The imminence of peril in Greece

On Sunday the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, put an end to one of the most turbulent weeks that the country has been through since the crisis began. After giving his assent in the European Council to the principles that will be implemented in the euro zone to resolve the tensions over sovereign debt, Papandreou went home and, quite by surprise, announced the calling of a referendum so that the Greeks could decide on the bailout of their economy.

It was a suicidal and at the same time desperate initiative, with which Papandreou tried to conjugate the imperious need of obtaining EU funds with that of alleviating the political hounding to which his government was being subjected at home.

If the referendum proposal had succeeded, the European Council would have lost its reason for being. Any leader of a member state might have gone back on the commitments made, by means of calling a referendum on his return to his country. The possibility of a negative result in Papandreou's mooted referendum would have jeopardized Greece's presence in the euro zone and in the Union, and even the viability of the single currency. Too much risk for the trifling benefits expected.

Yet Papandreou's gesture has served to show up the problems that the Union and the euro zone countries cannot continue to dodge and ignore. The growing adoption of unilateral measures on the part of Germany and France has been fostering an internal questioning of the governments that have to implement them. In a way that is no doubt mistaken, George Papandreou has expressed a reality that is worth taking into account: that there are political limits to the merely economic handling of the crisis. The answer cannot be to ignore them, as Merkel and Sarkozy seem to be giving us to understand. They have to be factored into the process of reflection on the path to be followed.

The new Greek government will be one of national unity and, in principle, will include a considerable number of technocrats. Papandreou will not be in it, and may immediately be substituted by a new prime minister who, however, will be unable to avoid the holding of elections. This may leave the new government caught in the pincer of the EU demands, on the one hand, and the resistance of the street, on the other. The paradox is that though Papandreou has been forced to resign, his successor may enjoy a political margin wider than his, at least on the internal front. And this is because, voluntarily or not, Papandreou has shown the imminence of peril not only to the other members of the euro zone, but also to his own citizens.

It is difficult to anticipate the course of events in a country that has been not only grievously affected by the economic crisis, but also politically and socially dismasted. The solution that seems to be gaining acceptance will not be one of the worst ones, even if the instability that is increasingly affecting the whole of Europe persists.