Club should beware of bearing gifts to the Greeks
Why fellow members of the club should beware of bearing gifts to the Greeks
In political terms, Greece is an ungrateful basket case and a serious underachiever in the EU, writes Eamon Delaney
Sunday May 09 2010
LAST week's violent reaction of the Greeks to the foreign aid package which is supposed to save their budgetary bacon says it all, but the reality is that you couldn't pick a less desirable country to bail out in the European Union than Greece.
Not 'undesirable' in the sense of blue skies, aquamarine seas and sunshine. No, that's all fine. But in political terms, the country is an ungrateful basket case and, in the EU, it has been a perennial awkward customer. Since the moment of their dubious entry in 1981, the Greeks have quite frankly underachieved and contributed very little to the development of the EU. Except problems.
When I was in the UN as a diplomat, it was an open joke: who was minding the door of the club when the Greeks got in? Their attitude was almost always 'what's in it for Greece?' as opposed to what is good for the EU too. When Ireland got massive EU Structural Funds in the Nineties, we built roads and infrastructure, but when similar funding went to Greece in the Eighties, it was siphoned away through corruption and graft, much of it under the Pasok socialist regime -- and this waste has contributed to the mess the Greeks are in today.
The irony is that the Greeks have been the most vociferous opponents of keeping out of the EU their old enemy Turkey and yet there are aspects of modern Turkish society and its robust economy which show up Greece for the sclerotic, over-unionised backwater that it is. Try telling that to Lucinda Creighton the next time she talks about keeping the poor old Turks out of the EU.
The Greeks' attitude to foreign policy used to be that the Turks were to blame for everything and they wasted no opportunity in raising their bilateral dispute, waving it around like a 'sore thumb'. It was something we had learned to stop doing with Britain and Northern Ireland where you only end up boring the rest of the world to death. But such is the hot-headed attitude of the Greeks to their national issues that they almost went to war twice with Turkey in the last 20 years. We're talking full scale war, among fellow Nato members. How would German taxpayers feel about funding that?
Of course, in the cynical world of diplomacy, this has some merit for the Irish. As one salty old ambassador put it, "my boy, as long as they are in the club, we will always look good!" The reality was that Greece was quickly admitted to the EU to safeguard its democracy, after emerging from decades of military rule in 1975, but it was soon clear that the country had structural and cultural problems quite different to the rest of the EU states. It was the first time that a country had come in that was not directly neighbouring another EU country. It must be remembered that, at that stage and for a long time, the EU comprised 12 states, the fondly remembered Les Douze, and so there was less of a hiding place for a moderately problematic member state than there is today. Now, Greece's problems are such that there is no hiding place at all, since we're all tied together with the euro.
In my own time as a diplomat, the Greeks always played ducks and drakes with any attempt to create a meaningful EU foreign policy. They cosied up to the Eastern Bloc countries when they were still communist. Greece itself almost went communist in 1947, but was prevented from doing so by Winston Churchill, and the continuing presence of a strong communist influence is one reason why it has the unreformed centralised economy, and crippling debt, which you and I are now going to pay for.
On the subject of Cyprus, a dispute so vexatious, it makes the North looked like a garden party, the Greeks have wanted to have it both ways -- supporting an independent Cyprus that would unite Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but also at various stages supporting a 'closer' relationship with the island and even a political union. When I pointed this out to my hosts on a trip to Cyprus, the welcoming ouzo was quickly withdrawn from the table. Granted, we were on a tourist board press trip (next stop, Ayia Napa) and political questions were not exactly top of the agenda but I just had to question why so many Greek flags were provocatively flying everywhere. But that's the Greeks, or Greek Cypriots in this case: they don't see the contradictions. Or the other perspective.
However, the low point of Greek foreign policy was its unwillingness to recognise the former Yugoslav state of Macedonia, because it took the old name of one of their ancient regions. Worse still, this meant that the Greeks could also veto the EU's recognition of the name and so for most of its existence Macedonia has been known as the FYRM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Can you imagine being a Macedonian football fan: "Come on, the FYRM!". The Greeks call it 'Skopje', the name of its capital. When I protested to my diplomatic colleagues that this was ridiculous and why was Ireland going along with it, the salty old ambassador piped up to say that "it was in the bag for us if there was ever an attempt to rename Northern Ireland as Ulster. We'd make sure the EU opposed it". But really, it was also about the bolshie behaviour of the Greeks making us look good.
The reality is that Greece is a country with which we have little kinship, apart from the study of the classics, sun holidays and if you're lucky enough (or, these days, unlucky enough) the ownership of a whitewashed holiday home. I mean, how many Greek celebrities or famous people do you know? How many of us work with Greeks, or know them socially? Very few. It is, in many ways, a closed society, and the least socially mixed in the EU.
So, if you had to think of a fellow EU country that you would enjoy bailing out, Greece would not be top of the list. Unless, of course, the Greeks were offering some of their lovely islands in exchange -- which is more or less what one German newspaper was suggesting when the Germans were being asked, once again, to stump up for our ailing Mediterranean cousins.
