Language of Greek Crisis Shifts From Financial Jargon to Humiliation
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Version 0 of 1. BERLIN — Greece’s financial crisis has often been framed in the dry, impersonal language of finance. At issue were credit ratings, bond yields and repayment schedules. The pulse of a collapsing nation was often measured in technical jargon about borrowing costs and primary surpluses. Now, with Greece and its European creditors locked in bitter negotiations this week over the terms of the country’s bailout, the politesse of the talks has disintegrated into starkly personal terms. Now the language of the Greek crisis is about humiliation, national pride, moral hazard and hypocrisy. Most ominously, it has deteriorated into a blunt confrontation between Greece and its biggest creditor, Germany, inflaming public opinion in both countries and reviving recriminations over who owes whom — always a risky exercise on a continent that has not forgotten the horrors of two world wars or the conflicts of centuries before. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece used a speech before Parliament on Tuesday to renew a call for Germany to pay reparations to Greece for the crimes and unpaid debts of the Nazis, and his government threatened to seize German assets in Greece. Berlin responded firmly, insisting that the reparations issue is long settled, and the German news media reacted angrily. “If one takes Athens seriously, then Greece itself, which is so proud of Alexander the Great, would have to fear demands for historical injustice,” Reinhard Müller wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The nationalistic antagonism has added an ugly new dimension of populist brinkmanship to an economic crisis that still threatens to fracture the European Union. Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the escalating exchanges risked hardening popular attitudes in Germany and emboldening other populist parties, from the left-wing Podemos in Spain to the right-wing National Front in France. “The euro was meant to bring Europeans closer together and to strengthen political union,” Mr. Leonard said, but the Greek-German clash has led to a “scary return to civilizational language — national stereotypes, hatred, lack of trust.” “The closer you bind Germany and Greece together,” he said, “the more hostility there is.” The quarrel may be most vivid in the apparently poisonous relationship between the finance ministers, Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany and Yanis Varoufakis of Greece. Many Greeks see the caustic Mr. Schäuble, 72, as the flinty embodiment of a German austerity policy they blame for destroying their country. Many Germans, by contrast, see Mr. Varoufakis, 53, as the swaggering embodiment of an unrepentant Greece trying to shirk its obligations. The rising mutual contempt is not limited to them. The Greek defense minister, Panos Kammenos, threatened this week that if Germany did not support Greece in the debt talks, Greece would send to Berlin the thousands of illegal migrants who have landed in Greece on rickety boats from Africa in recent months. One of Germany’s police unions responded by calling for Greece to be ejected from the zone of 26 countries in Europe where citizens can cross borders freely without visas. It has been clear since Mr. Tsipras and his left-wing Syriza party won power in late January that Greece would take a more confrontational approach in trying to renegotiate the terms of the country’s bailout, worth 240 billion euros ($255 billion). Mr. Tsipras appealed to Greek nationalism during the campaign. He vowed to force the country’s three main creditors — the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — to write off half of Greece’s debts, and to reinstate thousands of public employees who were fired to meet the creditors’ budget demands. Since taking office, though, Mr. Tsipras has been forced to backtrack on many of his promises, even as he framed a four-month extension to the bailout as a political victory. Now, with Greece rapidly running out of money and the European creditors demanding additional action from Athens before they release more loan money, Mr. Tsipras has chosen to revive the question of war reparations. “The best way to deal with the issue would be by taking legal action, but they decided to politicize the issue,” said Theodore A. Couloumbis, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Athens, adding that Mr. Tsipras may have decided to do so to distract domestic attention. “It is embarrassing for a government that came to power on a promise to reverse austerity — and with rhetoric describing Greece as a debt colony and lenders as loan sharks — to backtrack,” Mr. Couloumbis added. “There is a sense among Greeks that they are sick and tired of being told what to do by Merkel and Schäuble, and so they should push their claims. Why not?” The previous Greek government, a center-right coalition, completed a study of the reparations issue in March 2013, but it was not made public until last Sunday. According to an Athens newspaper, the study concluded that Germany may owe Greece over €30 billion ($32 billion). While the verbal sparring between Mr. Varoufakis and Mr. Schäuble has become a public sport, the historical antagonism it has revived is serious. Mr. Varoufakis set the tone in February during his first trip to Germany as finance minister, when he used a joint news conference to remind Germans that Greece’s economic troubles had helped fuel the rise of a neofascist party, Golden Dawn, and to draw a parallel with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. “No one can understand better than Germany how a suffering economy, with certain humiliations and a great loss of hope, what effects that can have,” Mr. Varoufakis said, as Mr. Schäuble sat nearby. “We need Germany at our side; we need the support of Germany.” The outrage felt by some German conservatives toward Greece began to boil over on Feb. 27, when the German Parliament approved a four-month extension to the Greek bailout after a heated debate. “Look at Tsipras, look at Varoufakis,” said one member, Klaus Peter Willsch, in a speech before the vote. “Would you buy a used car from them? When your answer is no, then vote no today.” The revival of claims from World War II has dredged up ghosts supposedly laid to rest by Europe’s postwar pursuit of peace, unity and common policies. The hardships inflicted by German-led demands for austerity have prompted angry outbursts of political populism and widened a chasm of historical interpretations. For instance, in arguing that Greece should be forgiven its current debts, some in Athens and their supporters cite the 1953 London conference where Germany’s postwar creditors effectively forgave West Berlin about half its external debt — some 15 billion deutsche marks, equivalent to about 10 percent of West Germany’s gross domestic product in 1953, according to a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin. The Germans point to the same conference to argue that the reparations issue is settled. Under the London agreement, which eventually involved 18 foreign creditors, final reparations were to be settled when Germany was reunited, which happened in 1990. At that time, the Germans say, they received no claim from Greece for any more than the 115 million marks paid in the 1970s. “This chapter is, for us, legally and politically closed,” Steffen Seibert, the German government spokesman, said Wednesday. Still, reports this week that the Greek justice minister, Nikos Paraskevopoulos, was considering signing an order to seize German property in Greece drove some German news outlets into a frenzy. “Enough!” screamed the Bild Zeitung, the country’s most widely read daily newspaper. “That’s what you want to shout to the Greek government. Day after day, hour by hour come new thrusts from Athens. Bizarre, arrogant, unabashed.” There was only one conclusion, the newspaper said: “It’s moral blackmail.” |