Financial Derailment and the Political Class in Greece

In this paper we look into the causes of Greece’s financial derailment and the factors which contributed to its acceleration. We also investigate whether there were any alternatives to the course of action the Greek political class was forced to take in order to address the country’s economic crisis, i.e. the programmes for fiscal adjustment signed by the Greek government on the one hand, and Greece’s EU partners together with the IMF, on the other. Namely, the questions investigated and sought to be answered in this paper are: What was the part played by the Greek political class in the country’s financial derailment? Why have three programmes for fiscal adjustment failed so far in Greece? Has the Euro proven to be the very lifeline of the Greek economy, or a noose around its neck? Is the dismantling of the Eurozone – or a ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ Euro, as has been proposed by some analysts – the solution to the problem facing the Greek economy? Has ‘Brexit’ proven to be the ultimate failure of the European integration project, marking out the path to be taken by the rest of the peoples of Europe, as some suggest? It is true that the EU is standing at a crucial crossroads. There are two main options: The first one, which is the easiest choice, is stagnation, with the subsequent cancellation of the venture aiming at European integration. The second option, which we endorse, is the strengthening of European integration through the rapid transformation of the European monetary union into a new political and economic union, of a federation type, which is the most convincing and all-round response to Euro-skepticism, anti-Europeanism and all forms of nationalism, seeking to dismantle the EU in every possible way. This development is simply not a free meal offered by the richest countries in Europe to the poorest ones; the latter are required to adopt rigorous programmes for changes and reforms, a course of action not favoured by the political classes in these poorer countries, which is the reason why they are lagging behind the richest economies in Europe.