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EU Uber Alles? Neoliberal echoes of a darker, mid-century plan for continental unity

The unflinching support for the EU and its institutions is not about preventing European countries from becoming “Afghanistan.” Not about preventing collapse. Not about the inconvenience of long lines at passport control. It is about promoting an ideology, a specific worldview, a vision for the way the world should work.

by Michael Nevradakis

Part 3 - “There is no alternative”

Just as with opposition to international “free” trade and the policies of institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, there was a time where the left and progressive forces were opposed to the politics of TINA—“there is no alternative,” exemplified by the original iron lady, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Today though, we are told by a wide range of voices, including purported leftists such as Varoufakis, that for countries such as Greece there is no alternative to EU and Eurozone membership, categorically ruling out any thoughts of departure.

But Greece lied by presenting false economic data to enter the Eurozone, did it not? And therefore it must accept “bitter medicine,” should it not? That’s what many “well-meaning” leftists and progressives retort when the topic of the EU and IMF’s cruelty towards Greece is brought up. But this also exposes what could, depending on one’s perspective, be described as either the EU’s incompetence or its insidious nature. If Greece lied and the EU did not perform due diligence and was fooled, then it is incompetent. If it knew what was going on and went along, then it is complicit in what has followed.

Furthermore, Greece wasn’t alone in its “creative accounting:” countries like Italy and Spain also brokered deals with the likes of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan to massage the numbers in order to meet the Maastricht criteria to qualify for Eurozone membership. Even Varoufakis, in a 2012 Dialogos Radio interview, has suggested that many other Eurozone members fudged the numbers.

Membership in the EU and the Eurozone provided an ephemeral economic boom and a period of false prosperity for Greece. The negative impacts, however, are more long-lasting, if indeed not permanent, in nature. Privatizations, which began in earnest in the early 1990s and did nothing to prevent the crisis, resulted in the wholesale sell-off of strategic state assets, resources, and public utilities that were often profitable. Introduction of a “hard” currency, overvalued for the Greek economy, made Greek exports and tourism uncompetitive compared to lower-priced alternatives in the region. Greece’s previously modest industrial base was decimated while agricultural production has dropped sharply since 1981, the year Greece joined the EU, due in large part to the EU’s common agricultural policy.

Greece, as did several other countries, may have presented questionable data in order to enter the Eurozone. In yet another biting irony though, similarly “fudged” numbers may have been presented, very much on purpose, in order to drag Greece into the IMF-EU austerity mechanism. Whistleblowers such as Zoe Georganta have made allegations and presented evidence indicating that Greece’s debt and deficit figures were purposely worsened in order to drag Greece under the austerity mechanism.

Fueling these allegations is the revelation that former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn had met with then-opposition leader George Papandreou in April 2009, months before Papandreou was elected as Greece’s prime minister. The allegedly augmented deficit and debt figures were revealed soon after Papandreou’s election, signifying the start of the economic crisis.

We might ask, why sabotage a national economy? The corrected question, though, should be, why not? The austerity regime enabled the EU and successive subservient regimes in Greece to impose unpopular and socially harmful measures that would never have had a chance of being enacted under ordinary conditions — including harsh cuts to social services, wages, and pensions, plus fast-tracking the privatization of key national assets.

Notably, the Greek economy was subject to EU audits and oversight during the 2004-2007 time period. For some unexplained reason, this oversight did nothing to prevent the crisis that followed. And while the international press has habitually focused on Greece’s falsifying of its economic data to join the Eurozone (without focusing on other countries which also engaged in this practice), any discussion of the allegations made by whistleblowers about the alleged augmentation of Greece’s deficit and debt figures is denounced as conspiracy theory. Indeed, the chief statistician who oversaw this possible falsification of the data is lauded in the press.

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