Happy Birthday
Messieurs Europe!
Lessons from Greek Entry into the EU
Athens News 23 March 2007
This Sunday, twenty-seven European
Union leaders celebrate the 50th birthday of the Treaty of Rome, the founding
document of the European Economic Community. Birthdays are a time to take stock.
In March 1982, a year after Greece became the 10th EC member, the president of
the European Parliament remarked glumly that the EC was "a feeble cardiac
patient whose condition is so poor that he cannot even be disturbed for a
birthday party." Twenty five years later, the patient is back on his feet
and determined to prove EU integration and expansion were not a mistake, that
current European peace and prosperity are not just a lucky accident.
Six hard-nosed national politicians
handed over part of their sovereignty to the Common Market in 1957. This was not
out of faith in transnational or supranational ideals. Nor had they the
charitable goal of transforming distant Greece into a land of shopping malls.
Instead, a tiny group of imaginative, incredibly stubborn statesmen led by Jean
Monnet had manipulated German war guilt, U.S. Cold War paranoia, and French
national jealousies to the noble end of making another European war impossible.
When France, Germany, Italy,
Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands undertook to lock their economies
together, Greece was a Balkan backwater. The rubble of occupation and civil war
had scarcely been cleared. Greeks exported themselves as cheap labor, because
inefficient Greek agriculture could not sustain them. Industry depended on high
tariffs and state-managed export deals. The legitimacy of Greek governments was
routinely undermined by intervention from the Palace or the U.S. Mission. Greek
politicians spent their time scheming against one another and packing the civil
service with relatives. Many Greeks looked sympathetically or even enviously at
their communist neighbors.
Strategically as well, Greece
seemed more a liability than a prize. Technically, Greece was still at war with
Albania. Bulgaria, now allied to Soviet Russia, bitterly resented its lost
Aegean coastline. In 1955, the dispute over Cyprus turned Greece and Turkey from
Balkan Pact allies into bitter enemies. Athens could not take for granted the
loyalty of the Slav and Turkish-speaking populations on its northern border.
In 1955 a tall, deaf politician
named Konstantinos Karamanlis, who had endeared himself to the Palace and the
Americans as an effective manager of development programs, was appointed Prime
Minister of Greece. Born under Ottoman rule near the Bulgarian border,
Karamanlis was gifted with an unintelligible mumble, commanding eyebrows, and a
contagious certainty that he was the natural leader of his disunited and
vulnerable country.
Karamanlis sacrificed most ordinary
human emotions to that certainty. "Costas is the only man I've ever seen
walk into his own house and be bitten by his dog," an anonymous colleague
once told the New York Times. But the poverty of his personal life was more than
compensated by his deep conviction that the Greek people could not hold on to
their fragile democratic institutions under any leadership but his own.
Karamanlis was adept at balancing
his political interests against U.S. pressure. But in 1956, popular anger over
Cyprus made Greece's dependence on the United States and NATO politically
costly. Karamanlis almost lost an election. To realize his dream of recivilizing
Greece, he needed a less polarizing partnership. He found it in Monnet's vision
of European integration.
In 1959, Karamanlis became the
first outside leader to submit his country's application for formal association
with the EC: "... a unified Europe will safeguard our security and our
independence and will deal successfully with the problems which beset our
country today. ... just as Greece geographically belongs to Europe, so is it
bound to it politically and culturally."
Through intense personal lobbying,
Karamanlis persuaded the EC-6 to accept Greece's candidacy. His argument was
simple, that Greece could not remain free and democratic without it. The
negotiations took two years, however. The EC welcomed this demonstration of its
relevance, but it was careful about the precedent it would be setting for
association agreements with Turkey and Spain. Greece was ultimately given 12
years to adopt the customs union, 22 years for fragile Greek industries. Soft
loans would fund investments to stiffen the Greek economy against the
competition it would face.
The year after Greece joined,
however, Karamanlis resigned as prime minister after a quarrel with the Palace.
When his party fell short in the 1963 national elections, he exiled himself to
Paris. From afar he watched Greece sink into political instability. After the
1967 military coup, the EC suspended his association agreement.
