Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker in press conference after EU summit on Greece.Demotix/Sander de Wilde. All rights reserved. In an openDemocracy article a few
weeks ago I argued there would be no agreement between the Greek government and
the Troika. I took this position because it was (and is) obvious that the most
powerful actor within the Troika, the German government, would not agree to any
substantial alteration of the austerity program imposed on previous Greek
governments.
As a result the Syriza government
would have no choice but to abandon the euro zone and introduce a national
currency. I was correct in my assessment of the inflexibility of the German
government and its clients in the eurozone (e.g., Baltic countries and Finland)
and the broader European Union (most obviously Poland).
Due to naivety and/or the triumph of
hope over experience, I never entertained the possibility that the Syriza
government would capitulate to the Troika. The capitulation arrived all the
more unanticipated because the Syriza government surrendered to EU
demands more draconian and more of an insult to national sovereignty than
those rejected by 61% of Greek voters in the referendum on 5 July.
Troika divisions
This post-referendum package
accepted by the Greek government does not result in a Third Bailout. On the
contrary, by accepting it all the Greek government has gained (if that is the
operative word) is a concession by its euro overlords to begin negotiations for
a Third Bailout.
The simple truth is that the
European partners in the Troika, the European Central Bank and the euro zone
finance ministers group, have conceded nothing of substance to the Greek
government. Even the potential for another bailout remains extremely
uncertain. The German government (led
not by Merkel but by finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble) refuses to endorse any
new funding for the Greek government without the participation of the IMF.
And further, the government in
Berlin refuses to even consider reduction of the Greek public debt as long as
Greece remains in the euro zone. For its part the IMF refuses to join any
neo-Troika unless the main creditor of the Greek government, the ECB, grants
debt relief. To weaken even more the potential for agreement among the
so-called creditors, the IMF for its part refuses to ‘forgive’ any of the Greek
debt that it holds.
Spectre haunts Europe
The conditions accepted by the Greek
government to begin negotiations add the insult of sovereignty to the injury of
austerity.
In his detailed annotation
of the Troika terms,Yanis Varoufakis shows clearly their punitive nature
and, more importantly, their rejection of democratic principles. The agreement
requires the Greek government to clear with the Troika any policy proposal
prior to informing the Greek population (full version on
the EU website). This requirement signals the end of Greek democracy by any
reasonable definition.
The role of the Greek parliament is
reduced to rubber-stamping policies handed down by the Troika. This is nothing
less than a deus ex machina
conversion (with the German government assuming the role of deus) of a democratic institution into a
body rather like the Consultative
Assembly of Saudi Arabia. The substantive difference between the two
powerless bodies is that in Saudi Arabia the monarch appoints all members. To
date Greece's EU overlords have not made that a condition.
It is rarely fruitful to speculate
on the motives driving extremist acts. The perpetrators almost always seek to
rap themselves in the cloak of virtue. However, in this case Donald Tusk blew
the Troika cover and revealed all. Mr Tusk is president of the European
Council, described as follows on an
EU website (bold in the original),
"The European Council brings
together EU leaders to set the EU's political agenda.
It represents the highest level of
political cooperation between EU countries."
In pursuit of setting "the EU's
political agenda", Mr
Tusk cemented his right-wing credentials by stating publicly that "I
am really afraid of this ideological or political contagion, not financial
contagion, of this Greek crisis". Lest anyone miss his point, the former Polish prime minister
went on to say that his concern was caused by the "radical leftist
illusion that you can build some alternative" to the EU's neoliberal
economic model.
He fears that this
"illusion" resulted from "wide spread impatience", which
could lead to "the introduction of revolutions" (all quotations from
the FT article). Carthage posed an
existential threat to Roman power in ancient times. For Mr Tusk and the Troika,
the Syriza government posed a radical threat to the recently consolidated neoliberal
eurozone.
The message of Mr Tusk and his
colleagues in the Troika summons up an authoritarian equivalent of the famous
passage that begins
the Communist Manifesto (1848),
in which he would substitute "democracy" for "communism"
and "European Union" for "old Europe",
"A
spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old
Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre…"
EU threat to democracy
Expect no "just peace" for
the country posing a radical threat. The suffering imposed on the Greek people
by the Third Bailout will not be "collateral damage". On the
contrary, since Greek voters rejected Troika rule by a landslide, the Hellenic
citizenry presents a threat far greater than the government it elected.
It must be punished
to prevent a repeat of such democratic impertinence.
I am in distinguished company in applying the word "punish" to
extremism of the terms imposed on Greece. Germany's most famous
intellectual and long time supporter of European integration, Jürgen Habermas,
has described the conditionalities as "an
act of punishment".
The European Commission
has become the vehicle for preventing the anti-austerity uprisings that Mr Tusk
considers so radical. By his reactionary clarion call for action to prevent
democratic revolt, the president of the European Council harks back two hundred
years, to 1814 when the monarchies of Europe gathered for the Congress
of Vienna.
These powers convened to
construct a barrier to the spread of republicanism, creating the so-called
Concert of Europe, in effect a Concert of Monarchism, to maintain a united
front across the reactionary states of the continent. Mr Tusk seeks a
twenty-first century version to prevent progressive change in the European
Union, a Concert of Neoliberalism.
If you enjoyed this article then please consider liking Can Europe Make it? on Facebook and following us on Twitter @oD_Europe
