Dutch economist Maarten Verwey has unprecedented powers as his taskforce oversees the implementation of Greece’s cash-for-reforms rescue package
Whoever ends up moving into Maximos Mansion, the official Athens residence of Greece’s prime ministers, after Sunday’s election, they will not, in any meaningful sense, be running the country.
That honour might be said to go instead to a besuited Dutch economist in Brussels with the imposing title of director-general in the secretariat-general of the European commission in charge of the Structural Reform Support Service.
Maarten Verwey, a senior civil servant at the Dutch finance ministry who joined the commission in 2011 and led its Cyprus assistance programme, heads what amounts to an EU taskforce for Greece, Greek media have said.
His powers are unprecedented. And if few voters on the streets of Athens have heard his name, many understand that how they cast their ballot in the elections will make little difference to what happens next.
“It’s a done deal,” said Christos Sotirakis, 43, a bank employee. “It doesn’t matter who wins, we know what they’ll be doing. More taxes, more cuts, more austerity. Every party signed up to it. There’s no real point voting.”
Anti-austerity Syriza leader and outgoing premier Alexis Tsipras, who resigned this summer after accepting punishing new bailout terms to ward off bankruptcy and keep Greece in the euro, and Vangelis Meimarakis, of the centre-right New Democracy, are tied in the polls.
But under the draconian conditions of Greece’s third cash-for-reforms rescue package, Athens effectively surrendered control over great swaths of economic and social policymaking to its eurozone lenders.…
In exchange for the bailout funds, Greece, which needs to repay about €1.3bn in loans this December and another €6bn in 2016, has pledged to radically overhaul its economy and make far-reaching changes to the health, welfare, pensions and taxation systems.…
According to the financial weekly Agora, Verwey’s 20-strong staff “will essentially write the legislation for almost all areas of government policy, from corporate income tax and labour market policy to the health and welfare system … and prepare interim reports during the evaluation of the economy”.…
Yannis Stathopoulos, a waiter, said he would definitely not be voting. “I’ve given up,” he said. “Did we really invent democracy?”Goodbye Greek democracy. Hello neoliberal transnational technocracy. Of course, as long as European borders remain open, which may not be for long, Greeks can move elsewhere and compete for jobs with the rest of the refugees.
The Guardian
Eurozone's enforcer ready to keep Greece's new leader in line
John Henley
ht Random in the comments
All I can say is, vote for Popular Unity!
ReplyDeleteOr not?https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/09/18/gree-s18.html?view=article_mobile
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of this Tom?
Well, it depends on one's attitude toward Trotskyism. I am sympathetic to it in principle but the devil is in the details.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree with them that many of the self-identified "Marxists" are pseudo-Marxists.
I count myself influenced by Marx but don't identify as either a Marxist or a Marxian.
Not sure about the idea that this amounts to “neoliberal transnational technocracy”. I’d call it an inevitable consequence for a country in a common currency area that loses competitiveness. It’s basic supply and demand, not neoliberal versus the oppose of neoliberal, whatever that is.
ReplyDeletePut another way, if the EZ was dominated by far left governments, and one country because uncompetitive, they’d have no alternative but to force that country to get its costs down – or force a highish level of inflation on other countries for a while.