The 1967-74 dictatorship of the
Colonels was also a disaster for Greek relations with NATO and the United
States. Membership in NATO had not protected Greece from a military coup. When
Turkey invaded Cyprus and the Junta went limp, the United States failed to
intervene effectively.
Karamanlis returned as leader of
Greece in 1974. He faced overwhelming pressure to repudiate Greece's strategic
dependence on the United States. Withdrawing Greece from the military wing of
NATO was a dramatic political gesture that bought time. By coupling it with
outreach both to the EC and to Warsaw Pact countries, Karamanlis convinced
ordinary Greeks that they could still "belong to the West" without
belonging to the America that allegedly betrayed them. A united Europe, he told
them, would protect Greek national dignity in future.
In 1975 Karamanlis launched his EC
campaign. French President Giscard d'Estaing was immediately sympathetic to
Karamanlis's flattering argument that only EC membership could protect Greece's
restored democracy. Europeans owed Greece something for their passivity toward
the Junta. Greece was too small a producer to pose a threat to the surly French
farmers who were Giscard d'Estaing's chief domestic concern.
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
told Karamanlis he would prefer to help Greece bilaterally. The EC had barely
survived the 1973 accession of Great Britain. Greek-Turkish rivalries had almost
destroyed NATO, an organization still vital to German security. Unwilling to
expose the EC to similar risk, Schmidt insisted on Greek reintegration into NATO
-- which required Turkey's approval -- as the price of entry.
Karamanlis told Schmidt no. Linking
the EC to NATO in Greek minds would defeat the purpose. Karamanlis pledged to
bring Greece back into NATO, but in a manner of his own choosing. He promised
that Greece would not entangle the EC in Greek-Turkish disputes. He also bought
four German submarines. Schmidt decided to trust Karamanlis. His instinct was
sound.
In early 1976 the European
Commission reported that Greece would need a transitional stage before
membership to reform its economy and ease Greek-Turkish tensions. Karamanlis was
furious. He prevailed on his friends to overrule the Commission. But entry hit a
new snag. Spain and Portugal emerged from dictatorship and submitted their own
EC applications. Spain's large size raised the stakes. Karamanlis fought to
separate Greece's application from theirs. To speed up the deal he made painful
concessions on the economic front, concessions that prompted members of his
negotiating team to resign in protest.
Karamanlis had another reason for
haste. Andreas Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement was coming up fast.
Papandreou's motive for denouncing the EC was partly political opportunism, but
he had legitimate economic arguments against Greek membership. If a referendum
were held, as Papandreou demanded, Greek voters might well have rejected
Karamanlis's European vision.
In a blizzard of personal
diplomacy, Karamanlis warned the EC that it was now or never. A deal was reached
in December 1978 that Greece would become a member on January 1, 1981.
Karamanlis leapt to the President's palace, from which he could block an anti-EC
referendum. Greece joined the EU. Greek workers, peaches, and tomatoes, however,
would have to wait seven years for the full blessings of membership.
In their 1976 evaluation, however,
European Commission technocrats had not been inaccurate. In 1977, the New York
Times reported that European diplomats were "aghast at ... the ineptitude
of the Greek bureaucracy," which "cannot produce reliable statistics
or translate relevant documents." Translating 50,000 pages of EC
regulations took until the waning days of December 1980, and Greek officials had
no time to read them. "I must publicly admit that we are unprepared,"
banker Adamantios Pepelasis told the Times just before the big day. "It is
unbelievable, but no one has worked out the cost of Greek membership. We seem to
be entering the community with great enthusiasm, but blindfolded."
As an archaeology student in Greece
in 1980, I had no idea that EC association obliged Greece to liberalize its
economy. My Kolonaki neighbors shopped in London or New York. Everyone else
bought poor-quality domestic goods from family businesses that clustered tightly
to ensure no competitor cut prices. The American "PX," the military
department store at Hellenikon air base, had mythic status. Departing Americans
could sell their used sheets and dishes to Greek housewives for close to their
original price. And frankly, not much seemed to have changed when I returned in
1988, seven years after Greece joined the EC.
