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Before Cyprus’ Eurozone entry in 2008, the obverse of its 20-cents coin bore an austere profile of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic School of Philosophy. Born in the 4th century BCE of Phoenician descent he was known as Zeno of Citium the Hellenic kingdom on the island’s southern coast where today lies the city of Larnaca.

Citium, though a largely Hellenized city, retained a sufficient Phoenician component in its culture to earn Zeno the nickname ‘the Phoenician’. His connection to Cyprus is widely documented, even if just footnoted, and it is acknowledged even if it is not that well known outside academia and students of Stoicism.

For those familiar with London, Zeno Bookshop on Denmark Street used to be a landmark showcase of this Cypriot connection. A short walk across from Foyles on Charing Cross Road it was the best-known bookseller and publisher of Greek and Cypriot books in Britain a key attraction for classicists and students of Greek.

Yet, even though the association can still inflate Cyprus’ historical pride, Zeno’s presence in Cypriot letters and culture remains subdued, uncharacteristically under-exploited, almost decorative. Probably because in reality it is feeble. But the reasons may run deeper.

The association suffers in part from the fact that Zeno was only born in Cyprus; he never actually taught there. He was, so to speak, ‘ours’ but not ‘one of us.’ The school he established in Athens under a roofed colonnade (Stoa) taught that logos, universal reason, was the greatest good and that placing it at the centre of life provided for a worthwhile existence.

Praised by Athenians for his temperance and consistency in living what he taught, refusing to compromise his principles for what society valued, Zeno also laboured over how the principles of self-control, devotion to duty and public spirit could shape an ideal society.

The Cypriot historian Costas Kyrris even linked Zeno’s ideas to the vision of a united Europe. In 2013, Cyprus was already a decade into its EU membership, but was reeling after the global financial collapse. Desperate to raise funds its government formulated a citizenship scheme aimed at high net worth foreign individuals and investors. Anyone seeking a Cypriot (and EU) passport could simply invest 2 million euros in the Cyprus economy and meet certain other criteria including a Clean Criminal Record.

The “golden visas scheme” though perfectly lawful and indeed implemented in other European countries, evolved into a considerable reputational problem as internationally wanted criminals, sanctioned business people, and politically exposed persons ended up with Cypriot passports.

Approximately 7 billion euros flowed into Cyprus channeled mainly into real estate. Cyprus’ landscape is now a distasteful patchwork of grandiose property developments and ill-fitting skyscrapers. Many are known to have trampled on planning and environmental regulations. And it is here that the fault line of disconnect between Zeno’s philosophy of restraint and modern Cyprus’ economic philosophy widened ominously.

A hostage to its geography Cyprus had often been hit by the ruthless whims of history’s powerful players. Crippled by Turkey’s occupation of part of its territory since 1974 it suffered – one could say stoically – by keeping its head down and slowly rebuilding itself.

In the 90s its economy grew and its inherent European democratic credentials were strengthened by EU accession. But by the turn of the millennium its agricultural and industrial sectors withered as its financial services and tourism sectors boomed. The financial meltdown exposed the weakness of its economic model. Instead of a total rethink the political establishment capitulated to short-termism and the impulse of the quick buck.

A tradition of political partisanship and nepotism was made worse by corruption and conflicts of interest. With the sale of passports the country’s economy fell prey to local opportunists and shady foreign saviours exposing the country to allegations of money-laundering.

The old ethic of hard work and silent suffering disintegrated in the face of hard cash and silent partners. Where Zeno’s Stoicism valued moderation, courage, justice and wisdom, modern Cypriot economic and political life drifted towards excess, deceit, amorality and ignorance. Where Zeno argued for the ideal community to be ruled by the competent and sage (οι σπουδαίοι), Cyprus’ political class – to be fair, like in many once great nations these days – colluded with the money suppliers and was inevitably infiltrated by self-seeking populist mediocrities, of the type whose resignations the country is now witnessing.

