You can read here the article on Greece and the European normalisation, which was written by Professor Emeritus and Member of the Board of Trustees of ELIAMEP Theodore Couloumbis. This commentary was published on 12 June 2016 in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini. It is available in Greek.
The new book of Loukas Tsoukalis: In Defense of Europe. Can the European project be saved? is published by Oxford University Press. Europe has not been so weak and divided for a long time. Buffeted by a succession of crises, it has shown a strong collective survival instinct but a poor capacity to deliver. Loukas Tsoukalis is critical of the way Europe has handled its multiple crises in recent years. He addresses the key issues and difficult choices facing Europe today.
In particular:
- Can Europe hold together? Under what terms? And for what purpose?
- A look at the key choices facing Europe today, by a leading political economist and former special adviser to the President of the European Commission
- Explains how the international financial crisis has become an existential crisis of European integration
- Asks whether Europe can ovecome the basic contradiction of a currency without a state
- Looks at how the European Union can accommodate greater internal diversity – and thereby hope to avoid a Brexit or a Grexit
- Examines whether there is an irreconcilable contradiction between Europe’s yearning for soft power and the hard realities of the world outside
Book Reviews
‘An inexorable analysis. An eye opener, a heart cry from a true European’ - Herman van Rompuy, former President of the European Council
‘A deeply insightful book that illuminates how only a combination of skill and passion can save Europe’ – Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy
‘The European project has traditionally been driven by the region’s political, business and technocratic elites, with ordinary people indifferent and often hostile to it, even as benficiaries. This clear-sighted, non-idelogical book shows how this has to change for the project to survive. Tsoukalis argues Europe needs a wide range of reforms that deepens integration in some areas, while allowing for greater differentiation and democratic decision-making in others. He eschews simple solutions and magic pills. It is the book’s great virtue that is clarifies both the scale of the problem and some of the ways forward’ – Dani Rodrik, Harvard Kennedy School
‘This is an important and enlightening book in which one of the most knowledgeable scholars of European integration takes a hard look at what has has gone wrong over the last quarter century. Though deeply committed to the success of the European project, the author’s account of present European crises is characterized not only by an unflinching realism but also by the masterly integration of economic and political analyses – and by the perceptive reconstruction of the conflicting interests and (mis-) perceptions that explain German, British and Greek contributions to present policy failures. Remarkably, nevertheless, the book ends neither in a counsel of despair nor in idealistic precepts but in a series of pragmatic proposals whose usefulness is not obviously in conflict with political feasibility’ – Fritz W. Scharpf, Max Planck Institute
‘As ever thoughtful and thought-provoking, Loukas Tsoukalis prompts us to re-examine the fundamentals of contemporary European integration. His deep analysis is timely, nuanced and challenging’ - Dame Helen Wallace FBA, British Academy
In the eyes of Greeks the meaning of Social Europe has changed over time, spanning the range from funds to promote social cohesion to externally enforced welfare state reforms in an austerity context. To the extent Greeks became familiar with Social Europe, they never took it to heart but would admit that they have periodically benefited from Social Europe’s tangible outlays, such as the European Structural Funds. Nowadays the Greek experience of a protracted economic crisis and a sudden refugee crisis can contribute towards rethinking Social Europe.
Welcome and unwelcome aspects of Social Europe
In pre-crisis Greece, Social Europe used to mean a welcome invitation to make Greece’s living standards converge with those of the rest of the EU. It also meant a less welcome push to introduce into Greece labour market and pension reforms, which would alter a patronage-based divide between insiders and outsiders.
European social policies, including active labor market policies and flexicurity, were alien in Greek society. Social Europe was not received well in a society in which many thought that they were entitled to a stable job and welfare benefits, dispensed by the state, by virtue of belonging to a group treated differently from other groups.
Examples of insider groups included civil servants, bank employees, journalists and the liberal professions. The majority of the rest were outsiders. An insider-outsider division has been the result of a particular historical legacy of state-society relations.
Social equity Greek style
Greeks hold complicated views on social equity. On the one hand they entertain egalitarian ideas as, in contrast to other European societies, there has never been an influential landed aristocracy in the Greece, while heavy industrialization was mostly absent from the country’s path to development.
On the other hand, Greeks often show more social solidarity with the narrow occupational group to which they belong rather than with the weaker social strata in general. While most Greeks reject any kind of social privilege, they simultaneously adhere to tailor-made, occupation-based privileges, such as rights to early retirement available to selected groups or preferential access to public sector jobs through political party patronage.
Social Europe after the crisis: from entitlement to austerity
After the crisis struck, the EU-imposed fiscal consolidation of the Greek economy led to the expansion of poverty, soaring unemployment and a deeper insider-outsider division between Greeks who have been relatively untouched by the crisis and their co-patriots who have been economically destroyed by it.
The economic crisis was very quickly transformed into a social crisis. Social Europe was flushed out of Greece along with the bathwater of relatively generous pensions, incommensurate to past insurance contributions, and wages standing higher than productivity levels.
