Out of synch with Europe
Greece may feel like it’s got serious problems, but Europe is facing some major dilemmas right now as the future of the union is at stake on multiple fronts, despite calls for solidarity and cohesion from the European Council.
On Friday, for example, Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem warned that a small group of EU countries may be forced to form a “mini-Schengen” in order to protect the core of Europe and ensure the rights of the nationals of the countries therein if the bloc fails to resolve the refugee crisis.
Europe is also facing challenges in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, coupled with the refugee crisis, for which there are no solutions that come without a high cost and hefty consequences.
However, what’s happening in Greece is ludicrous.
Everywhere we turn we see obstacles, whether in the operation of the market or the management and handling of fundamental issues such as education and social security, where all the solutions being presented appear not just out of place and inappropriate for the circumstances but also potentially disastrous.
Major issues like labor rights and the evaluation of the civil service cannot be dealt with simply by glossing over the problems. And particularly when we know that the choice of every new appointment made to the management of the state apparatus is made based almost solely on that person’s loyalty to the ruling SYRIZA party, then there’s really not much hope in sight. (To be fair, this is not just a SYRIZA thing, but the leftists are propagating a bad habit from the past.)
In the meantime, Europe is moving at a different speed, developing defenses and systems to protect itself, changing – for better or worse. And Greece appears to have come to a standstill as the rest of the world speeds around it. We are busy recycling the causes of why there can never be any consensus of real reforms; we are deconstructing and reconstructing old things under new names, trying to pretend that the worst possible version of each new thing is progress. In short, we are busy trying to make insignificance seem like political vision.
Obviously all European governments are facing serious problems right now, but they are finding ways to solve some of them or create the conditions that will lead to their resolution. They are in touch with the past and use the future only as a shared reference. Our obsession with the past promises nothing but isolation, dead ends and danger.
