On this occasion Prime Minister Rallis delivered an address before President Karamanlis, Ministers of State, the Ambassadors of the other nine EEC nations, party leaders and bank governors. The leader of the major Opposition party, PASOK, however, was absent, as well as those of the two Communist parties, all of whom oppose full membership. It is the belief of PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou that the structure of the Greek economy is such that it will suffer from competition with EEC industry, and therefore that a special relationship with the Common Market is preferable. The reception which followed at the Hotel Grande Bretagne could only remind the company that Britain’s Opposition, as well, is unenthusiastic about that country’s role in the EEC, particularly when it came to picking up the price-tag.
Although Greece first applied for association with the European Economic Community shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the average Greek probably heard more about the Common Market in the last month than he had in the two previous decades put together. “You are in the EEC, learn about the EEC” became a jingle reiterated on television more often than any commercial, and children were singing the slogan in the streets with about as much knowledge of its meaning as their parents.
With the tender-loving paternalistic care equal to that of any grammar school principal’s, the television networks reassured listeners, in so many words, that as long as they were good little children and did their homework, there was no reason to be frightened of those great big Western Europeans. This advice might seem gratuitious to give to a country of ten million people which has been playing host to nearly five million tourists per annum for some time and hardly needs to be lectured on the curious ways of foreigners. Indeed it might have been more to the point if Western European networks had exhorted their listeners with the words: “You are in the EEC; learn about Greece.” In his New Year’s message President Karamanlis said, “We have become members of a large family instead of being a small and isolated country on the margins of international life. With accession we are ridding ourselves of the need for protectors and custodians.”
Insofar as accession would strengthen independence, safeguard democratic institutions and implement social development, Greece’s entry into the Common Market could only be warmly applauded. As
for joining a large family, however, it was noted that the larger the family, the more opportunities there are for quarreling. Some Western spokesmen, believing that the Community had already become too large when Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined, could only greet the accession of a tenth member with reservations.
Many who received Greece warmly emphasized its heritage which had passed on to Western Europe so many of the ideals which were enshrined in the Treaty of Rome twenty-four years ago. However as a Dutch newspaper suggested, a people who had once contributed so substantially to art and philosophy did not necessarily guarantee that they would strengthen the community twenty-five hundred years later.
President Karamanlis’ message also carried a warning: “These benefits will not come automatically, but will require hard work and sacrifices on the part of the Greek people as well. We must limit our needs rationally and comply by certain classical and infallible economic principles, such as working harder and spending less than we earn.” What ancient Greek philosopher actually stated these exact words being unclear, workers responded to the President’s exhortation by spending the first Saturday of 1981 in bed. They were celebrating the establishment of the five-day work week. Although it was not a requirement for EEC entry, the five-day week was in part instituted to give the country a look of “being with it” in the eyes of the other nine members of the family. Greeks, hοwever, cannot be faulted when it comes to hard work
— as so many of them hold down one and even two moonlighting jobs. That they may spend more than what they declare on their income tax forms does not necessarily mean that they spend more than they earn.
A thought which came up at the eleventh hour — it being the hour when almost everything is accomplished or thought of in this countrywas that accession into the EEC might risk the loss of national identity. Absorption into a larger body, it was feared, might endanger loss of individuality and the suppression of long-honored habits and customs.
This fear appeared groundless almost at once. Within days of accession a certain characteristically Hellenic sleight-of-hand was detected by the press when the question arose about how each political party should be represented in the Euro-parliament and what party within that body these parliamentarians should be affiliated with. There was also some vague talk, involving Greece, though distinctly Levantine in flavor, about “buying, off” a European deputy. It only went to show that the newest member was historically senior when it came to the intricacies and subtleties of political art.
That the youngest member of a large family, far from losing its identity, often gains in projecting its own personality over its elders is a phenomenon better known to psychologists than to statesmen. The national habit of postponing things until the last moment seemed in no way suppressed by accession into the EEC. In the first week in January an official from Brussels, noting that not one of the twelve Greek seats to an advisory committee had been filled, phoned to Athens inquiring, naively, if Greece had already resigned from the Common Market. On January 20 as the deadline approached for the appointment of the Secretary General, neither he, nor those filling the posts immediately under him, had been decided on. The EEC’s puzzlement in regard to these actions — or inactions — can only be expected in its first days of learning the ways and by-ways of “the Greek experience”. If, a few years hence, the beautifully organized bodies in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg are reduced to a chaos of eleventh-hour indecisions, in Athens at least it will be no cause for surprise. If Greece came to dominate Rome as a result of being conquered by her, it should have little trouble doing the same with the often divided Common Market.
