12:41, 19 February 2010
During the last European Council meeting, EU leaders made their position towards the Greek economic crisis clear: Greece will have EU’s help if the measures taken by the country fail to tackle the economic problems. In other words, Brussels will make sure that Greece will not need EU’s assistance; towards this direction, EU has proposed some austere monitoring and consultation mechanisms that will allow central EU bodies (such as the EU commission and the European Central Bank) to supervise (and guide) the policy of the Greek government towards addressing the economic problems. This EU strategy has an explicit aim: to make sure that Greeks will undertake all the efforts needed in order to solve their domestic problems without a European helping hand; EU will show the way to the necessary measures to safeguard that this Greek modern tragedy will have one and only protagonist: the Greeks themselves.
All these have been rather awkwardly received in the Mediterranean country. A country that has always been defined by strong pro-EU attitudes and narratives (a direct result of the important benefits the country enjoyed as a result of EU membership throughout last decades), is now reluctant and sceptical about the EU. People are getting defensive towards a Union that, according to them, ‘is playing tricks with Greece’, ‘is exploiting their misery’ and ‘does not run to their assistance that they deserve as an equal EU partner’. Once again, quite in line with the concept of tragedy, Greeks look out for a deus ex machina, to divinely intervene and solve the problems for them. This time however, it looks that Greeks will be alone in facing the nemesisof their very own mistakes.
Because, this tragedy, although related to the global recession, is not a result of it; instead, it is the final dramatic act of the Modern Greek post-1974 political turmoil and the product of consequent Greek governments that were unable to identify (and even more timid to address) Greek political system’s very own faults (e.g. corruption or the reform of the pension system are problems that have been around unresolved years before the recent economic crisis). In addition to that, EU will stay reluctant towards a rather untalented player of the EU stage until now; Greece has failed to behave as a legitimate partner in the EU environment (with the directly related to the economic crisis scandal of the statistical service being a striking example). As a result, Greek pleas for assistance in the base of this partnership look (and are), largely, irrelevant.
All in all, this Greek tragedy that just started has no divine intervention. Let’s hope, that will have, at least, a catharsis.