The dynamics of modern statehood and the vicissitudes of the global economy cannot of course be addressed by the obscure musings of a philosopher who lived 2300 years ago. In any case Zeno was overtaken by his Roman disciples Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius who have since dominated Stoic discourse. While western European thought absorbed their teachings Cyprus fell behind; the Romans did not fit that comfortably with Zeno’s original Cypriot-Greek profile. Confounded also by the dominance of Greek Christian orthodox dogma Stoicism’s more secular rationalism found little space within Cyprus’ nationalist religious narrative. Zeno was confined to coins, crests and nomenclatures.

The Cypriot government has now suspended the citizenship scheme and is tracing dozens of problematic cases of investors that acquired citizenship. But the revocation of a citizenship turns out to be as tricky as renewing a dead philosopher’s passport.

The deeper irony lies in that the country would now benefit from a return to Zeno’s logos and a strong injection of Stoic inspired reform. A return to the founder’s fundamentals would not only begin to relieve Cyprus’ post-scandal angst, it would actually help it chart more ethical and sustainable economic policies. Perhaps even begin to fix its tarnished image.

How is it possible after centuries of forward leaps in rational thinking, decades of scientific discovery and the steady spread of democracy and education that, suddenly, it feels as though we’re on the edge of the abyss?

How is it possible after absorbing the lessons of two world wars, strengthening international cooperation and entrenching fundamental rights and freedoms, that, in less than a decade, we have fallen for populism and autocratic rulers?

And, yes, how is it possible that Donald Trump, four years into his catastrophic term as president of what George Packer describes as a failed state, declare that he will “make America great again, again” and still command a 42 per cent approval rating?

Perfectly plausible, asserts Justin Erik Halldor Smith, professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris in his remarkable book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason (Princeton University Press).

So plausible, in fact, that the despair over how things have deteriorated is compounded by the realisation that it was naïve – if not entirely irrational – to have assumed that reason could ever prevail.

“It is a great paradox that even though the totality of all human learning is more accessible than ever before in history, indeed billions of us can now easily access it with a device we carry in our pockets, nonetheless false beliefs are as epidemic as ever.” Smith’s venture is ambitious, and the range of historical and philosophical references enormous, from Aristotle all the way to Zizek via Leibniz and Spinoza, all of whom he uses to illuminate the battle zones of reason and superstition, knowledge and ignorance, science and religion, moderation and excess.

Though absent from Smith’s exploration, it was Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher, who considered that all rational human beings would want to agree on how they would want to live and be governed. Western societies thought, fought and suffered and in the end, come modernity, managed to articulate the road map for that vision. Initially, to use Ronald Reagan’s words, that shining city on the hill was America though in truth the European Union remains the closest but as yet unfulfilled manifestation of that drive.

Both projects stalled as a result of economic chaos triggered by capitalism’s thoughtless financial instruments and by mass migration triggered by ruthless foreign policy decisions. The politics broke down as the ignorant became susceptible to those intent on distorting the public debate. Hence Brexit, Boris, Trumpism, climate change denial and the failure to cope with the pandemic.

Disgraceful politics aside, Smith’s narrative is also driven by the tensions of our personal dilemmas. Our response to temptations, our phobias, sometimes his phobias, dietary choices, his own battle to quit smoking, all shape a compelling matrix. The writing hovers between the scholarly and the journalistic delivered in a sequence of tight essays rather than, thankfully, a dense philosophical treatise. Though it is quite demanding, it is always elegant and while sometimes pessimistic it is consistently witty.

It is when Smith addresses the algorithmic conditioning of our lives that his intellectual force and the book’s value are revealed.

“Irrationality,” he says, “is not, generally, simple ignorance. If you do not have the relevant information, then you cannot rightly be faulted for not making the correct inferences. Irrationality must rather be, then, some sort of failure to process in the best way information one does already have.” Smith says it gets complicated when you try to discern “whether a given failure results from innocently not knowing, or rather from a culpable failure to bring into play what one does know”.

If the 42 per cent of Americans still supporting Trump do not know that they may be voting against their own interests, can they be held to be irrational? Can the millions of Americans who saw Kremlin-funded Facebook posts in 2016 be blamed if they were swayed by the misinformation these carried?

