The consequences of a potential financial collapse in Greece are now just as geopolitical as economic.
Greek flags hang at a kiosk in Athens on June 3, 2015 as Greek Prime Minister will meet European Commission President today for make-or-break bailout talks with a deadline looming for Athens to make a critical repayment. ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images)
After months of stalemated talks, Greek Prime Minster Alexis Tsipras headed to Brussels Wednesday to hear a new set of European terms — billed as a take-it-or-leave-it deal — aimed at unlocking critical funds to pay its bills.
Those in control of Greece’s purse strings — the European Union , the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank — have essentially frozen Greece’s ongoing bailout because of refusal by the country’s far-left government to maintain harsh austerity measures in exchange for cash.
The new terms were not immediately disclosed. But even if Tsipras — a political maverick whose administration has hurled insult after insult against its creditors — decides to back it, he still needs to sell any compromise to his party and a Greek public weary of the cutbacks, layoffs and lean times.
Alexis
Tsipras, Greece's prime minister, reacts while speaking to the media in
Athens, Greece, on Tuesday, June 2, 2015. Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg.
(Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg) Some E.U. leaders see it as a crisis of Greece’s own making after decades of unchecked state spending and reluctance to impose limits after joining the euro zone more than a decade ago. Greek officials increasingly believe they can never restore growth unless freed from the tough cost-control demands set by their European partners.
All sides involved have one big problem. Greece is quickly running out of cash, and says it will put paying salaries and pensions above paying foreign debt. A key test comes Friday, when Athens must scrape together a $330 million payment to the IMF or risk going down the path of default.
“If there is no prospect of a deal by Friday or Monday, I don't know by when exactly, we will not pay,” Nikos Filis, a spokesman for Tsipras’s Syriza Party, told Greek television on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The drama amounts to a déjà vu.
Greece has time and again appeared on the brink of collapse — the match that lights the fires of regional calamity. Yet the stakes now are somewhat different than in the past.
A
pedestrian passes a stencil graffiti mocking German Chancellor Angela
Merkel in Athens, Tuesday, June 2, 2015. Greece has submitted a proposal
for an agreement with its bailout creditors, the prime minister said
Tuesday, as the country seeks a deal that will unlock desperately needed
rescue money. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) (Thanassis Stavrakis/AP) But in the years since, Italy, Spain and other weak-link economies in the region have significantly shored up their financial defenses, partially shielding themselves — and Europe — by slashing budget deficits and enacting reforms.
Without doubt, concern of financial fallout still lingers and could yet grow, particularly if Greece is forced out of the 19-member euro currency union. During the G-7 finance ministers meeting in Dresden last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew urged a quick deal, warning of that delays were courting “an accident.”
But in Washington and the major capitals of Europe, economic fears now are at least being equaled by worries that Greece could become a quasi-failed state on Europe’s strategically vital southeastern flank, one of the frontline regions for economic migrants and others seeking to reach the E.U.
Greece’s neighborhood is already growing more troubled. Macedonia — Greece’s neighbor to the north — saw a raid by ethnic Albanian insurgents last month that left 22 dead. Its capital, Skopje, is convulsing in anti-government protests.
Officials and analysts on both sides of the Atlantic are now growing more concerned that Greece, if no deal is reached soon, could stumble into a scenario similar to Argentina’s devastating economic collapse in the early 2000s.
Bank accounts could be restricted or frozen, even as some deposits are potentially converted from euros to a weaker domestic currency. It could see the return of high inflation, lighting-fast collapses of governments, and the return of the kind of political violence that rocked Greece in past decades.
Greece is already on the verge of losing control of its porous borders, posing a potential security risk for the rest of Europe. From ports in Turkey, a record wave of refugees — most from war torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — pour across the narrow straits and onto a multitude of Greek islands.
The resort island of Kos, an emerald dot in the Aegean about 265 miles southeast of Athens, is at ground zero. More than 7,200 refugees have arrived through mid-May, already topping the 6,000 who landed during all of 2014.
Kos’s mayor, Giorgos Kyritsis, said in an interview that the numbers are now so great that comprehensive background checks are impossible. He suggested Greece could easily become a back door for Islamist militants trying to spirit into Europe.
“Greece has no money left to deal with this situation and it may only get worse,” he said. “How can we know who is a really a refugee and who is a jihadist from the Islamic State? It’s Greece’s problem, but it’s also Europe’s.”
The geopolitical threat, of course, is subtler than market fear, and is unlikely to cause the same kind of urgency to reach a deal that falling stock markets and soaring borrowing costs did in 2012.
But in terms of European and U.S. interests, the risk of a Greek collapse remains perhaps just as great. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already sought to exploit the Greece-Europe rift, courting Athens in overtures that could become far more attractive in the event of a default.
“From a geo-political point of view, Greece occupies a very important role,” said Diego Iscaro, a Greece expert with IHS Global Insight in London. “It’s the southeastern border of NATO. And the risk is that you see a country in that is really chaotic, with a high risk of even more porous borders and a Greek government that, for a time, is no longer in control of the country. That is why the US is so interested in Europe getting a deal done.”
After months of little progress, analysts are holding out hope for a breakthrough in the coming days.
The major sticking points remain long-standing European demands that Greece overhaul its pension system and labor laws — changes considered anathema to a far-left party elected on a platform of just saying no to austerity.
On Monday in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel — seen in Athens as the architect of Greece’s harsh bailout — met with high-level officials involved in the Greek bailout, including IMF chief Christine Legarde and ECB chief Mario Draghi, in an effort to narrow the creditors’ own differences and present a united front.
The overall goal is to hammer out the terms that Greece must accept to unfreeze the $7.9 billion still left over from Greece’s existing bailout.
Tsipras, however, sought to turn the tables on his creditors, sending his own draft deal to them on Tuesday. Some quickly rejected it as too little too late.
“We’re not going to meet them half way,” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of European finance ministers, told Dutch television on Tuesday.
Yet even if an agreement is reached, it is likely to simply buy time. Greece’s existing bailout runs out at the end of this month. But its debt load — at 177 percent of gross domestic product — remains unsustainable. It will need a new, far more comprehensive deal within months to avoid default later this year.
Greece vs. Germany
Could Greece really leave the euro?
copy http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário