Greece; making hard choices.

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/02/150220-eurogroup-statement-greece/

Here you will find the agreed statement of the EU council and the Greek Government issued at 9pm., 20 February. It is quite short and it bears reading. In the chaos of the claims of victory and the counter claims of defeat now alive in every political part of the media, the agreed statement clarifies much.

Having started the enormous run on Greek banks by threatening to remove back-up funding from the European Central Bank a week ago, Germany has now agreed that the ECB will carry on backing Greek banks for 4 months. In return Greece will have all of its spending monitored by a renamed Troika and its policy plans subject to veto. To all intents and purposes the agreement maintains the old bailout plan and the overlordship of the Troika. And the Damocles's sword hangs over the Greek banks once again from the end of June.

Why has this happened? What has this struggle achieved - most of all for the Greek people?

There are many examples in history where working class and popular causes have had to make retreats, even take defeats, with a view to building up future resources, including time, in order to open up new advances. A retreat, let alone a defeat, is never without cost. But the calculation is that the cost can be reduced in its effect and a new position created that will defend and eventually even strengthen the position of the people in the longer term. However, one Greek man said in an English language street level vox pop exercise on the 21 February -
'The government have spent a month doing nothing but arguing with the EU, the banks have been emptied and now we are all back where we started.'

This sounds witty but it is not accurate. Even if we discount the wild exaggerations of some Syriza loyalists that they have won a major battle with Germany, there is no doubt that the continued existence of the Syriza government is a big achievement. Germany's initial plan was to bring it down, asap; to put the lid on any Syriza type experiments in the EU zone, funded as it is by the German currency, for once and for all. Germany retreated on that political project. It certainly came under immense international pressure, especially from the US, that wants austerity, not Greece, closed down in EU land. And more time, while the Syriza government finds some new friends, perhaps some new sources of funds, can only make another German 'push' more difficult, certainly it will make it more politically complicated - at least outside Greece.

Inside Greece it will now be much harder to take decisive anti-austerity measures, that begin to resolve Greece's humanitarian crisis, that will mean Greek people will have gains to defend in the name of their new government.

The shadow really hanging over Germany in the negotiations was not, as some commentators in Greece are writing, the international pressure behind Syriza's new anti-austerity way forward for Europe. Germany was most worried by the threat that Greece would leave the Euro zone. Their tough negotiators claimed not to be. But it was the real worry. If Greece dropped out of the Euro, not only would Germany lose 60 billion Euros of Greek's debts, but it might also 'lose' Spain, even Italy - especially, as seems very likely, that a devalued Drachma would produce very fast Greek growth. Yet in this particular showdown, the bullet marked 'exit' was never put in to Syriza's gun. Syriza insisted throughout, and although they compromised on many things, on this they did not waver, that they would be staying with the Euro. And this proved to be a decisive weakness in their position.

If the saga of Greece's negotiations with the EU resolve anything, it is the mastery that Germany have over the common currency. The defence of the Euro has ceased to be (if it ever was) a vaguely internationalist token of progressive, modern brotherhood across nations, it is the core of Germany's immense economic and political power. This concrete reality is an unreformable obstacle to any individual national political leadership in Europe striking an independent economic and therefore political course away from the status quo. Sooner or later, if the Greek people want to create a new sort of society, they will have to break with the Euro and its current institutions. (Reforming the EU as a whole would have to start with a revolution in Germany.) And such a realisation played no part in Syriza's struggle and therefore weakened it.

This is neither an argument that the immensely difficult and potentially dangerous step of breaking the Euro is to be instantly taken. Nor does it alter the foolishness of the disastrous sectarian abstention from Syriza's efforts maintained by organisations like the Greek Communist Party and lots of other groups - whatever their view on the Euro.

Nevertheless, Syriza's leaders' position on the Euro will continue to be a weighty halter around their necks in the coming struggle for social progress. And they may find themselves ending up by defending their and their country's allegiance to the Euro, as the priority over ending its peoples' burden of austerity.