Eu

Thursday

Taki

High life | 23 July 2015

From our UK edition

I think back to my Greek childhood and longing for the once cosiest and most romantic of cities overwhelms me. Actually it’s too painful to think back: all the blood spilled during the communist uprising, the beautiful neoclassical buildings destroyed by greed and lack of talent, the impeccable manners of the people that showed respect for the elderly, the church and the nation. They all went with the wind, that horrible sirocco from the south that has been used as an excuse for crimes of passion committed under its influence. This ache for a lost past is nothing new. Elsewhere and memory are most vivid in one’s mind, as are loss and the innocence of childhood. Mind you, the distilling process of memory can play tricks and is also extremely selective.

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

A beginner’s guide to Euroscepticism

From our UK edition

As a long-time Eurosceptic, I should be happy about the Johnny-Come-Latelys now swelling the sceptic ranks. Following Euro-institutions’ wicked treatment of Greece, many European liberals have finally realised that Brussels might not be the hotbed of liberalism, internationalism and bunny rabbits they thought it was. So, bit by bit, they’re becoming the thing they once looked down upon, the thing they once forcefielded their dinner parties against: Eurosceptics. But I’m not feeling very welcoming to these latter-day doubters, currently live-tweeting their Euro-existential angst and clogging their newspaper columns with tortured questions about whether the EU really is a ‘great achievement of enlightened internationalism’. (Answer: no, you donuts.

James Forsyth

The Germans have just changed the whole dynamic of the Euro

From our UK edition

The ancient Greeks used to drop iron bars into the sea to demonstrate the permanence of the agreement they were signing. The point was that the deal would last until the iron floated to the surface - that it was irreversible. The Euro was meant to be the same: once a country had joined it could —and would — never leave. It was for all time. But last night’s discussions have put paid to that notion. We now know from the German’s proposals for a ‘temporary’ Greek exit that a country can leave the single currency. This changes the whole dynamic of the currency union, weakening the position of countries with fiscal problems.

Friday

Charles Moore

Euclid’s theorem of the Irish

From our UK edition

The excellently named Euclid Tsakalotos has become the Greek finance minister after the sacking (tsaking?) of Varoufakis. He was educated at St Paul’s in the 1970s, and went on to Oxford. This atrocious suffering made him, even at the time, a supporter of Irish republicanism. In March this year, he popped up at a Sinn Fein conference and began his speech by apologising for his English accent, adding that ‘in mitigating circumstances, I am married to a Celt’. Euclid’s theorem is that the Irish are ‘honorary southerners’, now forming an arc of leftist insurrection which runs from Dublin, through Podemos in Spain, to Athens. Given the horrors inflicted on these countries by the eurozone, one almost wishes it well.

Thursday

Peter Jones

Tsipras vs hubris

From our UK edition

The EU finds it difficult to understand what drives the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Quite simply, he is a fifth-century bc Athenian democrat living in a 21st-century oligarchic world. Ancient Greeks feared two conditions above all that would mark them out as losers and bring undying shame: humiliation (hubris is the key word) and dependency. Hubris in ancient Greek meant ‘physical assault’, which broadened into behaviour calculated to degrade and humiliate others, all the worse if it were done (as Aristotle says) for the sheer pleasure of showing your superiority. A court case illustrates the point.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 9 July 2015

From our UK edition

Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the left has not mounted a serious challenge to the claims of the EU. It is extraordinary how it has been cowed. The single currency, especially a single currency without a ‘social dimension’ and political union, is the classic ‘bankers’ ramp’ against which the left always used to inveigh. It is a huge collective device to put banks before workers, if necessary reducing the latter to poverty. Greece is an almost perfect example of this, with the rescue designed to save European banks, not Greek people.

James Forsyth

Have the Greeks just blinked?

From our UK edition

The Syriza-led Greek government has just submitted a new set of proposals to their creditors. It appears to shift Greece closer to the creditors on VAT and pensions reform. It is also, as many have been quick to point out, really quite similar to the proposal that the Greeks voted against in last Sunday’s referendum. Indeed, it doesn’t even appear to contain any demand for debt relief for Greece. The Greek proposal has been drawn up with French assistance, the New York Times is reporting, which suggests that Paris should be sympathetic to the proposals. The question then is how the Northern European countries, led by Germany, react to it? But before the Eurozone finance ministers examine the proposals on Saturday, they will have to get through the Greek parliament.

Charles Moore

Left-wing Eurosceptics are finally starting to reveal themselves

From our UK edition

Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the left has not mounted a serious challenge to the claims of the EU. It is extraordinary how it has been cowed. The single currency, especially a single currency without a ‘social dimension’ and political union, is the classic ‘bankers’ ramp’ against which the left always used to inveigh. It is a huge collective device to put banks before workers, if necessary reducing the latter to poverty. Greece is an almost perfect example of this, with the rescue designed to save European banks, not Greek people.

Douglas Murray

‘Banging on about Europe’ doesn’t seem so dumb now, does it?

From our UK edition

As we watch the Eurozone catastrophe enter its latest ‘final phase’ one phrase keeps recurring to me.  That phrase is ‘banging on about Europe’.  Does anybody else remember when those words were used (at least since Maastricht I think) to dismiss absolutely anybody who was worried about the overreach or mismanagement of the whole EU project?  Europhiles from the three main parties loved the phrase.  Whenever they wanted to portray a political opponent as a tedious, fringe obsessive the words sprung to their lips.  For instance, whenever he wanted to paint the Tory party as a right bunch of nutters, Nick Clegg would portray them as the type of bores who keep ‘banging on about Europe’.

