Europe must stand with the Greeks

The moral case for the European Union is that it enables the nations of Europe to stand together to build peace and prosperity across the continent. Once Britain embarks on the renegotiation of the terms of its membership, leading to a referendum next year or the year after, it will be easy to lose sight of this dimension, the European common good. There is another reason that makes this case even more difficult to argue: the EU’s treatment of Greece. EU membership has brought only strife and suffering to millions of ordinary Greeks with no sign of relief. Greeks are bound to view any statement of high moral purpose with the deepest scepticism. Where is the solidarity?

When Greece joined the EU in 1981 it had its own currency, the drachma. Then 20 years later it adopted the euro, a step justified by some very doubtful accountancy. Currency revaluation would have been one way of bringing the Greek economy slowly into line with rest. If that did not work, there was also the possibility of a declaration of national insolvency followed by an IMF-supervised recovery. That is what has happened elsewhere, but it was not an option once Greece was inside the eurozone.

The outcome sounds like something from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Greece still has massive debts, repayments of part of which regularly become due. It can only keep up payments by borrowing more, usually from the same institutions it borrowed from in the first place. Those institutions – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – have imposed stringent austerity conditions. So the economy contracts again, and repayment of further tranches of debt becomes more difficult. This was precisely what happened in the nightmare world of the Victorian debtors’ prison. Once locked up, a debtor could no longer earn what he needed to settle his debts and regain his freedom.

Other countries in the eurozone have failed in their responsibilities to the Greek people, preferring to blame previous Greek governments and those who voted for them for insisting on generous public-sector pensions and an over-large public sector. But emptying hospital medicine cabinets of vital drugs or cutting teachers’ pay, as has been happening, will not solve this crisis. The priority must be to create conditions in which the Greek economy grows. If that means a reversion to the drachma, and the loss of money rashly lent in past years, then so be it. There will be a cost, but it should be shared across Europe.

The British Government shows little interest in the Greek problem. It presents its role in Europe exclusively in terms of the British national interest, with the political subplot of assuaging anti-EU sentiment inside the Conservative Party. This is a refusal to see Europe as a whole. Britain needs a peaceful and prosperous Europe, not only for Britain’s sake but for Europe’s. “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” That is what the British told themselves in 1914 and 1939, and they need to hear it again.