Naturally, Smith is uneasy with the Big Tech masters running the online circus: “The internet was unleashed by self-appointed experts, who knew how to engineer, but had very little ability to reason about the social consequences of what they were doing.”

Just like another significant book of our time, Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism, Smith condemns the weaponisation of the internet by social media platforms and their absolute focus on the business model that collects, predicts and exploits our posts and likes. And, of course, Big Tech’s disregard for what this does to public debate, elections, democracy. Micro-targeted by social media algorithms voters are led down paths of bias and find themselves trapped in bubbles of ignorance, conspiracy theories, even radical extremism. The brightness of reason darkened by distortions that blend fact with fiction paralysing the prospect of agreeing on what is the truth.

As we await the November elections to see whether America will go completely mad, Smith suggests that not only is it impossible to impose rationality but that its mere pursuit sometimes leads to an explosion of irrationality. He does not offer any strategy – philosophers rarely do – on how to defeat the forces of unreason but he exposes the enemy’s formations with astonishing clarity. That is also rare for philosophers.

This article was first published in the Sunday Mail on 6 September 2020.

A review of the findings of the Florence based Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom

Never before have the media, that is the civically useful type that produce independent quality journalism, come under such relentless pressure and criticism. The gatekeepers, those tasked to speak truth to power, are increasingly being questioned by authorities and snubbed by the public whom they are meant to serve.

In the US, lauded until recently as the hub of absolute press freedom, an infantile but sinister president launches personal attacks on journalists and degrades the profession. In Hungary, an EU member state, the government intimidates and stifles media freedom while in Turkey, a once aspiring candidate state, the government just locks journalists up at will.

Populist leaders, their poisonous discourse and the unchecked new technologies that allow the spread of disinformation are shaking the people’s trust in the media and by consequence redefining the media landscape altogether. Yet, as Donald Trump and Viktor Orban ride the trend, it is useful to remember that the media have always been subject to political pressure and interference while their commercial viability has always been at the mercy of their owners’ whims or capitalism’s frequent breakdowns. Which is why the national contexts in which they operate have, rightfully, always come under scrutiny by independent monitors.

Their aim is to assess the quality of the media, the environment in which they operate and ultimately to help establish the quality that can command the public’s trust.  Scrutiny of this constructive kind was released last week by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom of the European University Institute in Florence. The Media Pluralism Monitor 2020, co-funded by the European Union, examined the health of media ecosystems in EU member states, including a now departed member state, the UK, as well as in Albania and Turkey.

Four key risk areas were assessed: Basic Protection, i.e. rights and access to information, the working conditions of journalists and the effectiveness of media authorities; Market Plurality which assesses the legal and economic environment, transparency of ownership, media concentration, viability, and owner influence on editorial content; Political Independence, i.e. the autonomy of the newsroom, political control and influence, election coverage, advertising, regulations and funding, and, last, Social Inclusiveness which examines the degree of media access for minorities, women and people with disabilities as well as the overall level of media literacy and protection against hate speech.

The MPM2020 found that Basic Protection remains strong overall with the majority of the countries considered low risk and only one, Turkey, seen as high risk. However, when it came to Market Plurality, risks of commercial and owner influence over editorial content have risen with only five countries deemed low risk (Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands) with 11 at medium risk (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain and the UK) and the remaining 14 at high risk.

Serious concerns also emerged on Political Independence with Malta, Hungary and Poland along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey found to be high risk. Only Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden were low risk; the majority, including Cyprus, fell within the medium risk range.

As disinformation eats away at objective reporting, media literacy, the capacity to understand what is fake or biased, has become a key factor. Only six countries were found to have comprehensive media literacy policies. Five, Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Cyprus have no media literacy policy at all.

Cyprus’ risk level

In terms of Basic Protection, constitutional and legal provisions continue to offer citizens safeguards and effective protection of their rights connected to freedom of expression but there are areas of concern such as digital underdevelopment while the right to access to information still requires legal recognition.

