Safety not solidarity

A hurdle race up to the end; exhausting; and with a huge uncertainty: will the Eurogroup agreement manage to set a turning point for Greece and for Europe, the beginning of the gradual end of the euro crisis? Or will it be nothing major, just the umpteenth drop of a slow but useless trickle that until the end will not avert everything from coming to pieces?

The first 110 billion bailout of Athens took place in an almost surreal atmosphere of recklessness and collecting incompetence, with Angela Merkel that without losing her composure could afford to keep the Greek emergency in a water bath in order not to risk compromising (however, in vain) her score in regional elections. No one then seriously believed the devastating infective potential of an economy and debt that overall was marginal (2% and 3% of Eurozone GDP). If anything the undeclared but priority concern was over German and French banks, which were too exposed to the purchases of Greek sovereign bonds. The result at the end was an unrealistic plan more focused on rigor in public accounts than on reforms and that assumed Greece could resort once again to markets in ….2013. We all know how thing ended; including the many Greek breaches.

At this point, the second bailout – another 130 billion plus probably a 100 billion cut in debt owned by private creditors –cannot fail also if there is already who says it will simply postpone Judgment Day. It cannot fail for several excellent reasons.
The first is that the Greek infection has greatly spread: also if by now everyone is dreaming about a divorce, in Nordic Countries that would like to unload Greece and in Athens where exasperation towards EU partners has skyrocketed, nothing guarantees that an exit of Greece from the euro would not prompt a chain reaction at the expense of Portugal and then Italy, Spain and maybe also France.
The second reason is that the Nordic group, headed by Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, with the ghost of insolvency ready to strike, is always less inclined to risk helping reprobates even with well remunerated loans. Not to speak of solidarity; not even in terms of real incentives for European economic growth. Even the IMF, after all, is starting to ration its part: from one third of the total, its contribution should now not exceed 10%. The ECB, then, cannot indefinitely continue to be the fireman for an endless emergency; unless of a change its bylaws, which is something that at for now is far from being considered.

The leonine conditions being imposed on Greece, the fear of one day finding oneself subject to the same destiny feed, on the other hand, anti-German feelings that, if not suppressed as soon as possible, in the long run could destroy Europe instead of healing it; feeding the creation of harmful extremisms and nationalisms in democracies that are already exhausted by the impact of the crisis.
Finally, a failure of the plan would immediately bring to the abyss of uncertainty that, between the desire to break-up and widespread lack of trust among partners, could end up swallowing the single market along with almost sixty years of peaceful and fruitful European integration.

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