Financial Times
Editorial
June 16, 2011
The international financial rescue of Greece in May 2010 was, first and foremost, an emergency operation to avert a sovereign debt default, save Europe’s banks and prevent the collapse of the euro. But the crisis also represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Greek politicians, business leaders, trade unionists and the general public to join together in cleaning the putrid Augean stables of the modern Greek state.
Thirteen months on, the deepening political crisis in Greece suggests that this opportunity is evaporating. Hidebound vested interests mass in defence of archaic privileges that are incompatible with participation in European monetary union over the long term. Myopic politicians, in government and opposition, trade accusations over trivialities and pay lip service to the cause of reform. The public, suffering its third successive year of economic recession, is by turns angry, desperate and drained of hope.
This is not entirely the fault of George Papandreou, the Socialist premier who took office in October 2009. He it was who found the courage to admit to his European Union colleagues, at a Brussels summit two months after his election victory, that Greece was a corrupt state from top to bottom. He correctly saw that the three-year, €110bn European Union-International Monetary Fund rescue of Greece would demand an extraordinary national effort not just to accept job losses and pay cuts, but to embrace little-loved modern concepts such as fair competition, transparent government and paying one’s taxes.
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