Guardian
Editorial
May 13, 2012
Slowly but surely, the unthinkable is coming to be thought. Europe's monetary marriage was supposed to admit no divorce, but the idea of Greece being put asunder is now being canvassed openly in Brussels and Berlin. The immediate reason for talking taboo is that there is no longer any government in Athens to do business with. But the underlying issues are twin crises of democracy and the economy, crises that could soon engulf the euro as a whole.
The Greeks want to stay in the single currency, but not on the ruinous terms that their establishment agreed to. They have thus used their elections to rout both traditional parties of government, installing a splintered parliament with a large contingent from the leftist Syriza alliance whose whole purpose is calling time on austerity. Barring a breakthrough in President Papoulias's last-ditch scramble for a coalition of disparate parts, fresh elections will be called in days. The EU cannot send divisions into its unruly corners. All finance ministries can hope to do is to push Greek opinion back to the centre by inflaming fears about what happens if the patient will not take the medicine – hence the ominous muttering about cutting Athens loose. The Greeks, however, are not yet cowed: opinion polls show Syriza gaining in strength. A sudden slide out of the euro would certainly be a trauma, spelling failed cash machines, desperate flights to the border and chaotic disruption of commercial contracts. But when the pensions of older Greeks have already been cut by a quarter, and when half their young compatriots are unemployed, it is getting tricky to argue that things would necessarily be worse.
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