Greece needs democratic leaders to help, not a bureaucratic bashing

The ordinary people of Greece face the prospect of deep and sustained hardship, of a kind that is unprecedented in a European context, writes Fergus Finlay

SEVEN years after the ending of a military dictatorship, Greece applied to join the EU (ironically, in a letter to Garret Fitzgerald, who was then head of the Council of Foreign Ministers). Part of the reason was Greece’s belief that membership would help them to ensure stability in their democratic political system and institutions, and “as a powerful factor that would contribute to the development and modernisation of the Greek economy and Greek society”.

Right now, that aspiration appears to be dead. Greece may be taking the first steps towards leaving the European Union, and is certainly on the brink of deep economic uncertainty. It is clear that whatever else might be said, the ordinary people of Greece face the prospect of deep and sustained hardship, of a kind that is unprecedented in a European context.

I can’t claim to be an authority on Greece. I’ve read everything I can, and it’s amazing how divided opinion is. But all my deepest instincts tell me that what is happening to Greece is utterly wrong, cruel and misguided.

Somewhere along the way, the ideals that are supposed to underpin Europe have been completely forgotten, and all the decisions are being made by a bureaucracy.

In the midst of every previous European crisis since the Second World War, leadership asserted itself — sometimes late in the day, but it always emerged. There is no sign of any leadership anywhere in this crisis. Instead we are being led into this crisis by “institutions” run by people elected by no-one. The key decisions are being made by people whose names never appeared on a ballot paper.

If it ultimately results in the destruction of the Greek economy and the starvation of the Greek people, and that in turn leads to another banking collapse throughout Europe, and that eventually leads to the collapse of the eurozone and maybe even the Union itself — if all that happens to this rudderless ship, we are all going to find ourselves wondering who was to blame.

I’m not saying the Greeks are blameless in this, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. But think back a couple of years to how we all felt when our government did its deal with the troika in the middle of the night. We woke up one morning to a feeling of national shame — the sense that our basic sovereignty had been taken way. No, given away, by a chaotic shambolic government not worthy of the name.

I wrote an open letter to the President of Ireland back then, calling on her to use the discretion she had to address the Dáil. In that letter I said, “We, the people of Ireland, have been given no choice, no say whatever, in this matter. Our government has agreed to take money from third parties, and has mortgaged our future in the process. That money is to be doled out as we meet penal conditions — including an unsustainable interest rate — and we are to be judged every quarter on our “performance” before the next moiety is given …

“We are moving, without debate, from independence to dependence, from sovereign to beholden. We are changing from a democratic state to one where all the key decisions will be made by third parties, never elected, in no way answerable to the people. And all of that is being done by a government which, through its own actions, has squandered the mandate of the people and forfeited their respect.”

That’s exactly what has happened to Greece now — with the single exception that the Greek people elected a government, and gave that government a mandate to fight. They are trying to stand up for their own people, and for that alone they deserve our respect and our support.

That’s not to say that the Greeks are right in the totality of the approach they have taken. The catastrophe that is the Greek economy has been getting worse for years. For more than a decade they have been living on borrowed money, and nothing has been done to rein that in. Greece has a non-compliant tax culture and a pretty lackadaisical approach to the management of its own affairs. And there’s nothing new in that.

I can remember in the ’90s, when I worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs, going backwards and forwards to Brussels with teams of Irish officials who were negotiating investment from Europe in Ireland through structural and cohesion funds. We did well because our negotiations were always backed up with detailed and well-produced economic models, demonstrating how the investment would pay off.

But it was a source of constant frustration, even back then, that the Greek government would arrive with their own demands, and with what one of our senior officials referred to as a “page and a half of hand-written notes”.

So, Greece’s trouble may be largely of its own making. But so was ours, by the way — the policies we pursued for a decade, using cheap European money to fuel an unsustainable wealth and asset boom — were always going to be a recipe for collapse, except we hadn’t the wit to see it coming. We may see ourselves as having fought back from a disaster, but that doesn’t give us the right to be superior.

We often talk about the things we have given to the world over the generations. But can’t Greece make the same claims? And at the end of the day, Greece, like us, is a small country at the periphery of Europe. It’s a country in trouble. Greek citizens are Europeans just like us. At least that’s the talk we talk.

And the Europe we’ve always been asked to vote for is one based on a set of values and ideals — like democracy, solidarity, equal citizenship. There’s supposed to be a common purpose.

But when that is challenged by a small member state, in desperate trouble, the response looks deeply tyrannical. Greek banks have been forced to close because emergency funding has been cut off, and essentially all negotiations have been suspended because the Greek government decided to consult its own people. This does not in any sense reflect the European values I’ve always voted for.

Why has no consideration been given by the leaders of Europe — the democratically elected ones, not the bureaucratic ones — to the idea of going to Athens? Why has no-one suggested sitting down with the government of Greece in its own country, and making a genuine effort to reach a political solution? Why doesn’t the European Council, all of whom have an equal democratic mandate, choose two or three of their number to sit across a table from their partners and friends in the city and country that gave democracy to the world?

Or are we really going to try to starve them into submission instead? Of course the problems are deep and complex — but that’s what democratic politics are for. If democratic politics can’t exercise the wit and leadership — never mind the empathy for people who are suffering and afraid — to begin to develop a solution everyone can live with, there is a real possibility we’ll all be the losers in the end.

The ordinary people of Greece face the prospect of deep and sustained hardship, of a kind that is unprecedented in a European context