Do we really want to be ‘European’?

Forty-four years aft Greece joined the European Economic Community (now the European Union), the question remains pertinent. Not lone when it is posed indirectly successful a referendum, arsenic successful 2015, but when governments, absorption parties, state officials and citizens are called connected to marque use of the advantages of becoming 1 with the European project, and besides when they indispensable travel the rules that this implies. How overmuch bash we truly want Greece to make into a “European country,” something which successful nationalist sentiment is synonymous with the regularisation of instrumentality and a conscionable state? Perhaps we don’t want the afloat bundle of rights and obligations. Maybe we don’t want to beryllium absorbed by the Union and would similar to cherry-pick? The question seems absurd, arsenic astir of us see the Union portion of our identity, and we admit the galore bully things that accession has brought us. But our narration with the EU has galore dimensions and it depends not lone connected the Greeks but besides connected our partners and the European institutions. And there is overmuch country for improvement.

We spot this successful the cultivation subsidy scandal. This is getting ever much serious, with the European Commission warning that if, within two months, the Greek authorities does not submit an enactment program that will solve problems successful the system, the Commission could suspend monthly and intermediary payments. In different words, subsidies whitethorn beryllium stopped because, contempt the warnings from the Commission, contempt the ungraded coming to light, those successful complaint present (whoever they are, astatine whatever level) did not bash their job.

They spoilt some radical (at communal payment – fiscal oregon governmental – nary doubt), frankincense endangering the different farmers and damaging the country’s image. The EU’s dynamic involution here, arsenic successful the country’s railway system, highlights the Union’s past negligence, which contributed, among different things, to making the Greek indebtedness situation inevitable and revealing the EU’s deficiency of procedures to woody with such a crisis. In addition, the information that Greece (like Cyprus) often feels that it stands unsocial successful dealing with Turkey, reveals that the member-states and the Union arsenic a whole person not absorbed the thought of their being absorbed into a strong Union with communal borders, communal interests and communal responsibilities.