by Terence Roth
Wall Street Journal
November 1, 2011
The European Commission was rendered speechless last night, unable to react to George Papandreou’s dramatic choice to have Greece’s people vote on the country’s future in the euro zone.
Referendums are anathema in Brussels, where scripted summits and handed-down directives are more the style than popular votes and their messy democratic outcomes.
The Greek Prime Minister’s sudden lurch toward more democracy also seems to have caught most of the rest of Europe unawares.
It was, in the tempered words of Rainer Bruederle, a senior German lawmaker, “a strange thing to do.” Why jeopardize the hard-won rescue plan secured only four days earlier at the European Union summit, a deal bearing no small financial risk to Greece’s euro partners?
Imperfect and incomplete as it is, the agreement had at least the glimmer of resolution. Instead, Europe and financial markets face another two months of uncertainty about whether Greece will trigger a financial implosion.
So there is the reason for surprise, even to his own Socialist party. Mostly everyone in Europe would have tried to talk him out of risking a catastrophe.
It’s down to raw politics in Athens.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment