Sovereign rights should refer to the nation rights of citizens, and not to the nation rights of government bureaucrats.

Sir Gideon Rachman, in his very clear-eyed and straight talking “Germany’s conditional surrender”, July 14, mentions: “Much of the comment about the loss of Greek sovereignty, in the outline deal just agreed”

“Greek sovereignty”? As I see it “Inalienable sovereign rights" have lately just become a convenient wording for what government bureaucrats consider to be their rights… or statist ideologues consider to be the rights of ever more powerful governments.

The day sovereign rights refers more to the nation rights of the citizens, than to the nation rights of governments, that’s when sovereignty has a chance to get on a real track.

Meanwhile bank regulations that assign a risk weight of zero to government debt, and 100 percent or more to private sector debt, has absolutely nothing to do with any justifiable sovereign rights… much the contrary it has only to do with government bureaucrats' clientelism.

@PerKurowski

“Inalienable sovereign rights” is most often just a wonderful exploitable excuse to screw your own citizens

Sir, François Heisbourg writes “It is clear… that the new great powers, including a reinvigorated Russia are deeply averse to interference in what they see as inalienable sovereign rights – an attitude explained in many instances by their former colonial or dependent status”, “The west is accelerating its own strategic decline”, September 5.

I think there is a need for a clarification. 99 percent, at least, of the demand for the respect of inalienable sovereign rights, comes from those wanting to use that as a shelter in order to violate what should be the even much more inalienable human and economic and democratic rights of their citizens.

To oversell the importance of “inalienable sovereign rights” is only to play into the hands of dictatorships, even those who dressed up as popular democracies, are quite often, de facto, nothing but dictatorships.