The situation is poorer on Market Plurality. The law does ensure transparency in media ownership and avoidance of cross media concentrations but only in broadcasting. An outdated and deficient press law and the absence of a digital media legal framework as well as the increased corporate influence and pressures on journalists’ employment conditions are problems, heightened by lack of reliable data.

Editorial independence in Cyprus is in principle warranted by both regulatory and self-regulatory provisions. However, the rules make very limited provisions on the effective protection of journalists and the avoidance of political interference into their work. The key issue remains the pursuit of the political agendas of media owners, sometimes without any visible interference and often led by corporate rather than actual political aims. This enforces a degree of self-censorship and compliance among editorial staff.

Crucially, a subculture of informal relations exists between the political class and media owners and journalists which more than any other factor affects focus, topic selection and nuancing. There are also recurring problems with the governance and funding of Cyprus’ public service media, CyBC, and the influence the government and political parties retain over it.

Where Cyprus fares badly is Social Inclusiveness. Access to the media is mostly reserved for mainstream groups with minorities, women and other social actors sidelined despite evolving plurality and multiculturalism. Much needed media literacy actions are limited and lack policy direction despite valiant efforts by academics and other stakeholders.

And though media literacy may be seen as the least important in terms of immediate impact and a country’s overall image, it is potentially the most significant in terms of achieving better across-the-board results in the future. A well-informed media-literate populace is more likely to demand Market Plurality and not likely to tolerate Political Interference.

Trumpism and Orbanism are the result of complex factors. Media literacy would certainly not have prevented them. But it can be argued that for a confused public caught between populist politics, fragile economics and a hounded media it might make just enough of a difference to avert total disaster in the future. END

Nicholas Karides was one of the Cyprus experts for the Media Pluralism Monitor 2020 along with team leader Christoforos Christoforou.

Individual country reports can be accessed at https://cmpf.eui.eu/mpm2020-results/

This article first appeared in the Sunday Mail on 2 August 2020

#BlackLivesMatter uncovers America’s false assumptions

When the American physicist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn identified the notion of the Paradigm Shift in the early 1960s, he described it as a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices within a scientific discipline.

Such a shift, Kuhn asserted, occurs when the dominant paradigm under which normal science operates is rendered incompatible with new phenomena, facilitating the adoption of a new theory or paradigm. Kuhn, who died in 1996, had confessed to a certain elasticity in his use of the term which has since infiltrated popular culture and spread to non-scientific contexts inevitably degenerating into a cliché.

Post-Covid19 every industry from hospitality to retail seems to be having their paradigm shifted. A fast and furious world that not long ago had worshipped ‘disruption’ as the only path to innovation is now forced to rethink everything.

Outside science laboratories and markets Kuhn’s term is being loosely used to signify changes in our collective perceptions, the type that is seeing a neurotic professional class reassess the slippery line of work-life balance. But nowhere is the change in perception more profound than in the explosion of racial tensions in the United States and the way the #BlackLivesMatter movement is now reshaping the country and social contexts everywhere else.

This late realisation of what it means not to breathe freely as an African American in the United States has shuttered assumptions in every western society. Whether the fall out will prove a permanent paradigm shift or a slide into more social upheaval now depends, in part, on whether the incumbent 45th president will retain power in November.

In understanding how we got here and where this might end up it is useful to recall that Barack Obama’s election in 2008 as the first African American president had itself been described as, yes, a paradigm shift. But given that 12 years later a movement like BLM has had to be mobilised and, more ominously, has faced hostility from the White House that Obama vacated, goes to show that perhaps that shift was not as paradigmatic.

As symbolisms go Obama’s victory was certainly a seminal moment in the country’s history. It was an extraordinary manifestation of change particularly when one contemplates that it was not until as late as 1965 that African Americans were fully granted the right to vote, when Obama himself was four years old. His election disrupted the old political culture and for a while, at least on the surface, racial tensions appeared to cool off. However, given where we are, very little changed in the underlying racism African Americans still face.

Obama, whose intelligence and decency this author admires, had presided over the same racial inequality and police brutality we see today. He dealt with the many vicious incidents during his term with dignity and compassion always saying the right things but in the end his administration failed to bring real change.

