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26.05.2015 | Непохитна Греція штовхає кредиторів до столу переговорів коли часова бомба готова вибухнути
Амброуз Еванс-Прітчард - The Telegraph



Europe's creditor powers have started to wobble. Berlin, Paris and Brussels are coming to the grim conclusion that Greece may not capitulate as expected, and time is running out fast.


Athens is now warning openly that the "moment of truth" will come on June 5, when the country faces default on a Ђ300m payment to the International Monetary Fund, unless the EU authorities hand over the next tranche of bail-out cash.


It would be hazardous to bet the integrity of monetary union on the assumption that this is just a bluff.


For the past four months the creditor bloc has been dictating terms, mechanically repeating the same demand that Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza rebels deliver on an austerity contract that they vowed to repudiate and which the previous conservative government was unable to implement.


EMU leaders have never at any moment acknowledged that the extra loans imposed on a bankrupt Greek state in 2010 were chiefly designed to save the euro and stem a European-wide banking crisis at a time when the eurozone had no defences against contagion.

They have yielded slightly on Greece's primary budget surplus but are still insisting on fiscal targets that can only trap Greece in a vicious circle of low growth and under-investment. Such a regime would leave the country just as bankrupt in the early 2020s as it was when the traumatic ordeal began, with nothing to show for so many cuts and a decade of depression.

 

They are still pushing Greece to sell off state assets for a pittance to the same old oligarchy, further entrenching the deformities of the Greek economy, presumably - for there is no other urgent imperative - so that they can collect their debts.

Yet creditor bluster has reached its limits. It is by now clear that Syriza is so angry, and so driven by a sense of injustice, that it may be willing to bring the whole temple of monetary and political union crashing down on everybody's heads, if pushed to the brink.

Mr Tsipras spent five hours trying to calm the party leadership on Tuesday as a mutinous caucus on the hard-Left, but not only them, berated him furiously for raiding reserve funds to pay off creditors. Better to default and be done with it.

The mood was already clear at a "war cabinet" 10 days ago when all wings of the party agreed that they would stand and fight - whatever the consequences - rather than submit to demands for a further cut in wages and pensions, or accept any deal that fails to offer debt relief and imposes a primary surplus above 1pc of GDP.

Pensions have already been cut by 44pc, and 48pc for public sector workers, and these stipends are the final safety net for Greek society. The recipients are literally feeding their children and grandchildren and extended kin. More than 900,000 registered unemployed - or 86pc of the total - receive no benefits.

 

The Greek drama has, in any case, escalated to a higher level. Washington has brought to bear its immense diplomatic power, warning Germany ever more insistently that it would be a geo-strategic disaster of the first order if an embittered Greece were to spin out of control and into the orbit of Vladimir Putin's revanchist Russia.

Wiser heads in Berlin need no persuasion. Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democrat leader, clenches his teeth with exasperation when told that Europe can safely handle a Ђ315bn default and a Greek ejection from the euro.

"It is extremely dangerous politically. Nobody would have any more faith in Europe if we break apart in the first big crisis," he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is in turn meeting groups of MPs from her Christian Democrat family, quietly warning them that the Bundestag may have to vote on a third rescue package for Greece even if Syriza stands fast on its "red lines" and does not fully comply. The southeastern flank of Nato cannot be allowed to unravel.

Suddenly, the technocrats in Brussels have begun to talk of "progress". The word is out that Syriza is finally putting forward serious reform proposals.

This new rhetoric is humbug. The Greeks offered long ago to draw up plans for free market reforms under the tutelage of the OECD, the leading specialists in this field.

They offered to draw up flexible labour laws with the help of the International Labour Federation, a legitimate alternative to the German-style "Hartz IV" reforms being pushed by the EU institutions - and anathema to the radical Left.

Syriza put forward a detailed list of reforms weeks ago. The creditor powers rejected the suggestions out of hand. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's finance minister, told me that EU authorities were interested only in securing a ritual submission. "The reforms were a smokescreen. Whenever I tried talking about proposals, they were bored. I could see it in their body language," he said.

The creditors could have found common ground with Syriza at any time had they wished to negotiate. What has abruptly changed over the past week is the mood at the Kanzleramt and the Elysйe, the twin power centres of the EMU system.
Ms Merkel and French president Franзois Hollande together called for fast-track action on Tuesday. "We expect that decisive progress now be made in the relevant forums. It’s in everyone’s interest that Greece stays in the eurozone,” said the German chancellor.

Behind closed doors they have told EMU negotiators to stop obstructing a deal and defuse the ticking time-bomb before it blows up in two weeks.

The European Central Bank is grudgingly doing its part, postponing the long-feared tightening of collateral rules for Greek banks. There is just enough liquidity in the system to limp on until early June.

The ECB can hardly do otherwise. If it were to pull the plug on the Greek banking system and - by its own authority, with no mandate from elected leaders - deliberately precipitate the bankruptcy of the first radical-Left government elected in Europe since the Second World War, it would create a martyr state for the European Left. It would establish for all to see that EMU's governing institions are beyond democratic control.

Syriza has always had a stronger hand than supposed in this high-stakes game of strategic chicken, even if it has misjudged horribly in trying to play off Europe's debtor bloc against the Teutonic core, or in playing off Washington against Moscow.

It is no light matter to shatter a currency built with ideological fervour to bind Europe together, the crown jewel of EU integration. As Mr Tsipras puts it, the eurozone is like a woollen jumper: “Once it begins to unravel, you can’t stop it anymore."

The EU itself is already in a deep moral crisis, discredited by a self-inflicted slump and mass unemployment across the Greco-Latin world. It no longer has the self-assurance to confront flagrant abuses of its core principles by more than one state in central and eastern Europe.

The European elections last year were a primordial scream by the souverainiste Right, a coronation for France's Marine Le Pen. The Left remains loyal, but tepidly, and not to be taken for granted.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission's chief, admitted poignantly to Die Welt that the whole project is in dire trouble. "Europe has lost a huge amount of prestige. Nobody takes us seriously in foreign policy anymore," he said.

"A Greek exit from the eurozone would do irreparable damage to the European Union's reputation in the whole world."

The EMU creditors have Mr Tsipras by the scruff of the neck. He has a knife to their throats.




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