Sunday Independent
Why fellow members of the club should beware of bearing gifts to the Greeks
In political terms, Greece is an ungrateful basket case and a serious underachiever in the EU, writes Eamon Delaney
Sunday May 09 2010
LAST week's violent reaction of the Greeks to the foreign aid package which is supposed to save their budgetary bacon says it all, but the reality is that you couldn't pick a less desirable country to bail out in the European Union than Greece.
Not 'undesirable' in the sense of blue skies, aquamarine seas and sunshine. No, that's all fine. But in political terms, the country is an ungrateful basket case and, in the EU, it has been a perennial awkward customer. Since the moment of their dubious entry in 1981, the Greeks have quite frankly underachieved and contributed very little to the development of the EU. Except problems.
When I was in the UN as a diplomat, it was an open joke: who was minding the door of the club when the Greeks got in? Their attitude was almost always 'what's in it for Greece?' as opposed to what is good for the EU too. When Ireland got massive EU Structural Funds in the Nineties, we built roads and infrastructure, but when similar funding went to Greece in the Eighties, it was siphoned away through corruption and graft, much of it under the Pasok socialist regime -- and this waste has contributed to the mess the Greeks are in today.
The irony is that the Greeks have been the most vociferous opponents of keeping out of the EU their old enemy Turkey and yet there are aspects of modern Turkish society and its robust economy which show up Greece for the sclerotic, over-unionised backwater that it is. Try telling that to Lucinda Creighton the next time she talks about keeping the poor old Turks out of the EU.
The Greeks' attitude to foreign policy used to be that the Turks were to blame for everything and they wasted no opportunity in raising their bilateral dispute, waving it around like a 'sore thumb'. It was something we had learned to stop doing with Britain and Northern Ireland where you only end up boring the rest of the world to death. But such is the hot-headed attitude of the Greeks to their national issues that they almost went to war twice with Turkey in the last 20 years. We're talking full scale war, among fellow Nato members. How would German taxpayers feel about funding that?
Of course, in the cynical world of diplomacy, this has some merit for the Irish. As one salty old ambassador put it, "my boy, as long as they are in the club, we will always look good!" The reality was that Greece was quickly admitted to the EU to safeguard its democracy, after emerging from decades of military rule in 1975, but it was soon clear that the country had structural and cultural problems quite different to the rest of the EU states. It was the first time that a country had come in that was not directly neighbouring another EU country. It must be remembered that, at that stage and for a long time, the EU comprised 12 states, the fondly remembered Les Douze, and so there was less of a hiding place for a moderately problematic member state than there is today. Now, Greece's problems are such that there is no hiding place at all, since we're all tied together with the euro.
In my own time as a diplomat, the Greeks always played ducks and drakes with any attempt to create a meaningful EU foreign policy. They cosied up to the Eastern Bloc countries when they were still communist. Greece itself almost went communist in 1947, but was prevented from doing so by Winston Churchill, and the continuing presence of a strong communist influence is one reason why it has the unreformed centralised economy, and crippling debt, which you and I are now going to pay for.
On the subject of Cyprus, a dispute so vexatious, it makes the North looked like a garden party, the Greeks have wanted to have it both ways -- supporting an independent Cyprus that would unite Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but also at various stages supporting a 'closer' relationship with the island and even a political union. When I pointed this out to my hosts on a trip to Cyprus, the welcoming ouzo was quickly withdrawn from the table. Granted, we were on a tourist board press trip (next stop, Ayia Napa) and political questions were not exactly top of the agenda but I just had to question why so many Greek flags were provocatively flying everywhere. But that's the Greeks, or Greek Cypriots in this case: they don't see the contradictions. Or the other perspective.
However, the low point of Greek foreign policy was its unwillingness to recognise the former Yugoslav state of Macedonia, because it took the old name of one of their ancient regions. Worse still, this meant that the Greeks could also veto the EU's recognition of the name and so for most of its existence Macedonia has been known as the FYRM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Can you imagine being a Macedonian football fan: "Come on, the FYRM!". The Greeks call it 'Skopje', the name of its capital. When I protested to my diplomatic colleagues that this was ridiculous and why was Ireland going along with it, the salty old ambassador piped up to say that "it was in the bag for us if there was ever an attempt to rename Northern Ireland as Ulster. We'd make sure the EU opposed it". But really, it was also about the bolshie behaviour of the Greeks making us look good.
The reality is that Greece is a country with which we have little kinship, apart from the study of the classics, sun holidays and if you're lucky enough (or, these days, unlucky enough) the ownership of a whitewashed holiday home. I mean, how many Greek celebrities or famous people do you know? How many of us work with Greeks, or know them socially? Very few. It is, in many ways, a closed society, and the least socially mixed in the EU.
So, if you had to think of a fellow EU country that you would enjoy bailing out, Greece would not be top of the list. Unless, of course, the Greeks were offering some of their lovely islands in exchange -- which is more or less what one German newspaper was suggesting when the Germans were being asked, once again, to stump up for our ailing Mediterranean cousins.
Sunday Independent
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