Greece to foster close partnership of European South

On September 9, leaders of Greece, Italy, Malta, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and France will meet in Athens invited by Greek PM Alexis Tsipras to discuss on a new vision for Europe. The "Athens Summit", as it is called, aims to set the pace for the challenges EU and Eurozone are faced with, especially after Brexit and the dire effects of austerity.

The agenda will focus on the need for a new strategy for Europe, a new social model that will emphasize on the need to get away with catastrophic austerity, the refugee issue, which is about to come back to news headlines as the EU-Turkey deal and the relocation program are not efficiently developed. Each one of these countries has its own national interest and concerns for the coming period, but there is one strong component that brings them together: the aim to strategically change the course of events in Europe and stimulate sustainable growth.

Time to End the Greek Debt Tragedy

It’s the season when Greece’s continuing debt saga approaches what has now become a familiar summer climax, with citizens protesting austerity cuts and international creditors squabbling over the terms of loans. It’s time to exit this cycle and face reality: Without relief, Greece’s economy will never recover, with repercussions the European Union can ill afford.

Last July, the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was forced to accept a raft of austerity measures imposed by international creditors in order to receive a bailout. This has taken a toll, and around a quarter of the population is unemployed.

Greeks Bearing Gifts: How Europe’s poorest country is doing more than anyone else to help Syrian refugees.

One Friday in late summer, just as the Syrian refugee crisis was beginning to peak, a blue station wagon pulled up to the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The car’s side mirror was held on with masking tape and force of will. Big letters on the side said “Free Food For All” in English and Greek. A half-dozen sunburned, chain-smoking Greek leftists of all ages piled out, followed by two barrel-sized aluminum vats, several gas burners with propane tanks, two folding tables, forty bags of pasta, a box of spices, a dozen car-battery-sized cans of tomato paste and a couple of three-foot-long wooden paddles for stirring soup.

Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret

“I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten,” says Títos Patríkios. “The Athens police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament in Syntagma Square. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic.”

 A day that changed history: the bodies of unarmed protestors shot by the police and the British army in Athens on 3 December 1944. Photograph: Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

And then came the defining moment: the recklessness of youth, the passion of belief in a justice burning bright: “I jumped up on the fountain in the middle of the square, the one that is still there, and I began to shout: “Comrades, don’t disperse! Victory will be ours! Don’t leave. The time has come. We will win!”

Questioning Greece’s future from the other side of the Atlantic

In the last month (20 Sept-18 Oct 2015) I visited a number of universities and think tanks in Canada and the US to give a series of lectures supported by the Onassis Foundation lectureships program. Visiting six cities and many more institutions in four weeks was a demanding but rewarding experience.

The subject was the adjustment of the Greek economy and in particular of the banking sector within the changing governance of the Eurozone. And there was an impressive amount of interest in progress in Europe and Greece even in places as geographically remote from the old continent as Vancouver, San Francisco or Sacramento. Interest was also strong in New York, New Haven as well as Washington. Fifty participants attended the last lecture given at the World Bank mostly staff of the Bank and the IMF but their interest was more or less expected given their knowledge of and involvement in Greece.

Battered Greece and Its Refugee Lesson

Here’s a rough guide to the modern world: More efficiency, less humanity. Technology is principally at the service of productivity. Acts of irrational grace are not its thing. They have no algorithm.

Greece has made me think about everything statistics don’t tell you. No European country has been as battered in recent years. No European country has responded with as much consistent humanity to the refugee crisis.

Greece between Russia and the United States: The Syria-bound flights

On September 6, Washington asked Athens to close airspace to Syria-bound Russian aid flights. Earlier the same day, Kremlin requested and received Athens permission to transport humanitarian aid to Syria for the period between September 1-24.  A quagmire for the interim government in Greece?

A truly hard and complex decision was made by the interim government in Athens which essentially has no full authorization to deal with such delicate political and strategic decisions. Nevertheless, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded negatively to US request.  This decision will go without repercussions for the Greek side, but it is meaningful of how both the US and Russia are planning to employ their influence on the surrounding and neighboring countries,  as well to the biggest reception and first transit states for refugees, like Greece.

Greece’s Refugee Crisis and Europe’s Failure

As if Greece didn’t have enough on its hands after its European creditors forced it to accept a damaging bailout deal last month, it is also trying to cope with more refugees crossing the Mediterranean to its shores than to any other country in Europe. It is unconscionable for Europe to expect Greece to shoulder this burden, yet that is exactly what is happening.

Refugees at a temporary camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. CreditSergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

More than 107,000 refugees and immigrants have landed in Greece this year, surpassing the 80,000 reaching Italy. More than half are Syrians fleeing the civil war.

How olive oil explains Greece’s problems

The hills of Kalamata, on the southern coast of Greece's Peloponnese peninsula, produce some of the best olives in the world. When pressed, they produce an oil that is almost fluorescent green and sometimes described as "liquid gold."

EPA/ALI ALI

But after much of that oil is pressed in Greek processing facilities, tanker trucks come to take it straight to the sea. In 2012, 60 percent of Greece's olive oil output was shipped to Italy. There, it is packaged in Italian bottles with Italian labels, and then sent around the world. And most of the profits go back to Italy -- according to consultancy McKinsey, Italy captures an extra 50 percent premium on the price of Greek oil.

Greece: The Need for a More Collaborative and Flexible Response on Migrants

Lesvos, a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, is currently one of the most popular arrival points for migrants not only in Greece but in Europe. Roughly half of migrants arriving in Greece so far this year have come to Lesvos, which at some points is located less than 10 kilometers from the Turkish coast. Approximately 1,000 migrants have been arriving on the shores of Lesvos each day. These are record numbers for the island of 86,000 people.