Ramita Navai

Ali Baba and the 300 hostages

From our UK edition

In the heat of the midday sun, the fields and woodlands between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia look idyllic: birds sing, the grass is smudged with wild poppies, all seems quiet. But this picture of pastoral peace is, I’m afraid, an illusion. This is Greece’s Wild West, a lawless and desperate place known as ‘The Jungle’, where people are beaten up every day. ‘It’s dangerous out there,’ says the fat Greek policeman standing with me, just north of the village of Idomeni. Then he waddles back to his car. The predators in this jungle are Afghan people-smugglers, their prey the poor migrants who have struggled here from all over Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Matthew Parris

Greeks just want to keep what they’ve got

From our UK edition

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard to take away.

Rod Liddle

Forget the EU – we need the Hanseatic League

From our UK edition

I think it is time to put into effect my plan for the re-shaping of the European Union. A somewhat scaled-down European Union: Greece wouldn’t be in it, for a start. Nor Portugal or Spain or France or indeed Italy south of a line which I have just drawn on my Times Atlas of the World in felt-tip pen, stretching east north east from Genoa to Trieste. And even that northern bit of Italy (Venice in, Bologna definitely out) is there on a sort of probation — and on the understanding that they take their orders from the German-speakers in the new capital Bolzano (or Bozen, as it will become once more). The European Parliament will be abolished and Brussels (or Brussel, henceforth) stripped of its EU capital status.

Tuesday

Matthew Parris

You’ll never understand Greece from a God’s eye view

From our UK edition

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard to take away.

Steerpike

Crowdfunding campaign to bail out Greece fails to meet its target

From our UK edition

After the people of Greece voted against the bailout terms on offer in Sunday's referendum, the likelihood of the country staying in the Euro is beginning to diminish. Now, they have received yet another blow. A crowdfunder campaign, started by Londoner Thom Feeney to raise the full €1,600,000,000 needed, has been closed down after failing to meet its target. The IndieGoGo fundraiser claimed that since 'all this dithering over Greece is getting boring' it was time to forget the European ministers working on deals and instead let 'the people just sort it instead'. Alas, it seems out of the 503 million people across Europe, only a small percentage wanted to take part. The campaign managed to muster €1,930,577, a fraction of the funds needed.

Isabel Hardman

The Greeks haven’t exactly got negotiations off to a good start

From our UK edition

Eurozone leaders are holding a summit later today to discuss the Greeks' proposal for dealing with their debt that was to be put before the Eurogroup this afternoon. But that summit might be a tad short. The Greeks haven’t turned up with any new ideas. They have instead made an oral presentation, and may table a paper tomorrow. If this is true, then it hardly gets the new negotiations off to a good start. It had looked yesterday as though Syriza was keen to give it another shot by removing Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister at the behest of the Eurogroup, but on his first full day in the job, Euclid Tsakalotos looked isolated.

Monday

James Forsyth

Merkel strikes an uncompromising tone as the ECB tightens the squeeze on the Greek banks

From our UK edition

François Hollande and Angela Merkel have both given brief statements to the media ahead of their dinner this evening. Hollande was keen to stress that the door remained open to Greece for negotiations and struck a generally more emollient tone. Merkel, though, did not sound so emollient. She claimed that the deal that the Greeks rejected was ‘quite a generous one’. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank—the key actors in this drama—have kept the emergency lending assistance they are offering the Greek banks at the same level. This means that the Greek banks will not be able to re-open. The ECB has also said that it will ‘adjust the haircuts on collateral accepted by the Bank of Greece for ELA.

James Forsyth

Time running out for a Greek deal warns Osborne

From our UK edition

Right now, Britain is sitting on the side-lines waiting to see if there is, to use George Osborne’s phrase, an ‘11th hour’ deal between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone. Britain isn’t part of the Greek bailout or the Eurozone so is peripheral to this process; David Cameron isn’t invited to the emergency Eurozone meeting on Tuesday. But Osborne has just told the House of Commons that the UK government expects the Eurogroup to discuss a new proposal from the Greek government at tomorrow’s meeting. As Osborne pointed out, the problem is that the political timetable for a deal isn’t moving as fast as the financial timetable in Greece. A deal between Athens and its creditors will take weeks not days.

Nick Cohen

Does anybody still believe that the EU is a benign institution?

From our UK edition

Ever since Margaret Thatcher U-turned in the dying days of her premiership, there has been a kind of agreement between Left and Right on what the European Union is. Most Conservatives followed the late-vintage Thatcher. They stopped regarding the EU as a free market that British business must be a part of, and started to see it as an unaccountable socialist menace that could impose left-wing labour and environmental policies on a right-wing government. As many critics have said, the Tory version of British nationalism that followed had many hypocrisies. It did not want foreigners infringing national sovereignty when they were bureaucrats in Brussels but did not seem to mind them when they were generals at Nato or economists at the WTO.

Alex Massie

Cheer up! The Greek crisis shows you were right all along

From our UK edition

I don't know whether the joy on the right was worse than the preening on the left last night but as the result of the Greek referendum swept across social media I found myself thinking that any result so cheerfully welcomed by Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Sinn Fein can't be thought altogether cheerful. Of course you needn't judge a cause by its followers but when a cause is followed and endorsed by such a collection of rogues, crooks and cranks it's wise to begin to wonder about it. All this glee seemed especially shabby since, really, it didn't really seem to be about Greece at all.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Greece says No, will Germany now try and kick it out of the Euro?

From our UK edition

Greece has voted No in the referendum and resoundingly so. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, No is leading 61% to 39%. The result is a massive humiliation for Eurozone leaders who have spent the last few days telling the Greeks to vote Yes and warning them that this was really a referendum on whether the country should stay in the single currency or not. Tonight, Syriza have been making clear that the Greek government intends to remain within the Euro. However, the German government is making clear that it is not interested in further negotiations with Athens or a new bailout deal.