum to 8th Report on State Respon-sibility, UN Doc A/CN.4/318/ADD.5-7.

|14| LG&E Energy Corp and Others v Argentina, ICSID Award (25 July 2007), para 251.

|15|
Ibid, para234.

|16| Continental Casualty Company v Argentina, ICSID Award (5 September 2008), para 180.

|17| ILC Commentary, above note 10, at 84.

|18| M Waibel, Sovereign Defaults before International Courts and Tribunals (Cambridge University
 Press, 2011), at 3-19.

|19| RM Lastra, L Buchheit (eds), Sovereign Debt Management (Oxford University Press, 2014),
 at xx-xxiii.

Author

Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt 

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Executive Summary of the report from the Debt Truth Committee

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Hellenic Parliament’s Debt Truth Committee: Presentation of the Preliminary Findings

16 June, by Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt

Définition of illegitimate, illegal, odious and unsustainable debts

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Terms of reference for the Hellenic Parliament’s Truth Committee on Public Debt

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14 April, by Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt

-- 

Eric Toussaint

Scientific coordinator of the Truth Committee on Public Debt

see: 
http://cadtm.org/Legal-foundations-for-repudiation 

http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth

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