A tale of two European Unions: austerity-choked Greece on the one hand, where tens of thousands of households kept warm by burning firewood and whatever else they could find this past winter; and the sparkling, imposing EU buildings in Brussels, full of exhibits about the "European dream" and the EU's vaunted social justice and solidarity. Which EU is the real one? Follow the trail of smoke and find out.
By Michael Nevradakis One of the most emblematic images which has come from Greece recently is the cloud of smoke and haze that has frequently covered Athens during the evening hours this winter. This noxious cloud was the result of thousands of households resorting to burning firewood--and anything else that they could find--due to their inability to pay for heating oil. As with a number of other everyday necessities, heating oil has been heavily taxed in Greece, as part of the austerity measures the Greek government and the so-called "troika" (the European Union, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank) have agreed upon, purportedly to "bail out" the country's economy. Coupled with shrinking incomes and pensions plus rising unemployment, many households were forced to go without heating in their homes and instead resorted to lighting the fireplace or makeshift furnaces in an attempt to stay warm.
This policy on the part of the government was not without its victims. In December, three children were killed when a fire engulfed their home, having likely started from a wood-burning stove the family was using to keep warm. Earlier this month, two college students died from carbon monoxide poisoning after leaving a charcoal grill lit in their unheated apartment. And if the end goal of this inane policy was to help the Greek state increase its tax revenues, that too failed. Failure, however, does not typically stand in the way of absurdity, at least when the troika and the Greek government are concerned. Despite a decline in tax revenues from heating oil, Greek finance minister Yiannis Stournaras refused to cancel the tax, which has resulted in an 80 percent decline in the sales of heating oil.
Stournaras, who undoubtedly made this decision from the comfort of a warm and well-insulated ministry office, has also managed to insulate himself from the humanitarian crisis that the policies he is enforcing have created. The cloud of smoke hanging over Athens can indeed be said to be, more than anything, symbolic in nature, symbolizing the hopes and dreams of the Greek people, and particularly its youth, which figuratively if not literally have gone up in smoke.
This symbolic cloud of deleterious smoke has, this past weekend, made it to neighboring Cyprus, where the “fair” and “socially just” EU has just reached an agreement with the island's new pro-austerity government to enforce a "haircut" impacting all deposits in Cypriot banks. Whitewashed as a "one-time tax," this "haircut" will result in depositors losing 6.75 percent of their money for deposits of up to €100,000, while those with deposits greater than that amount will lose 9.99 percent.This unprecedented measure was deemed "just" by Holland's Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who presided over the Eurogroup meetings where this agreement was reached.
Across the continent, a much different European Union awaited me during a recent visit to Brussels. Amidst a flurry of construction projects for new EU buildings that is ongoing in the midst of an economic crisis, visitors to the headquarters of the European Commission are greeted with a sea of murals, banners, and other showcases displaying the idea of European unity which the EU claims to promote. Beneath the flags of the 27 EU member-states and photos of individuals from different European countries holding hands and doing everything except singing Kumbaya together, a series of museum-like exhibits explained to visitors just how fair, just, and progressive the EU is, and how the EU was bringing the people of Europe together in one big, happy European "family."
The talks that I had an opportunity to listen to during my visit maintained this warm and fuzzy theme. Even a discussion of a topic as grim as the economic crisis in Europe was cloaked in positive talk about how new rules governing and overseeing the finances of EU member-states would bring Europe one step closer towards the holy grail of complete and everlasting unity. These talks were so convincing, I was just about ready to join in and begin singing Kumbaya as well.
But there was something nagging at me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, but certain things that were being said didn't seem quite right. There was the statement by one EU official that "the sovereign state is a 19th century construct, and nothing lasts forever." Another official, in discussing the recent electoral results in Italy, casually mentioned that the Italian prime minister Mario Monti, a pro-EU technocrat who was not elected, "was the best thing that ever happened to [Italians]" while adding that there were regions of Italy which he wished could be "governed directly from Brussels." References to the "free movement of labor," a "flexible labor force," and a "single European consciousness" were peppered throughout the talks.
Suddenly, it occurred to me. The European Union that I had left behind in Greece and Cyprus had invaded this space, and that warm but not-so-fuzzy feeling I was experiencing was actually a result of the aforementioned cloud of symbolic smoke. All that talk about European unity was being overcast by that cloud of smoke and the images that were blowing in along with it: children burning to death in homes without heating oil, increased numbers of homeless people begging on the street, tens of thousands of businesses with "for rent" signs on their front door.
So which European Union is the real one? The answer, actually, is that these two European Unions are much more similar than one would think. This is evident from examining where quotes such as "There must be a readiness to subordinate one's own interests in certain cases to that of the European Community" and "The solution to economic problems... with the eventual object of a European customs union and a free European market, a European clearing system and stable exchange rates in Europe, looking towards a European currency union" originate. You are excused if you guessed "EU official" or "European technocrat," but you're incorrect. The quotes come from members of Hitler's government.
Clearly, it is this sort of European "unity" and "solidarity" that is worthy of a Nobel Prize.
