President of the European Commission Jacques Delors, who keeps sending Greece packages -and not CARE packages but stringent economic do-it-yourself kits full of instructions about achieving the prerequisites for the convergence of EC economies – was in such a good mood when he came to Athens last month, it was almost as if he had brought a box of bonbons.
Maybe the Danish reactions to the Maastricht Summit had softened Mr Delors’ hard heart, or maybe it was the 100,000 US dollars cheque he pocketed from the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation which presented him with its Athinai Prize for Man and Mankind.
His acceptance speech graciously admitted that Greece had some place in Europe right now. There was no need for him to spice up his meaty message with a dash of Sophoclean wisdom invariably recited on these ‘cultural’ occasions in the Erasmian phonetic which always arouses a titter in the Athenian audience.
If his remarks at the Onassis ceremony were noble (“What you are honoring in my person is a collective course, that of European edification”), his speech the day before addressing the Annual General Assembly of the Federation of Greek Industries was practically cheerful – a happy change from those usually gloomy, quarrel-some gatherings of Greek businessmen and union leaders.
Mr Delors might well have been expected, like so many EC economic Commissioners before him, to play the role of scolding schoolmaster and have everyone stay after class and write “I will reduce the annual public deficit by X percent this year” fifty times into their copybooks.
Mr Delors was not merely in a good mood, he was in a conciliatory, almost apologetic, one. All those wretched things written about Greece lately in Le Monde and the Economist and Le Figaro shouldn’t be taken too much to heart, he seemed to say. That the EC has botched it in the Balkans, and then beaten Greece for it with no good reason is only due to frustration and impatience.
“Greece,” said Mr Delors, “does not have a place only in Europe’s past,” (Whew! His fellow countryman, historian Jacques Durozelle, suggests Greece has no part in it, past or present). “In Greece and with Greece, the future of all Europe is being played out.” (Great applause: Greece is still the navel of the world.)
This was indeed a gesture of bearing an olive branch since Greece has been treated as odd man out amongst the Twelve, called ‘the sick man of Europe’, at the very moment when its strategic position in the Balkans is so important. Greece has complained with good cause that at the very time it should have support for its national interests, understanding for its economic difficulties and acknowledgment for its social stability, it has been petulantly dismissed as a regional ‘problem’ paranoid, nonconforming and eccentric.
Even for Greece’s economic woes, Mr Delors had a sympathetic word. To years of socialist misrule and self-in-dulgence, diminished competitiveness and bloated public sector, the EC, he admitted, had added aid to Greece without discrimination or adequate de-finition, neither participating in local programs nor assessing their real value.
Not only was the President of the European Commission whistling Greece back into the fold, but he was careful to assuage its fears of being, even if inside the pasture, still marginalized.
“The EC,” he said, “rejects the concept of a Europe with different speeds,” citing as proof the fact that “in the last five years, with the aim of attaining the target of economic and social cohesion, funds equal to those of the Marshall Plan have been allocated.”
“The heads of government meeting at Maastricht,” he added, “did not decide to form a European axis of selected countries but rather to afford all 12 EC member-states the opportunity to achieve their goals.”
Well aware that in this country the economic sins of the fathers have been visited upon the sons, Mr Delors wanted Greece to adapt in its own way, neither being rushed towards unattainable goals and stripping economic gears in the process, nor forgetting to develop its traditionally strong sectors such as agriculture and small businesses.
“Modernization of the Greek community,” he concluded, “is not only a challenge for Greece but a need for the Community. As Plato said, (well, even he had to quote a Golden Oldie) in order for a stone wall to be solid, even the small stones have to be placed well.”
In the Laudatio preceding the pre-sentation of the Athinai Prize by President Karamanlis to Mr Delors, it stated the award was given “in recognition of his contribution to the European idea and for his personal commit-ment to building a Europe of citizens.” For many, this business of being citizens, polites, members of a polis, was the most important message found in Mr Delors’ Greek fortune cookie.
“Greece and the European Community,” he said, “should sign a ‘moral contract’ under which they would share responsibility for the course leading to a united Europe.”
An economic package, yes, but one whose accompanying message is a moral contract declaring that everyone in the community is a first-class citizen.