He would argue – and he would partially be right – that his efforts in the very difficult socio-economic circumstances he inherited from George W Bush were held back by a hostile Congress dominated by a dogmatic Republican Party going through its own paradigm-shifting and polarising nervous breakdown.

In recent weeks Obama has become very vocal, breaking the long-established norm that prevents former presidents from hostile engagement with incumbents. True to his reputation as a careful strategist his interventions have been both robust and thoughtful but have still triggered considerable reaction. His call to BLM protesters to “make this moment the real turning point for change” was seen as admission that his eight-year reign had fallen short while his call on them to redirect their energy at the ballot box was seen in some quarters as too cautious. You can’t satisfy everyone. Obama was and remains a positive force but, clearly, his impact wasn’t as defining as we might have thought.

To make things worse BLM is generating intense hostility among the Right prompting fears of a Fascist backlash in part fueled by Donald Trump’s repulsive personality. As things stand, it will fall on Obama’s vice president, the unlikely radical, Joe Biden, to calm things down enough to salvage some of America’s lost rationality and humanity.

To go back to Kuhn, the recent phenomena in the US do not constitute a paradigm shift; they have merely revealed that the paradigm had been false. It is hard for Americans and Americophiles to stomach, but for a real paradigm shift to occur they would first have to address the false assumptions that have corrupted their theories about themselves. Paramount among these is the romantic notion that America was ever great.

This article was published in the Mail on Sunday on 5 July 2020 and in the newsletter In Depth on 7 July 2020.

It started with Ronald and should end with Donald

This article first appeared in the Mail on Sunday on 31 May 2020

On Friday July 12, 1985 President Ronald Reagan was due to have a polyp removed at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. That afternoon First Lady Nancy Reagan called the president’s Chief of Staff Don Regan to inform him that the operation might be delayed for a day and a half.

Don Regan was an experienced political operative. He had served as the president’s Treasury Secretary during his first term and was one of the masterminds of Reaganomics. Now as Chief of Staff he was not only the president’s top adviser and confidant but one of the most powerful men in Washington.

For a moment that Friday he became concerned that the postponement could have been prompted by some last-minute medical complication but almost immediately he sensed that the surgery was more likely to have hit an astrological barrier.

In his book, On the Record, Regan revealed that the First Lady had sought to change the timing of the surgery after consulting with her astrologer who, Regan wrote, “had become a factor in my work and in the highest affairs of the nation…” repeatedly forcing him to reschedule press conferences and re-arrange official travel plans.

Regan never got to meet Nancy’s crystal gazer; the First Lady would just pass along the ‘prognostications’ to him and he would adjust the President’s schedule accordingly. The whole thing came to a boil in 1987, leading to Regan’s resignation but by the time the revelations hit the press Reagan was nearing the end of his presidency and any damage was inconsequential. Ronald Reagan is now revered. US presidential myth making tends to roll over the negative, exaggerate the mundane and normalise the abnormal.

It is quite tempting to contemplate the potential improvement to Trump’s chaotic presidency were Melania Trump also inclined to consult with an astrologer before letting her husband take major decisions – like withdrawing from the World Health Organisation or hitting China with tariffs. The prospect could even open the game up for foreign capitals to deploy their own horoscopic experts to foresee Trump’s convulsions.

It might seem unfair to compare the wobbly and naïve Reagan with the incoherent and criminal Trump but the point here is how presidential candidates who, on paper, are unfit for high office are able to travel an unrestricted path to the White House. How easy it is for celebrities and businessmen devoid of political, socio-economic nous or of policy-making fundamentals to generate a snowballing of followers, business donors, media backing, PAC endorsements and, in the end, inescapably, political party support.

So deep has the decay been that the nostalgia that the Trump circus now provokes makes Reagan seem a paradigm of stability and robust leadership. And yet, Reagan’s was the first presidency where it became blatantly apparent to the rest of the world that the institution was losing its gravitas. Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks brought disrepute to the White House in the 70s but hadn’t eroded that sense of awe that the institution itself drew. In fact, Tricky Dick’s Watergate machinations heightened global intrigue about Washington’s corridors of power.