Meanwhile, successive Greek governments fought to support their political clienteles by preventing substantive reforms in the aforementioned highly discriminatory welfare system, which pits insiders against outsiders. This is a fight that continues to this day. Thus, in crisis-ridden Greece, Social Europe has been associated, not so much with the rationalization of the welfare state, as with deep social spending cuts.
Rethinking Social Europe
However, as soon as the refugee crisis broke out in 2015 and hundreds of thousands of desperate people landed on Greek islands, Greeks rushed to offer help. Noticing the glaring absence of central state authorities, Greeks started pouring clothes, shoes, food and medicines on to incoming waves of refugees. Suddenly for Greeks, who during the crisis had taken Social Europe to mean indiscriminate austerity measures, being a European now meant sharing one’s own reduced resources with non-Europeans emerging from the sea.
Seeing a real humanitarian crisis from close by, Greeks have started putting Greek and European politics in perspective. In 2015 populist promises that other Europeans would rally around an anti-austerity Greek and South European vision to reshape Social Europe have evaporated. Pre-electoral claims that all that was necessary for Greeks to enjoy pre-crisis living conditions was to banish the EU-imposed austerity packages have contributed to the government turnover of 2015, but have soon proven futile. Almost every Greek has realized that a patronage-based system of welfare is normatively indefensible and financially unsustainable.
Distrust and dissatisfaction with the EU
But the fact that unfettered and one-size-fits-all austerity can rapidly lead an once relatively prosperous EU Member-State, such as Greece, to acute social crisis, has indicated how fragile Social Europe has become as well.
On this issue, the governing coalition of Syriza party with the right-wing Independent Greeks party, which has been in power since January 2015, believes that in the past Social Europe spelled the undermining, rather than the protection, of workers’ rights, for example, through introducing unacceptable flexibility in labour relations.
Finally, the coalition of Syriza would like to see more flexibility in the Stability and Growth Pact’s rules and the abandonment of Fiscal Compact, so as to allow national governments in Member States to follow expansionist economic policies. Simultaneously the radical left/right coalition distrusts the strengthening of decision-making powers of EU’core, including a stronger EU budget. Yet Syriza does call for an EU-wide increase in public investment.
Source: Clingendael
Author: Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos
On Thursday, June 16th at 1:15pm EST, IPI is hosting a Global Leaders Series presentation featuring H.E. Dr. Srgjan Kerim, candidate for the position of United Nations secretary-general.
IPI Live Event Feed
At the event, Dr. Kerim will discuss his experience and how it informs his vision of the future of global politics and the United Nations. He will address questions including how he would shape the job of UN secretary-general and define his priorities in office.
In December 2015, the government of the Republic of Macedonia formally nominated Dr. Kerim as a candidate for the position of UN secretary-general. Dr. Kerim is Foreign Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia and a member of the Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly.
Dr. Kerim has more than 30 years of international political experience, as Foreign Minister, Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia, and President of the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
ELIAMEP Working Paper 75/2016 written by Georgios Kolyvas analyses the future of the eurozone. In particular, it argues that more integration is feasible on the basis of the experience gained in previous years. In addition, it is proposed for Greece to set up its own growth plan which will help the country to proceed towards its recovery beyond the third bailout programme.
Working Paper 75/2016: The eurozone on the way of more integration (in French).
Author: Georgios Kolyvas
Briefing Note 44/2016 of ELIAMEP’s South East Europe Programme analyses the key parameters of the EU decision to abolish the visa regime for Kosovars travelling to EU countries. This development can be seen as an important step in Kosovo’s efforts to come closer and eventually integrate in the EU.
You can read here the article on reactions within the Greek society, which was written by Professor George Pagoulatos. The commentary was published on 12 June 2016 in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini and is available in Greek.
L’OTAN mène depuis le lundi 6 juin l’opération « Anaconda », son plus grand exercice militaire depuis la fin de la guerre froide. Dans quel contexte géopolitique cette manœuvre s’inscrit-elle ? Quel est le message adressé à la Russie ?
Nous sommes dans une période de tensions accrues entre la Russie et les pays occidentaux depuis le début de la crise ukrainienne en 2014. Le référendum organisé en Crimée, hors des règles constitutionnelles, qui a conduit au rattachement de cette province ukrainienne à la Russie, et le conflit armé qui a été déclenché entre l’Ukraine et les rebelles de la région du Donbass, opposés au pouvoir central de Kiev et appuyés par les Russes, participent à ce regain de défiance.
Ces manœuvres se déroulent un mois avant le Sommet de l’OTAN, prévu début juillet à Varsovie. Elles ont pour objectif d’envoyer un message dissuasif en direction de la Russie, et de décourager les Russes de tenter une action militaire directe – très peu probable – ou du moins d’utiliser des moyens de guerres hybrides contre des pays de l’OTAN, les Pays baltes ou la Pologne. Mais le message n’est pas seulement destiné à la Russie. C’est aussi un message de réassurance vis-à-vis de la Pologne et des Pays baltes, inquiets de ce qu’ils considèrent comme une résurgence de la menace. Ce message est au moins aussi important que le premier.
Le renforcement du système de défense anti-missile en Roumanie, et bientôt en Pologne, constitue-t-il une menace pour la Russie ? Quelle est la stratégie américaine ?
