Greek Lessons for European Citizenship +

Yesterday, we saw how the EU finally gave the green light to support measures (bailout, unfortunate name, I think) to shore up the battered financial budgets and the battered Greek (not to mention the structure of public services). This is the culmination of a series of large errors (not the plan itself) on how to get to a destination that seemed in this way, but that no institution was willing to assume.

And now, the situation is irreversible. The Greek situation is if the sum of a number of historical factors that have led to this situation, and that however much you want to match a certain Anglo-Saxon press, is not comparable to the rest of the that "serious" and "brainy" press wants to do with the rest of what they name, contemptuously, as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain).

The situation becomes Greek from an early accession to the EU in 1981 (then EEC), mostly by American pressure within NATO to bring the natural boundaries of this organization to the eastern Mediterranean and access control step the Soviet fleet in the Bosphorus and the Caspian.

Therefore, these requirements did not require a thorough overhaul of its economic and institutional structures, as they are required later to Spain and Portugal when we entered 1986. And here come some of the current problems. That and the demonstrated tendency of all Greek governments over the last two decades of makeup over their public (which is well known in all the gossip of Brussels). But this is not the question I want to bring up in this post.

The point is that the Greek situation is left worse because no institution has sought to address the real situation. From 11 February to 25 March, there have been no high-level meeting of the EU or bilaterally with other countries which made no reference to the Greek crisis to try to minimize it and try to find the confidence of the markets. And here again our heroes encounter. Europe is not only convincing the markets, Europe is also convincing the public. And this is again a deficit.

The European population does not perceive a need to rescue together. Moreover, many voices (who mistakenly complain) that are against what each country will contribute to the rescue with a loan at 5% to 30,000 million euros (on a plan for a period of 18 months). The citizens have to explain what that means, counting without restrictions, without demagoguery, without treating it so childish.

These moments are to be used for citizens to seek a joint involvement of 27 and to remind the rest of the world, the value of building a common space based on solidarity, respect and joint construction of a future. And in this turn to fail.

We have seen there have been threats of resorting to the IMF, if the 27 did not come to help (I refuse to use the word rescue, dear Eurosceptic media) to Greece, and this can not be. The EU has returned to give the impression of drift. Drift, because it believes in one of its partners, and that the bulk of the population perceives it, because from the Permanent Commission and the Presidency have not taken steps in this regard.

The lesson: Europe must take a clear consequence of this situation. Hopeless situations, require a robust response to the same integrator which would give the public confidence and not release the "ghost" of the interim decisions, which are the leitmotif of the current Barroso Commission. Urges the EU to be able to cope with a strong intergovernmental decision-making mechanism (the Treaty of Lisbon, has these devices) and a o-Gov, that sense of security and transparency to the public.

The future of EU institutions go through them "visible" and "transparent" to the people, otherwise we are facing a chimera, which like the Greek case is just, I fear, Act.