When Reagan arrived in the 80s he spun an image as the great communicator, the friendly wise-cracker. The media relished it. His photogenic smirk, his cowboy one-liners and Nancy’s astral strategies would not, however, turn him into a great leader. He brought successes – for the conservative-minded – but they came from those with experience taking charge of policy. From his VP, the one-time CIA director George Bush Senior to George Shultz and from James Baker to Don Regan himself. They were the ones doing the job while Teflon Reagan gave rehearsed responses that avoided exposing his ignorance on the detail.

Admittedly, in his second term as the undisputed leader of the Free World Reagan outplayed Gorbachev in their summits, securing the all-important nuclear missiles elimination treaty. But Gorbachev was open-minded and, by then, desperate.

Despite having risen from the obscure and unrelated background of B-Movies and actors’ trade unions, Reagan arrived in Washington with greater governmental experience than Trump had in 2016, having served as Governor of California. Still, he was not a politician’s politician and it showed. Like Trump he played politics as if it was television. He only just got through the Iran-Contra affair that saw weapons sold to Iran as a way to channel funds to Nicaragua’s rebels. He was a more charming liar than Trump could ever be and in his later years one would almost feel sorry for him when he became slower, his punchlines losing their spark and conviction.

Reagan normalised the notion that a president didn’t have to be a smart, policy-driven visionary, he (it was only he then) only had to be able to rally the people, make them feel good and let the ship be steered by the elite crew and the brute force of the US engine room. Reagan opened the door for Trump and his type. But now the ship’s rudder is failing, the engine room is depleted, the bridge is full of sycophants and the captain keeps on lying.

Politics is brimming with floaters entirely unfit to ever hold high office. Trump has given them tremendous hope. By the end of Reagan’s presidency Don Regan became deeply critical of the man despite his continued admiration for him. He wrote that “Rulers are not judged like other men”, which is precisely why the line linking know-nothings to political office should be broken.

It is not impossible to devise a solid and fair formula that would entrench education, expertise, rationality and suitability as absolute pre-requisites for anyone seeking access to political power.
Not to mention a basic capacity to form complete sentences.

4 April 2020 – In the pandemic age the divide between optimists and pessimists appears to have been filled with data-ists, a new breed of followers of data and of the scientists and visualists that produce them. A self isolating data-hungry population now fixated on metrics of deaths, glued on curves that resist being flattened.

In the meantime older divides persist. Gaby Hinsliff pointed to one in The Guardian last week when she referred to how Prince Charles and Boris Johnson got swift Covid-19 tests while front line NHS staff were being denied access to them. It may seem churlish, wrote Hinsliff, to dwell on what divides us rather than what we are discovering we have in common. Yet, she went on, we seem to be moving into a dangerous new stage of this epidemic, one where heart-warming stories of hope and altruism may give way to something darker.

As deaths increase and the ineptitude of those in power is revealed, as authoritarianism creeps in and supermarket shelves empty Hinsliff’s churlishness may not seem that misplaced.

It may be useful to recall the hidden variations of some of the Greek words that have come to dominate our vocabulary these weeks; words like πανδημία (pandemic) and επιδημία (epidemic). The latter is the noun use of επιδήμιος (epidêmios) which means “among the demos, among the people”. Ominously the Greeks also used it for επιδήμιος πόλεμος which means civil war.

Civil strife could be stretching it too far. As far perhaps as the possibility that in the year 2020 the prime minister of a member state of the European Union could suspend parliament and rule by decree. Unthinkable.

For Gaby Hinsliff’s article of 26 March 2020 click here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-prince-charles-covid-19-test-old-divisions

This article first appeared in the Sunday Mail on 8 March 2020

George Papaconstantinou is a self-effacing and clearly a deeply knowledgeable economist-turned-politician-turned-academic. It is almost impossible to think that a decade ago he had been described as ‘the most hated man in Greece’, a remark, he later told Peter Spiegel of the Financial Times that felt like ‘a punch in the stomach’.