All important steps are taken with a degree of risk. If some Europeans approached Greece’s entry with circumspection, Greece, on her part, was not going to be impeded by any sense of caution. In business enterprises, personal affairs, and even on the highway it is the risk itself which most arouses the energy and enthusiasm of her people. Further more, there seemed much to be gained. The poorer agricultural nations such as Ireland and Italy have proved to be the ones which have benefited most from associating with an organization whose revenue is largely spent in supporting agriculture. Greece’s entry increased EEC shipping by fifty percent making it the most extensive in the world. And Greece’s entry will no doubt increase the power which shipping already holds. Above all, with an economic crisis at hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that European unity must project itself beyond the economic sphere into the area of political consolidation. A community of ten democracies, which with the accession of Portugal and Spain will make twelve, should emerge with an important and positive voice in world affairs. In this democratic chamber orchestra the voice of Greece will be heard, in the wind section perhaps, sometimes introducing the theme, but always noticeable in making her entrances late.
Athens Possessed
The infrequency of urban crime and terrorism in Athens has attracted the attention of sociologists as well as casual tourists. Visitors, and elderly visitors in particular, have repeatedly remarked that the sense of security they feel in the city’s streets, even in out-of-the-way places or at late hours, is one of the city’s important assets. Crime exists although ‘ the antics of, say, the rifl· fides, thieves who break into shops in original ways, find response from newspaper readers who in most other cities would overlook them as too common to be newsworthy.
The sudden conflagrations, therefore, that engulfed two major department stores within ten minutes of each other in the early morning hours of December 19 elicited consternation and a national sense of outrage. That the fires were set by arsonists could not be doubted, though, characteristically, the police presumed they were extreme Leftists, and Opposition elements accused fascist supp orters of the Junta. The mechanisms that set off the conflagrations in Minion, the city’s largest store, at 3:10 a.m. and in Katrantzos at 3:20 a.m., were both noiseless and of great force, as the earliest witnesses saw the buildings already enveloped in flames.
It was widely pointed out that such sophisticated incendiary bombs were of greater power than the amateur devices associated with left-wing anarchists. Contacting newspapers by phone later in the morning, an organization calling itself the October ’80 Movement claimed responsibility for the fires, but police files of that month furnished no clues and it was questioned whether such an organization even existed.
Although no one was injured, the blazes were the greatest in the fifty-year history of the Athens Fire Department. Both stores, being heavily stocked for the Christmas season, were especially flammable. One hundred and fifty men with forty-two trucks were unable to control either blaze, and they burned themselves out only after the buildings had been gutted. In the case of Katrantzos, an eight-storey, partly prefabricated, structure on Stadiou Street, the upper part collapsed and the remainder of the building had to be demolished.
Serious damage was also sustained by smaller, adjoining shops and the government, responding promptly, promised long-term loans with little or no interest to these concerns as well as to Katrantzos and Minion. Compensation was also promised to the stores’ two thousand employees and their families. The management of Minion had planned a party on the premises later on the same day for the children of all its employees.
The following Monday Parliament set aside all other business and leaders of all political parties condemned the outrage. The economic effect of the fires — with two areas of the city’s central shopping district cordoned off, citizens themselves apprehensive about circulating in other shopping areas during the busiest week of the year and “the holiday spirit” deflated — was impossible to calculate. Although the managements of the stores announced they would continue in business despite losses (damages were estimated at forty million dollars while the two stores together were insured for ten million), and Minion had already reopened in a few small areas of their gutted building by mid-January, the fact that Athens was no longer free of violence was a blow to the city’s pride.
In spite of the inevitable eagerness on the part of some politicians to point the blame in the opposite direction, most people believed that the perpetrators, whether attempting to disrupt the functions of the city or tear apart the fabric of state, were terrorists with motives beyond reasonable political definition and, in the Dostoievskian sense, “possessed”.
