Substantial crisis
Following years of modernizing frenzy fed by the European left, the European Union countries are gradually returning to older forms of confrontation. At the same time, they are witnessing a resurgence of parties long thought to be either dead or in decline. The mass protests in Italy against the proposed labor reforms of Silvio Berlusconi’s government have radically transformed that country’s political landscape. And from the delusion of social capitalism of the transatlantic left in 1999, we are suddenly faced with old-fashioned confrontation. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is being seriously challenged by the old left inside the Labor Party. The spillover of these reactions to other EU countries, and particularly to Greece, is highly likely. These reactions may be anachronistic, but they also fail to resolve the real issue, the breakdown in social cohesion. Berlusconi is striving to impose his entrepreneurial logic beyond the enterprises under his personal control throughout Italy. This is a highly interesting venture, the outcome of which will depend on the strength of those opposing his efforts. In Greece, Prime Minister Costas Simitis seems bewildered since the developments unfolding in Europe will probably fan traditional tendencies inside the so-called socialist movement. In a period of relative prosperity, Simitis wasted too much precious time, failing to carry out basic reforms of the economy due to a lack of political will. And he linked his rule to various economic interests, which has estranged him from other entrepreneurs and from much of the public. Simitis’s reformist efforts merely encouraged the rise of a few new strong businessmen, left public administration stagnant, nourished corruption, pushed unemployment up, undercut workers’ purchasing power and increased their insecurity. Radical changes, of course, inevitably entail some painful consequences for a society’s productive base. But the problems surfacing in European countries will make it increasingly difficult to portray the EU as a positive reference point for promoting unpopular policies in Greece. At the same time, Simitis’s government will find it increasingly hard to meet EU standards, since the requisite restructuring did not take place in time. Simitis had an easy time in office when the country’s business community and workers supported his efforts to push the country into the eurozone. Now, however, it is questionable whether he can control the situation, given the serious rift inside PASOK at a time when many EU states have also been riven by internal skirmishing. After every EU summit, Greece’s prime minister boasts about Greece being an equal EU member and about its contribution to shaping the nascent European reality. What he does not point out, because he obviously fails to grasp it, is the absence of leadership and of a substantial vision for an integrated Europe, which is making an awkward and largely uncritical attempt to imitate the American social and economic model. Even more difficult for the prime minister, every European leader is alone when tackling national particularities, reactions and challenges, and this is where he has to display determination, experience and creative flexibility. Rigid systems and obsessions failed even in the case of dictatorial regimes, such as the former Soviet Union, and cannot serve as lifebelts for preserving political mediocrity in the democratic states of Western Europe in general, and in Greece in particular.