The former finance minister of Greece between 2009 and 2011 under George Papandreou’s Socialist Pasok was in Cyprus last week for a Life Changing Ideas Series presentation organised by Global Training and the University of Nicosia. He addressed a fairly receptive audience that included two Cypriot former finance ministers – Haris Georgiades and Michael Sarris – who had, in their time, also been dealt some metaphorical blows to the abdomen.

Papaconstantinou acknowledged their presence a few times, not, as it transpired, in terms of the camaraderie that stems from the public blame finance ministers inevitably receive, but more in terms of how the three of them shared the unique experience of enduring the wrath of a more elite gang, the Eurogroup.

In the course of his presentation Papaconstantinou used his two best selling books Game Over (2016) and Whatever it Takes (2019) to frame his narrative and to shine light on the dark days of the Eurozone crisis and sketch out the conditions of its purported recovery.

The titles are essentially pulled, the first, from Jean Claude Juncker’s remark in 2009 “The game is over… we need serious statistics (from Greece)” and the second from Mario Draghi’s now legendary statement: “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough”.

In 2010 Papaconstantinou signed the first of Greece’s three bail-out agreements with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. At €110 billion it was the biggest ever rescue package granted to a collapsing economy.

He described Greece as the canary in the coalmine, a test state used to alert when the oxygen in the Eurozone’s mineshafts would begin to run out. He argued, quite convincingly, and without brushing over Greece’s long standing structural shortcomings, that after the collapse of the US subprime market his country was only a small part of a systemically precarious Eurozone.

There’s something distinctly unpolitician-like in Papaconstantinou. Perhaps out of modesty or an awareness of the cacophony of blame that floats around, he did not linger on the fact that when he did sign the bail-out, even if sabotaged by the previous conservative government’s unreliable data, things had begun to improve for Greece. So much so that the Financial Times ranked him as one of Europe’s top finance ministers for showing ‘panache’ in handling the crisis. One analyst had stated that he had undertaken “more budget and structural reform that any EU country ever”. Little of that received Greek media coverage at the time.

The one event that best fitted the Life Changing Experience billing of the lecture series is one that Papaconstantinou understandably preferred not to mention. It was how he was scapegoated and tried by a tribunal in Athens for allegedly removing the names of members of his family from the infamous [Christine] Lagarde List of wealthy Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland. Papaconstantinou was acquitted of the charge but the ordeal, which he very candidly describes in his first book, scarred him.

It doesn’t show. Nor does it seem to have diminished his drive to remain engaged. These days he leads the Transformation of Global Governance project, a research and policy analysis initiative at the European University Institute in Florence that aims to assess the capacity for global cooperation.

Papaconstantinou believes in the essence of the EU. In the current geopolitical instability he describes Europe as ‘the only adult in the room’.

It is a curious choice of a phrase, one that immediately reminds of his more recent former colleague, Yanis Varoufakis, who used it as the title of his own provocative exposé of the European establishment. The phrase, as Varoufakis revealed, actually belonged to Christine Lagarde (her, again) who in the midst of Greece’s dramatic moments spoke of the need for adults in the Eurogroup. In Lagarde’s mind Papaconstantinou would be such an adult.

Unsurprisingly the audacious Varoufakis is absent from Papaconstantinou’s latest book apart from a reference to Adults in the Room in the bibliography. The fact is they both suffered in that ‘room’ mostly in the hands of Wolfgang Schauble, their German colleague. Papaconstantinou chose to go for the least-worst option and sign the bail-out while Varoufakis, having seen what five years of that option had brought, opted not to.

In both instances the system won. Papaconstantinou can’t take much courage from the continuing stagnation while Varoufakis’ only gain from his risk-taking was the birth of a resistance movement.

The bottom line is that the younger generation in Greece and in Europe – in whose name the battle is being waged – does not deserve populist politicians feeding on the inequality that market excesses and austerity have brought.

Both former ministers, the pragmatist and the radical, know that for European social democracy to stand any chance against the emerging right-wing nationalism their narratives would need to converge. We seem to have reached a whatever-it-takes point.

