Swedish think-tank Timbro presented the subsequent edition of the Authoritarian Populism Index. The aim of the index is chiefly to determine to what extent populist parties can pose a real threat to liberal democracy in the European Union and five other countries on the continent.
Financial crisis with its accompanying factors, including the high rates of unemployment, tax increase and sever cuts in public services led to the increasing popularity of the radical left-wing parties in Greece and Spain, while not rendering the same result in Portugal.
The Greeks have voted and widely approved the course of Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA-party (35,5%, -0,8). It is noteworthy that the decision for the left-wing alliance reveals that the Greek voters predominantly want to stick to traditional values and their societal structures, rather than giving a chance to reform-orientated powers.
“An experiment of austerity” and “blackmailing” are just a few of the many fanciful epithets employed by the members of SYRIZA and socialists to create a “syrizophrenic” picture of what is going on. However, the true reasons of and solutions for the crisis have already been known for a long time.
The new Greek government of the leftist party SYRIZA wanted to take back austerity reforms in order to, for example, “gradually restore salaries and pensions so as to increase consumption and demand”. But it seems that the only thing accepted by the European Commission and eurozone finance ministers is 4-month extension of the bailout in return for presenting a list of reforms that Greece had committed to undertake.
Nominants of Syriza haven’t even settled comfortably in their key chairs in the new Greek government yet and new prime minister together with finance minister have already made their first compromise and step back from their pre-electoral promises. They refrained form talking about the debt write-off, started talking about restructurization of debt and went on a European tour to find out from creditors which particular forms of restructurization could be acceptable.
The new left-wing SYRIZA government, which sees public expenditure as a means to counterbalance the lack of competitiveness, is all but a solution to the Greek problem. If anything, the pro-European and cosmopolitan young Greek generation – which is fed up with the “Greek way” of policy-making of the past – can make a difference.
This treaty was supposed to force politicians to behave more responsibly and not to think only in a time horizon of the next elections, but in a couple of months it became obvious that countries would be breaking also this treaty regularly.
As finance ministers sat together at the Ecofin meeting last week, the future of the Eurozone was at stake, with Greek political deadlock casting a shadow of darkness over its own euro existence. Greek President Karolos Papoulias was going to ask politicians last Tuesday to stand aside and let a technocratic government be formed to avoid bankruptcy of the heavily indebted Balkan country even though radical leftists from Syriza party have already rejected the proposal…
Marshall is coming back to Europe, where British argue with French about banking rules and Greeks want to place mines on the borders. Even though a new wave of recession is flooding Europe, rating agencies turned gentlemen and raised a couple of ratings. Fiscal pact hasn’t properly cooled down yet and there is already anti-austerity mood in Europe, not only among demonstrating people but also among politicians. Maybe it is because of the level of unemployment in…
