The people have spoken. The majority of the people of Greece have rejected the discipline needed to be part of the eurozone. The message is clear without having to analyse the results of Sunday's election in detail. It is true that leaving the eurozone is seen as being an extremely complex move, with serious repercussions not only for the country concerned but also for the zone as a whole. Nevertheless, when a people speaks, it has to be listened to. All the jumping through hoops that has taken place over the years to avoid Greece's exit have achieved nothing, despite the eye-watering cost. On the contrary, this situation is helping to aggravate what is happening in the eurozone as a whole. At a time when the EU is trying to develop the policies needed to correct the public deficits that are ruining more than one member state, the Greek anomaly cannot be allowed to run indefinitely, with all the risks of contagion it carries - especially as we now know that the Greeks themselves are, in practice, calling for a return to national currency.
Leaving the euro does not mean leaving the EU. At this point in the argument, I need once again to reject the dishonest and wrong interpretation which links leaving the euro with leaving the EU. Pushing Greece out of Europe would, of course, be a crime and a total absurdity, given what all Europeans owe to Greek civilisation, the cradle of our culture. It is just the opposite of expulsion that is the truth: it will be simpler and, indeed, more efficient for the EU to support Greece outside the euro, to increase funding, to support the economy and to contribute to new projects that are being prepared in Athens.
Of course, Greece will have to alter some aspects of its conduct, to consolidate the standard of living that it achieved by sometimes artificial devices. Sunday's election attracted a large number of foreign journalists and observers, and what they found had the occasional bizarre tinge. Ship owners continue not to pay taxes; luxury vessels fill the ports, but no one knows to whom they belong; the number of civil servants is breathtaking but what they do is often open to doubt; wages for some jobs are higher than in other EU countries and there are privileged positions. At the same time, more and more people have lost all employment and are increasingly losing hope.
The people of Greece have chosen the political forces in which they can have confidence. They must now assume their responsibility, with the EU support, of course, which remains, and is developing and even becoming more focused.
At stake is how the euro works. Without Greece, the eurozone will operate more easily, with a reduction, at least in part, of the risk of contagion from those who do not comply with the discipline that is crucial. A member state's leaving the eurozone will, of course, have consequences which financiers have described as very serious and even dangerous. Sometimes I wonder, however, if the repercussions will really be as serious as they say, or if the fears and warnings have not been artificially inflated by the world of financial speculation, which is concerned with its own interests and nothing else. With Greece, the banks are taking risks, certainly; but they are demanding and receiving interest rates worthy of the usurers whom Dante condemned to Hell.
I have the impression that political leaders are a little more relaxed than financiers on the possibility of Greece's leaving the eurozone. Our newsletter of yesterday quoted this sentence by the German foreign minister: “Germany would like Greece to remain in the eurozone, but whether it does or doesn't is not in Germany's power”. We also reported that one of the ECB's executive board, Jörg Asmussen, said: “Greece must abide by the aid plan if it wants to stay inside the euro”. Anyway, arrangements for Greece's exit have not been set. There has even been talk of a transitional exit. According to some sources, the paths to be taken are already being studied.
A risk the EU cannot take. What seems clear is that the EU cannot allow the risk of contagion spreading to several other member states and sending the world of finance (and speculation) into a frenzy at precisely the time when discussion is being conducted at the very highest levels of how to implement the twin track - budgetary discipline and economic recovery - approach. If Greece refuses to abide by the commitments to which it signed up, the EU must consider its own null and void. And since the people of Greece have elected to leave the euro, perhaps only temporarily, preparations must be made.
(FR/transl.rt)