The most common reaction to the victory of the left-wing, anti-austerity Syriza in the Greek elections is that it signals the beginning of the end of the euro. May be it will, or may be not, depending on how successfully the new PM, Alexis Tsipras, is able to negotiate the country’s euro 240 billion debt with what he calls the “Troika” — the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank. They had imposed severe austerity measures on Greece as part of loan conditions. His party, and even the right-wing Greeks, in general blame the Troika for enforcing stiff austerity measures that landed the economy in a mess.
Mr Tsipras has sworn to fight the Troika which, in a way, is a fight for Greece’s sovereignty. Undoubtedly he would get a lot of support from countries like Spain and Portugal, and elsewhere where anti-euro forces are gaining ground. Today the 28 members of the European Union are dictated to by Brussels. It is economically perverse for Brussels to impose economic uniformity on such disparate countries as, say, Germany and Greece, or Lithuania or Latvia. As some say, it might as well be the old Soviet Union under a different label. Let’s have some glasnost.
Europe is clearly divided between southern countries like Greece and countries with strong economies like Germany, Finland and the Netherlands whose taxpayers are against financing economies they feel are in trouble of their own making. It will be interesting to see how this divide pans out because on this outcome will depend the survival of the euro, and more so the dictatorial European Commission.
