Are we Sure that Tsipras Caved In?

Germany did not speak yet, and until then nothing is certain. But it looks like the new Tsipras proposal may turn into an agreement between Greece and its creditors.

We’ll see what happens in the next days, but I want to make a few remarks

At first sight, this does not look good for Tsipras. On all the points that remained contentious when negotiations were interrupted, the new proposal substantially accepts the creditors requests (labour law being an important exception): On VAT, privatizations, retirement age, we are now very close to the original creditors’ requests, and very far from the Greek ones.

And in fact the new package is even more “austerian” than the Juncker plan, as it contains deficit reduction for 12 billions instead of 8.

This said, if Tsipras manages to link the package to the obtention of a new loan (plus unblocking of structural funds) for a duration of three years, he will have obtained what he has been asking so far in vain, and what had been refused to Papandreou in 2011: Time and money.

While accusing him of doing nothing to change his country, creditors forced Tsipras to spend the past five months flying back and forth from Athens to Brussels, each time asking for a fistful of euros. If he manages to obtain a new loan over the next three years, this will finally stop. He will have the time to implement his recipe for Greece, and it will be finally possible to judge his government on acts rather than promises.

In this light the referendum was very important. By asking the Greek people the mandate to negotiate while remaining in the euro, he succeeded in throwing the ball in the creditors camp. Those speaking of betrayal of the people’s will probably did not pay attention to the Greek debate in the week of July 5th. This is why Syriza keeps climbing in the polls, by the way.

Tsipras had to pay the price of a stricter austerity than he would have wished for. But he gains breathing space, which is orders of magnitude more valuable. No surprise that Germany is hesitant. If a deal is not reached, as of now, it will be clear to all who will have kicked Greece out.

Not a bad day for Tsipras after all

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Of Democracy and of a Different Europe

I have mixed feeling about the Oki victory in Greece. The choice was between two evils: slow death by more of the same (the troika plan), or a roller-coaster ride that has a high chance of ending catastrophically for Greece and for the EMU. I would have voted no, were I Greek, but not joyfully. This said, two things I have been reading in the past days are disturbing:

1. First, the claim that Tsipras’ rhetoric on democracy is misplaced: After all, people say, we all are democracies. Why should Greek democracy count more than the Portuguese, or the Spanish one? There is no reason, of course. Point is that Tsipras did something that is now really revolutionary in Europe, he tried – hold your breath –  to implement the platform on which he was elected. How many governments in Europe went to power promising an end to austerity, promising a “new deal for Europe”, just to retract a few months/weeks/days later and align themselves with the Berlin View that austerity is the only way? Greek democracy today should count more than democracy in the rest of Europe, because it is the only case in which voters are actually listened to by their government. This is why Syriza’s anomaly needed to be crushed, well beyond the actual content of its proposed policies. If European policy makers feel that their democracy should be as important as Greece’s, they could start by trying to do what their voters elected them for. That would certainly not hurt.
2. The second thing that bothers me, is the convergence of the establishment and of euro-skeptical movements across Europe. Don’t be fooled by the enthusiastic adherence of many no-euro movements to the Oki campaign Their siding with Tsipras was instrumental to Grexit, turmoil, and weakening the euro itself. Something orthogonal to what Tsipras has been doing and saying in the past two years. The referendum made it clear that the establishment and the no-euro converge in trying to prove that there is no alternative to austerity in Europe. The former, because if Greece is not normalized, we would enter into a new phase in which statements and policies would have to be assessed on the basis of facts (not so favorable to austerity) rather than taken as a matter of faith. Euro skeptics need Tsipras to be crushed because this would definitely prove that the only way to get rid of austerity is to get rid of the euro altogether.

Therefore the referendum, while certainly hazardous and ill-conceived (what did the Greek people vote on, in the end?), had the great merit of exposing the hypocrisy of some commentators, and to show that the only hope for a different Europe has to be found in the struggle that an inexperienced prime minister is leading from Athens. Since yesterday, with the renewed support of his people. Dangerous times ahead, but with a small hope for change.