Greek foreign policy: The next ruin?

The economic consequences of Greece leaving the eurozone would be serious for the Greek people and the rest of the EU. The foreign policy implications could be equally bad. Russia policy aside, the Syriza-led coalition has been part of the European mainstream. If a post-Grexit Greece lurched from left-wing populist to right-wing nationalist government, its foreign policy could be an even bigger problem for Europe. 

The EU and Greece have finally agreed on a bail-out deal. But, as Christian Odendahl and John Springford have written recently (‘The Greek bailout deal resolves nothing’, July 13th), its flaws are so serious that it is likely to fail eventually. Before EU leaders steel themselves to expel Greece from the eurozone, they should think about Greece’s geopolitical importance (and not just its flirtation with Russia). 

Greece and Turkey should build on "low politics"

Two of the major allies in NATO and the wider Mediterranean region, Greece and Turkey have long being faced with huge dilemmas of stability and security in the Middle East and North Africa. Under the current pivotal shifts of global and regional influence, these two countries have a lot to win by cooperating closely and consistently.

The unfolding of the Greek financial crisis has been heightened up during the last six months. Even after the first agreement at the latest Euro Summit over a third bailout deal, economic conditions and the future of Greece inside Eurozone are not yet secured. And not that much because the Greek government does not look for it, but because the financial deal has nothing to incite hopeful thoughts over growth development. The bailout deal is not investment-oriented  nor addresses the major macroeconomic burdens of the Greek economy. 

Why debt sustains corruption in Greece and vice versa

As numerous Greek MEPs opposed the Eurozone summit deal, implementation will require a broad coalition of political parties. This column argues that corruption in Greek politics will prevent the formation of such a coalition. The heavy debt service leads parties to invent extreme ways of responding to super-austerity and to strongly oppose direct reforms that challenge existing clientelism. The way out is to sign a new agreement that combines debt restructuring and radical transparency reforms, including naming-and-shaming practices, to block clientelism in the medium and long run.

You should actually read the IMF's memo on Greece. It's horrific.

Germany and the EU "won" their arguments with Greece, and the country accepted another bailout deal as the cost of staying in the eurozone.

Thomson ReutersChristine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

Neither the country nor the people wanted the bailout to come with another painful austerity package, but it has. 

The crucifixion of Greece is killing the European project

You couldn’t have had a clearer demonstration of what democracy now counts for in Europe than this week’s immolation of Greece. In January, after five years of grinding austerity imposed by the troika of creditors had shrunk its economy by a quarter and pushed millions into poverty, Greeks rebelled and elected an anti-austerity government.

 Anti-austerity protesters clash with police in front of the Greek parliament on Wednesday night. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft

Following months of fruitless negotiations, the country voted last week to reject the latest cuts, tax rises and privatisations demanded to deal with the disastrous impact of the first phase of austerity. The response of the eurozone’s masters was immediately to ratchet up the pain still further. For the “breach of trust” of daring to put the terms to its people, Athens was to be punished. So on Monday – threatened with expulsion from the eurozone and economic collapse courtesy of the European Central Bank’s cash blockade – the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, bent the knee.

By the numbers: The Greek economy

As Greece works out the details of a deal with the EU for billions of euros in bailout funds and severe austerity measures, the nation continues to feel the effects of nearly a decade of financial turmoil. Here’s how Greece’s economy has fared.

The Greek bailout deal resolves nothing

Even if the new bailout makes it through the Greek parliament in coming weeks, the programme's economic incoherence will make it fall apart.

Before the bailout deal was struck, the Greek impasse had descended into point-scoring and finger-pointing, with creditors blaming Greece for the country’s economic woes, and Greeks – and the centre-left in other countries – blaming the creditors for insisting on more austerity and trying to humiliate the country. Now that a deal has been struck, the argument will shift onto whether Alexis Tsipras, with his confrontational bargaining strategy, has won anything that a more emollient government would not. Tspiras and his supporters claim that debt relief and a long-term programme of fresh lending would not have been on the table without playing hardball. But the truth is that Greece capitulated on Monday July 13th, not the creditors, and this has important ramifications for the bailout’s success. 

The Uncomfortable Truth About Debt

If it’s 1 a.m., it must be Greece.

Looking beyond Greece’s debt. Source: Fotolia [M]

Endless summits are the stuff of nightmares for European leaders who have spent five years attending meetings that run late into the Brussels night and morning. It was true again over the last 24 hours, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her counterparts worked through the night to hammer out a dealthat keeps the Mediterranean country within the 19-nation euro zone.

Greece and eurozone reach agreement in bailout talks

The government in Athens and its creditors have reached a deal that will shore up Greece’s place in the eurozone after marathon overnight talks.

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‘We have an a-Greek-ment’, Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, tells the press after almost 17 hours of talks between Eurozone leaders

After 31 hours of acrimonious discussions spread over one tense weekend, a breakthrough came early on Monday morning. Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, announced that the 19 leaders of the eurozone had unanimously reached agreement.

What are the geopolitical implications of Greece's euro drama?

 Greek and EU flags are waved at a pro-euro rally in front of the parliament building in Athens on Thursday. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media

The arrival in a week of more than 9,000 refugees in the Greek islands highlights the fact that Greece’s euro drama is being played out in a turbulent neighbourhood. “I have no doubt this will affect Europe, also in a geopolitical sense,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, told the European parliament this week.