It would be unfair to say that
Andreas Papandreou fought the EC to keep Greece the way I had remembered it.
When Papandreou became prime minister in October 1981, he lacked Karamanlis's
intuition that the EC could be his ally in strengthening Greek sovereignty,
healing the Left-Right schism, promoting industry, and easing rural poverty.
Papandreou's charisma gave him the freedom to renew the U.S. base agreement and
to keep Greece in NATO. He soon concluded that withdrawing Greece from the EC
would damage Greek national interests. But he cheerfully flouted EC reform
commitments because it was safer domestic politics to do so.
EC partners frequently begged
Karamanlis to stop speaking publicly about European political integration,
because such talk was anathema to the UK. Still, the EC was making timid steps
toward a unified foreign policy. Papandreou, however, had an anti-colonialist's
contempt for European solidarity. Catering to anti-British sentiment, he blocked
EC condemnation of Argentina for its invasion of the Falkland Islands. To
appease restive leftists after the U.S. base agreement renewal in 1983, he
supported the USSR when it shot down a Korean passenger airplane.
By 1985, however, the Greek economy
was collapsing. Standing before his EC colleagues with begging bowl
outstretched, Papandreou moderated his rhetoric and used his considerable charm
to win friends again. The EC funding he pried loose achieved a major goal.
Agricultural subsidies and regional development funds began to transform the
Greek countryside. Growing dependence on money from Brussels softened Greek
hostility to the EC, even among Moscow-line communists.
The EC's resentment was intense,
however. Greece was a black hole in terms of complying with EC directives,
providing EC statistics, and monitoring the fate of EC financial assistance.
Billions of euros flowed to Greece but the gap with richer members show no sign
of shrinking. Helmut Schmidt was angry enough at one point to call Greece's EC
admission the worst mistake of his career.
Constantine Mitsotakis, though a
capable politician, lacked Karamanlis's vision and Papandreou's charm. In power
from 1990-93, his New Democracy party could not impose on its own the
liberalization Mitsotakis recognized as necessary. Greek public opinion forced
him to alienate Brussels by backing Serbia against its victims. When I left
Athens in 1992 I had little expectation that Greece would ever change. The 1993
Maastricht Treaty, however, was about to impose not only a new name, the
European Union, but also dramatically new rules of behavior.
Kostas Simitis came to office in
1996, a charisma-challenged economics professor. The world economy was
globalizing, whether Greece liked it or not. Simitis concluded that Greece must
adapt or starve. The EU Single Market, reinforced by European Monetary Union and
the Common Foreign and Security Policy, became his leverage against his own
party. He even turned to Greece's advantage the inability to produce reliable
statistics. Against the odds, Greece joined the EMU and exposed itself to global
competition, with both the economic dynamism and the insecurity that choice
entailed.
Better shopping, of course, is not
a valid measure of progress -- even Khartoum has a shopping mall. The proof of
transformation is that the educated, ambitious children and grandchildren of
Greeks emigrants are starting to come home. An insecure, often chauvinistic
traditional society based on networks of personal dependency has become a freer,
more self-confident, tolerant, and often law-abiding European nation.
Miracles are rare, and Simitis's
strategy fell short of one. The price of Greek liberalization includes a huge
and growing balance of payments deficit. Greece remains the least attractive
country in Europe for foreign direct investment. That Greece still cannot
produce a valid registry of land ownership or recycle its garbage reflects the
continued dominance of local self-interest over civic virtue. Still, Greeks know
from bitter experience that things could be much worse.
According to the 2006 Eurobarometer,
a full 74% of Greeks believe that the EU improved their lives. Greeks strongly
support a deepening of the European Union to strengthen its voice in foreign
policy and international security. Greeks rank second behind Slovenes in
trusting the EU, with 65% compared to an EU average of 45%. They want a European
Constitution and a European Army. Greeks are eager to share the EU's blessings
with their former Yugoslav neighbors (72% favor Serbian membership, 52% for
FYROM), though not necessarily with Turkey (only 24%) or Albania (38%).
