Spilling Greek Blood

Malta joined the EU in 2004, right at the end of a cycle of optimism triggered by the end of the cold war which finally put to an end Europe’s 1500 years of bloody wars and 50 years of nuclear tension.
Since than we have seen the rise of right wing populist parties formerly held at bay by a social democratic consensus which was fatally crippled by the fragmentation and of European societies which left individuals more exposed to the risks created by globalisation.
This left the room open for populists who promised to cut expenditure and decrease tax revenue without bringing social havoc.
Unable to keep these promises when elected to power these leaders started to manufacture consent by internally targeting immigrant as well as was the case in Sarkozy’s France against a native gypsy populations.
In so doing they have opened the flood gates for the more primitive hordes whose mythology harks back to the Frankish or Lombard war lords of the middle ages.
One wonders what Alcide De Gasperi or Altiero Spinelli would have said about the hordes assembled in Pontida last week to dictate conditions to a government they hold at ransom.
Since the European Commission is a reflection of national governments, its reaction to the current crisis in Greece has been at best ambivalent and at worse suicidal.
Surely economic good sense dictated a bail-out coupled with a plan to restore the Greek financial mess partly caused by unsustainable fiscal policies of successive Greek governments but also by banks who profited from the situation. Political good sense also dictated that Greece must remain in the Euro zone.
But imposing austerity as a way of life on an entire country without even expecting the private banking sector to pay a part of the cost, was the price national governments had to pay to increasingly bullish electorates and irresponsible bankers.
Greek blood had to be spilled.
The consequences of this are obvious; Greek confidence in Europe has been fatally wounded.
In Greece reactionary forces of the left and the right will probably exploit a widespread sense of national humiliation and victimhood which would imperil long term structural reforms.
The ultimate losers in all this could well be sober Greeks who accept the need to reform but question the a kind of shock therapy which could leave the patient in bad shape.
As Ulrick Beck prophetically warned on the onset of the financial crisis:
“Those who harm the union harm themselves. If the members renounce their European responsibility and solidarity in a frenzy of national reflexes, everyone loses. Each nation on its own is condemned to global insignificance”.
Ironically the greatest threat to Europe is now coming from within.