END

Why European Parliament elections matter

This article was published on May 16 2019 in Issue 3 – Volume 16 of the Cyprus Center
for European and International Affairs newsletter ‘In Depth’.

Nicholas Karides

A citizen’s relationship with the voting process is contingent on their understanding of their country’s history and of the state of its politics. Above all, however, it is founded on the citizen’s notion of how they can affect change.

Citizens who vote in national parliamentary elections usually have a good grasp of their legislature’s role and work, but what prompts them to actually make the trip to the polling station is that they feel that their vote will make a difference.

Similarly, when it comes to the European Parliament elections later this month, the ninth such process since 1979, the motivation to vote is likely to hinge on one’s understanding of the history and current state of the European Union. But mostly it will depend on whether European voters feel that their vote will make any difference.

Will it make a difference in terms of boosting their country’s voice in Europe, or in charting the future direction of what is a deeply troubled European Union? Indeed will it make a difference in terms of confirming or salvaging any collective faith in the idea of European integration?

The answer is Yes, a little bit, but still enough for it to matter. And it matters because Europe matters.  As with so many things about Europe, its underrated success is matched by its understated bit-by-bit progress. It is a progress that voters have come to take for granted, not paying attention. But it does matter in almost every aspect of their lives from the economy to security and from their data protection to their environment’s protection.

These elections are emerging as an undeclared silent referendum on how much more or how much less ‘Europe’ citizens want. If they do turn out to vote in numbers it will mean that the Germans and the Greeks, the Poles and the Portuguese, and at the time of writing the British too, consider that we must address our amassing problems collectively even if elements of European decision-making remain democratically deficient.

It is true that the European Parliament itself suffers from this deficiency. Though clearly a force for good it does not yet function as a full-fledged parliament. Unlike national parliaments it has limited power in initiating legislation, a role almost exclusively reserved for the European Commission. But it matters that it is there. It is the closest Europeans have in terms of a substantive representation of the will of the people as it continues to carve its space in favour of the citizen.

But for it to begin to matter more citizens must back it by equipping it with representatives that are able to strengthen its scope and role. Had the European Parliament had a greater say over the last decade, the banking excesses and the austerity which triggered Europe’s downward spiral may have been easier to tame. The distortions of the European Council’s decisions could have been checked and a greater solidarity between member states would have been achieved.

Democratic deficits breed citizen indifference which then results in the citizens’ knowledge deficit. Britain had to suffer the post Brexit referendum ordeal to realize the deep awareness deficit that existed across the country about EU affairs. Years of deliberate neglect by successive UK governments about the European Union and its role in actually making the UK stronger made millions of British voters susceptible to outrageous lies. They became convinced that Europe didn’t matter, that it wasn’t necessary and that it was holding the UK back.

Standard Eurobarometer results from 2007 show that only 17 percent of Britons felt that they were “well informed” about EU matters. Ten years later, in post-referendum 2017, that figure was up to 47 percent.

In 2016 the majority of Leave voters had been misled by sinister, unqualified politicians who got to hijack and distort the debate on Europe. They were also let down by years of deliberate neglect from their elected governments. In contrast the majority of Remain voters knew that the European Union was not working but they still thought that it was good for Britain to stay in and to affect any change by participating, not by abandoning. Now, in 2019, Remainers have – within a short timespan – come to learn more about the value of the European Union than some of their most ardent federalists on the continent.

Brexit showed that an absence of awareness of EU affairs allows anti-Europeans to hijack the public debate and impose their dark narrative. These opportunistic, sinister, unqualified politicians are now everywhere, a swelling wave of nationalism at odds with the values and principles that the European Union.

It is one thing for Democracy to be deficient; it is another thing for it to be asleep. For a few decades a tired and disinterested citizenry has been hypnotised. To address the deficiencies they now have to snap into action.

Voting in the EP elections will be an affirmation of the admittedly unfashionable but still necessary process of deeper European integration against the dark forces of populism and unthinking nationalism. In this, citizens have a much greater capacity to make a difference than they may think.

END