Le projet de défense anti-missile date de la fin des années 90. À cette époque, les Américains avaient imaginé un système de défense qui puisse les protéger face à des pays proliférants et contre des tirs de missiles balistiques en nombre limité. Le projet a été repris par l’OTAN en 2005. En 2009, le système de défense anti-missile européen a été révisé par le président américain Barack Obama en faveur d’un déploiement en plusieurs étapes de la défense anti-missile, privilégiant d’abord la protection contre les missiles à courte et moyenne portée. La protection contre les missiles à plus longue portée, celle qui inquiète les Russes, devait venir ensuite.
Initialement, même si ce n’était pas écrit dans les textes et notamment dans le concept stratégique de l’OTAN de 2010, le bouclier anti-missile en Europe visait essentiellement le risque d’une prolifération balistique et nucléaire en Iran.
Il est vrai que, désormais, depuis l’accord sur le nucléaire de juillet 2015 avec l’Iran qui a permis de stopper le phénomène de prolifération en Iran, la défense anti-missile européenne a perdu de son intérêt. Or, le projet continue à être développé. Un nouveau stade d’opérationnalité sera d’ailleurs proclamé lors du prochain sommet de l’OTAN. Cela inquiète vivement les Russes. La Russie avait d’ailleurs engagé des négociations avec l’OTAN, et plus spécifiquement avec les Américains, pour être intégrée au projet de défense anti-missile afin d’avoir l’assurance qu’il n’était pas dirigé contre ses forces de dissuasion nucléaire. La révision du projet par Barack Obama en 2009 avait d’ailleurs pour objectif de limiter dans un premier temps le déploiement de la défense anti-missile aux instruments qui ne sont pas susceptibles de menacer la Russie. Mais aujourd’hui, les SM-3 Block IB qui seront déployés en Roumanie peuvent intercepter des missiles à plus longue portée, ce qui inquiète les Russes.
Il y a donc deux éléments à prendre en considération. Effectivement, les Russes perçoivent le bouclier anti-missile européen comme une menace dans la mesure où il pourrait, un jour ou l’autre, intercepter les missiles de la force de dissuasion nucléaire russe. Si les Russes ont donc le sentiment de voir leur protection être affaiblie, il ne faut pas voir pour autant le système de défense anti-missile comme étant dirigé uniquement contre la Russie. En effet, ce projet initialement porté par les Américains, et ensuite adopté par l’OTAN, a une portée qui va au-delà de l’Europe : il s’agit pour les Etats-Unis de se protéger de frappes nucléaires limitées sur l’ensemble de la planète. Les mêmes éléments de défense anti-missile sont déployés en Asie avec des frégates AEGIS, au Japon, tandis que les Etats-Unis encouragent les Indiens à se doter d’un bouclier antimissile et vendent des systèmes de défense élargis à tous les pays du Proche-Orient. C’est donc bien un projet qui vise à couvrir l’ensemble de la planète face aux pays potentiellement proliférants mais qui par ricochet tend à affaiblir la protection des pays qui disposent de l’arme nucléaire et qui ont développé ces armes dans une logique dissuasive.
Les incidents militaires entre la Russie et les Etats-Unis en Mer baltique préfigurent-ils un accroissement des tensions cet été, alors que l’OTAN tiendra son Sommet annuel à Varsovie, et que la Suède et la Finlande se rapprochent de l’Alliance ?
Dans cette période de tension, il est certain que les Russes testent la défense des pays européens. On l’a notamment vu lorsque la Russie a déployé des bombardiers en Syrie, et a étonnamment privilégié un parcours longeant les frontières des pays membres de l’OTAN avant de se déployer en Syrie, ce qui n’était pas forcément nécessaire. C’est une façon de tester les réactions de l’Alliance atlantique. L’OTAN répond de son côté par des manœuvres militaires afin de ne pas céder à ces intimidations.
Mais, parallèlement, le Conseil OTAN / Russie, une structure de dialogue créée à la fin des années 90 et qui ne s’était plus réunie depuis la crise en Crimée, a de nouveau tenu une réunion il y a deux mois. Il y a donc des canaux de discussion qui existent entre l’OTAN et la Russie et qui ont été rétablis. Il y a également le format Normandie (France, Allemagne, Ukraine, Russie) qui permet d’entretenir ce dialogue.
Le Sommet de l’OTAN à Varsovie sera l’occasion pour l’organisation de réaffirmer la réassurance vis-à-vis des Pays baltes et de la Pologne. Il est également probable que les canaux de communication avec la Russie soient développés car ce Sommet de l’OTAN, symboliquement situé en Pologne, devrait se traduire par une période de tension accrue entre les protagonistes.
Concernant la Suède, il faut rappeler que ce pays a privilégié une posture de neutralité armée durant la Guerre froide. Son rapprochement vis-à-vis de l’Alliance atlantique est progressif depuis la chute de l’Union soviétique. La perception de la résurgence de la menace russe contribue à accélérer le rythme de rapprochement de la Suède et de la Finlande avec l’OTAN.