Did he or didn’t he?
Last week, the biggest media story in Germany was whether or not Yanis
Varoufakis had flipped us the finger. After a video of the Greek finance
minister “showing the stink finger” (as Germans put it) was screened on a talk
show, a satirist claimed he had doctored the video and that the finger-flip was
a fake. A day later he recanted.
Why? One can
understand the Greeks’ obsession with Germany, which the Syriza government
blames for austerity policies that have brought the country to its knees. But
Germany has built a firewall round its banks to protect them from the fallout
from a “Grexit”.
Its position - that
Greece must honour the terms of its bailout - has the backing of most other EU
members and EU institutions. It could regard the antics of an inexperienced
government faced with the harsh realities of life in the eurozone with
equanimity. This is, in fact, the attitude that Germany’s finance minister,
Wolfgang Schäuble, has maintained.
Germans admire
Schäuble for keeping his cool. Greek caricatures portraying him as a Nazi have
caused outrage. Germans also resent Greek demands for reparations for the
brutal occupation in the Second World War, and hints that they might confiscate
German property to enforce payment. The Greeks do have a point, and Germany is
willing to negotiate. But using Germany’s past to blackmail Angela Merkel’s
government in totally unrelated negotiations is not a good idea. For decades,
Germany’s bad conscience has been exploited by its European friends. But there
is a growing - and dangerous - feeling here that enough is enough.
Ironically, back in
the 1990s, Helmut Kohl gave up the deutschmark and accepted the euro in order
to reassure the French that Germany would not become Europe’s hegemon. In
return, members of the euro club were supposed to abide by strict rules to
ensure the common currency did not become like, well, the franc, lira or
drachma. And now to have the past dredged up and flung in Germany’s face by a
country that lied its way into the eurozone, refused to reform while it was
rolling in cheap money courtesy of the common currency, can’t or won’t collect
taxes properly, has been bailed out repeatedly and still doesn’t accept the
rules - this could well be the final straw. The Greeks can congratulate
themselves on a self-fulfilling prophecy the oracle at Delphi would have been
proud of: nationalism is rearing its ugly head in Germany again.
Indeed, the rise of
populism at home is a main reason Merkel cannot climb down. On the right, the
anti-euro, anti-immigrant and vaguely anti-American party Alternative für
Deutschland will probably get into the Bundestag in 2017. On the left, a
campaign against the free trade agreement between the EU and the US is gaining
momentum. On the streets, people have demonstrated in Dresden against
“Islamisation” and the “lying press” and rioted in Frankfurt against the European
Central Bank and capitalism in general. Squeezed by radicals on left and right,
the pro-Europe centre may not hold.
The situation in the
rest of Europe is even worse. Cave in to the Greeks, government officials
mutter, and the next thing you know the Spanish will elect the populists of
Podemos, the Irish will go for Sinn Féin and both will demand handouts, to be
paid for by you-know-who. France’s Marine Le Pen will have more arguments for
leaving the eurozone or even the EU. And let’s not even mention Britain.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin tears up treaties, tramples on his neighbors’
sovereignty and threatens the EU’s eastern flank, and Islamic State kills
people just across the Mediterranean.
When Athens threatens
to turn to Russia, open its borders and let immigrants from Syria into Europe,
or even wave Isis fighters through, it is not only behaving irrationally - you
don’t threaten the people you want money from, unless you’re a gangster. It is
destroying the glue that holds Europe together: trust.
Germans’ attitudes
toward politics are informed by their history and based on Kantian ethics: ends
never justify means. Rules, therefore, must never be broken, even if they are
self-defeating. This is alien to Anglo-Saxon policymakers, who follow the
utilitarian precepts of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. And it is alien,
of course, to southern European politicians, for whom political expediency will
always trump principles. In the euro crisis, Germany has repeatedly seen the
rules bent, broken, changed and broken again. The EU needs to understand that
this is intensely worrying to most Germans.
At the deepest level,
however, German exasperation with the Greeks is rooted in fear. At the end of
this century, Germany will have fewer than 60 million inhabitants, 25 million
fewer than today. By 2050 the demographic great powers of Europe will be
Turkey, France and Britain (in that order).
Germany, a country
with an ageing, shrinking, underqualified and poorly paid workforce, a country
fixated on hammering metal rather than tapping touch-screens and addicted to
unsustainably high exports, could find itself in an economic crisis sooner
rather than later.
For the German elite
at least, European integration is the answer. Germany feels that it needs to
establish an economically stable, rule-based and politically united Europe
while it still has the power to do so. Greece’s antics thus awaken the angst
that dares not speak its name.
What to do? The Greeks
have made their point. Many Germans inside and outside the government realise
that austerity must be eased. They accept that Germany has benefited from the
same set of euro rules that drove Greece into bankruptcy, and that Greece needs
help.
What the Greeks ought
to do now is to help Germany help them by going short on the rhetoric (and the
“stink fingers”) and producing realistic plans for reform. Their politicians
are no longer playing primarily to a Greek audience. Europe is watching.
Classical Greek
theatre was supposed to lead to catharsis. It won’t if Alexis Tsipras and Yanis
Vanoukis overdo the clowning.
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