This Greek enthusiasm for the EU is
in sharp contrast to the views of richer countries. In Germany, France, Italy,
Spain, and the UK, a 2007 FT/Harris poll found only 25% believing the EU
improved their lives, against 44% thinking it made their lives worse. The rich
countries have less enthusiasm for an EU army and hesitate to pay for further
expansion. The only good news of that poll was general agreement that leaving
the EU at this point would make their lives worse.
This popular ambivalence makes the
EU vulnerable. The European Constitutional Treaty was casually murdered in 2005
by French and Dutch voters annoyed at their politicians. It was also a victim of
the EU's 2000 "Lisbon Agenda." Brussels realized too late that
bureaucratic summonses to a "dynamic, knowledge-based economy" inspire
no one.
With EU "deepening" stuck
in the doldrums, EU leaders pray that peculiar weather and sympathy for polar
bears will rally Europeans around an ambitious new project, this time to impose
environmental sustainability on the European economy. It is a noble and
necessary goal, one that should inspire the necessary supranational coordination
and self-sacrifice.
Looming environmental challenges,
particularly in light of Greece's own EU history, are a powerful argument for
extending the blessings of EU membership. Comparing Ankara of 2007 with Athens
of 1981, there is no question that Turkey's struggling democracy
"deserves" EU membership. The Turkish economy is far more competitive
and open than Greece's was at the equivalent period. Turkey has demonstrated its
ability to abide by EU norms as conscientiously as Greece did under Papandreou.
Offered EC candidacy, Turkey responded with a series of bolder political reforms
than Greece was ever required to make.
Abstract arguments against Turkey's
admission, especially that "European" equals "post-Enlightenment
Christian," are disproved by Greece's own experience. The Church of Greece
resisted EC membership because its not-unreasonable reading of history suggested
opening the gates to Frankish heretics would be a greater threat to Orthodoxy
than 400 years of Islamic rule had been. But Orthodoxy is alive and well.
Abstract judgments are dangerous.
The crucial roles in transforming Greece were played by very specific,
strong-willed personalities. Karamanlis, as he freely admitted, threw an
unprepared country into deep European water. Papandreou extracted from Brussels
the cash for swimming lessons. Simitis pried fingers loose from the edge of the
pool.
Greeks are well placed to
understand the EU's moral duty to help specific, courageous leaders consolidate
liberal democracy and economic freedom in the countries they govern. The elder
Karamanlis was brave enough to ignore Greek public opinion when necessary.
Europeans now have the duty to ask whether Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and
his probable successors will be equally brave. That judgment of character can be
made accurately, however, only by close friends willing to trust one another.
These are not trusting times.
Cyprus's use its new EU membership
as a lever against Turkey has played very badly in Turkish public opinion.
Facing presidential and parliamentary elections, with a crisis looming over
Iraqi Kurdistan, and with waning faith that European leaders could persuade
their voters to accept Turkey as a member, Erdogan has put EU reforms in the
refrigerator. His only prudent political course, at least until after the
elections, is reasserted Turkish nationalism.
The EU seems more seductive a club
to diplomats and politicians than it does to ordinary citizens. As a U.S.
diplomat I envied my EU colleagues their excellent lunches and birthday parties.
But I often wondered why the EU was so timid in using its influence to criticize
its wayward members, including Greece.
Like America's founding fathers,
the EU's founders seldom deluded themselves that they could improve human
nature. Instead, they built institutions to cope with human nature. In decent
clubs it is the duty of members to politely ignore other members' foibles,
counting on them over time to learn the rules and follow them out of social
pressure. The number of truly "unclubbable" states and leaders is
smaller than generally advertised. And in retrospect, as recent history has
shown, the EU approach has achieved more lasting results than the one I know
better, America's heavy-handed use of public criticism and dire sanctions.
March 25 happens to be Greece's
birthday, and also my mother's. I will try to remember at some point to raise a
glass to the Treaty of Rome. Europeans live on a continent now peaceful and
prosperous enough, thanks to difficult decisions made five decades ago, that
their personal and national celebrations can safely take precedence. Some
gratitude is in order.
