We must strive to work for the greater good
Against a background of squabbling and frayed tempers, the European Union finance ministers inched their way last night towards agreement on a second bailout for Greece, comprising a €130bn loan and a writeoff of 70pc of the debt owed to private investors.
The ill-feeling was internal as well as bilateral. Chancellor Angela Merkel has not concealed her impatience with Greece, but she has domestic difficulties too. In recent days there have been rumours of splits with her finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble.
The famously hard-headed Dutch annoyed some of their colleagues by raising a new issue when the eleventh hour had already arrived. They wanted "permanent control" of the Greek economy jointly by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
With negotiations on the brink, this hardly ranked as a helpful suggestion. And the colleagues needed no reminders that trust was lacking. They might not openly echo the Dutch finance minister, who declared that Greece had failed again and again to meet its international obligations, but they shared the scepticism of the Germans, French, Finns and others.
They thus came close to admitting what is almost never admitted in the world of diplomacy: that they doubted the validity of the exercise in which they were engaged.
Can this bailout save Greece from defaulting on its debts, risking catastrophe at home and the danger of "contamination" throughout the eurozone and more widely?
Will there be even more bailouts, and can they work?
The current aim is to reduce the Greek debt ratio to 120pc of gross domestic product by the year 2020.
But the conditions simply do not exist for this modest enough ambition.
The country's economy is shrinking and will shrink further. The cuts imposed under the "austerity" programme could make a return to growth impossible.
Argument on these topics is all too familiar to ourselves. There is, however, a world of difference between Greece and Ireland.
Here, we change governments peacefully and let them get on with their work. There, thousands take to the streets, throwing petrol bombs, burning buildings, and attacking police. They have lost confidence in their weak government and parliament.
Many may say it is no wonder that the Germans in particular would evidently like to wash their hands of Greece. But that would be both harmful and disgraceful.
Greece cannot be quarantined. The consequences of a default would be dreadful. Not least among them would be the necessity to confess that the European Union, for all its wealth and all its history, could not save a member-country from bankruptcy because it lacked the imagination and the generosity to fight its way out of the debt crisis.
And EU institutions and major EU governments, especially those of Germany and France, share the responsibility for the crisis.
To what extent did other governments bring their troubles on themselves? This question is particularly relevant to the antics of the former governments in Greece and Ireland. It has much less relevance to the question how we can recover. No country can do that by itself.
Last week 11 EU prime ministers, including Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British Prime Minister David Cameron, sent a letter to the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.
They want faster action to "deepen" the single market services sector and the internal energy market. They also want a "digital single market" by 2015.
That is exactly the kind of programme that has been discussed, and indeed agreed, again and again in recent history but with sparse results. This is a good time to revive it, as well as pressing for the fiscal measures required to prevent another crisis.
As to our domestic economy, we must look again at measures we can take on a less grand scale. The events of the last few days have reminded us of our tremendous opportunities in tourism, agriculture and agribusiness.
These are prime areas for the development of small business. But as much as any of these things, we need to insist on, and take part in, a co-ordinated European approach. No more midnight patchwork.
Irish Independent
