Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24
When news of the Greek debt crisis first broke in 2010, a number of German tabloids called on their Southern neighbors to pawn their cultural and natural heritage to pay off their debts. “Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks!” ran a headline of the ever tasteless Bild. “And sell the Acropolis too!” With the bailout of May 2010 in the making, the populist editors of the right-wing magazine, apparently oblivious to the historical sensitivities around the German annexation of foreign territories, stubbornly insisted: “We give you cash, you give us Corfu.”
Today, more than four years since the signing of the first “memorandum of understanding,” it seems that Germany’s nationalist media — along with the European investor class and the oligarchic Greek elite — are finally getting their way. Greece’s subservient government is now pushing hard to open up new frontiers for privatization, with some 77.000 state assets slated for sale, including a host of historic marinas and idyllic islands, a number of ancient palaces, and large stretches of the country’s spectacular and unspoilt coastline.
Pawning Greece’s Heritage
Earlier this year, the government announced that it would move ahead with its plans to sell off a number of historical buildings on the foot of the Acropolis. The Guardian reported that “among the properties are refugee tenement blocks built to put up Greeks fleeing the Asia Minor disaster in 1922 and culture ministry offices housed in neo-classical buildings in the picturesque Plaka district … that were erected shortly after the establishment of the modern Greek state. Both are widely viewed as architectural gems.”
The announcement came on the heels of a controversial decision to rent out two of the most important archeological sites in Athens — the Stoa of Attalos, which sits in the ancient agora, and the Panathenaic Stadium — to companies for private events. Earlier, similar plans had been mooted by leading politicians of the ruling conservative party to lease out the Acropolis for photoshoots and other commercial and promotional activities.
Then, in May, the government upped the ante by proposing a bill that would effectively overturn decades-old constitutional protections of the country’s coastline, restricting development and guaranteeing open access to the beach. The Greek privatization fund TAIPED subsequently marked 110 beaches for privatization, including such gems as Elafonisos, home to the valuable marine archeological site Pavlopetri. Under the coastal bill, ownership of the seashore — along with any architectural structures and the surrounding natural environment — will fall exclusively unto the buyer, who will be free to “develop” their property and restrict access to common folk.
The consequences of this privatization drive would be disastrous and largely irreversible. Thanks to its constitutional protections, the Greek coastline has so far managed to avoid the kind of mass development that has befallen the Spanish coastline — leaving it intact as one of Europe’s last-remaining unspoilt seashores. As The Press Project points out, however, the proposed coastal bill “would make it possible for even large beaches in Greece to be carpeted from end to end with umbrellas and beach bars,” while the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned of a Spanish-style construction boom of holiday apartments that could cover the Greek coastline in concrete.
Needless to say, the privatization drive goes hand-in-hand with the strangulation of Greece’s public sector — under direct orders of the Troika of foreign lenders — which renders the crisis of the country’s archeological heritage all the more acute. The budget of the Culture Ministry has been slashed by a savage 52% since 2010, putting at risk some of Europe’s most valuable cultural treasures by greatly reducing the available funds to maintain and protect archeological sites and run public museums.
Meanwhile, the Environment Ministry has overtly shifted its attention from preserving the country’s natural heritage to opening up new spaces for oil exploration.
A Scandalous Logic of Dispossession
While the sheer size of the privatization program and the aggressiveness with which it is being pursued are unprecedented in European history — eclipsing even the disastrous fire-sale privatizations in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union — the moves follow a well-established ideological script that has long been tested and perfected in the developing world under the guise of the Washington Consensus. As Harvard economist Dani Rodrik put it, in the 1980s and 1990s, “‘stabilize, privatize, and liberalize’ became the mantra of a generation of technocrats who cut their teeth in the developing world and of the political leaders they counseled.”
The script is not merely ideological, however: it has long since become the very modus operandi of the neoliberal state and the globalized world economy. The influential Marxist geographer David Harvey has referred to these processes as “accumulation by dispossession,” emphasizing how the “primitive” practices of enclosure that expropriated smallholder farmers and commodified the commons of pre-industrial England do not only continue today but constitute the very logic of the system. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein furthermore showed how economic and political elites often strategically exploit the temporary paralysis wrought by natural disasters and economic crises in order to privatize public property and common wealth that would otherwise be impossible to expropriate.
With the brutalities of disaster capitalism on full display in Greece today, and with the European Union and the IMF resorting to outright expropriation in order to claw back their own irresponsible loans to the Greek state, it is perhaps no surprise that the privatization process itself has been marred by scandals throughout. It recently emerged that the government secretly granted total tax exemption to the consortium that bought up the rights to exploit the old Hellenikon airport, one of the most valuable pieces of land in the Mediterranean. Even as a Kafkaesque array of fees and taxes is being imposed on ordinary Greeks surviving off less than 500 euros per month, the owners of Lamda Development, as sole bidder for the site, “shall be exempt from any tax, duty or fee, including income tax in respect of any form of income derived from its business, of transfer tax for any reason, [or] capital accumulation tax.”
To make matters worse, it soon emerged that Lamda Development, which is owned by the Latsis family of shipping and banking tycoons, paid a mere $1.2 billion for the old airport, even though independent pre-crisis valuations estimated it to be worth at least $6.8 billion. Calculations by the Greek newspaperTo Vima furthermore show that the state will have to make at least another $3.4 billion in administrative and infrastructural expenses before it can deliver the property to its new owner — thus effectively subsidizing the multi-billionnaire Latsis family for its “purchase.” In the process, the public debt accumulates even further.
In fact, the corruption of public officials and the collusion between state and capital is so extreme and so deeply entrenched that it has inevitably infected the top echelons of both government and business. Last year, Stelios Stavridis, head of the TAIPED privatization fund, himself a former construction mogul who made a fortune building swimming pools for Greece’s tax-evading business elite, was fired after a newspaper revealed that he had been offered a trip to the island of Kefalonia on the private jet of the infamous Greek oligarch and shipowner Dimitris Melissanidis, to whom he had — just hours before — sold a 33% share of the recently privatized state gambling monopoly OPAP. Stavridis was the second TAIPED head to be dismissed on allegations of improper conduct within a year. Of course, the deals themselves have not been in the least affected by any of these scandals. Whatever the cost, the fire-sale must go on.
Europe, Selling its Soul
Ultimately, however, we need to face up to the real powers behind these endless scandals — the ones who have so far managed to keep their hands clean of any overt corruption but who are nonetheless ultimately responsible for the expropriation and exploitation of Greece’s immense natural and cultural wealth, not to mention the unspeakable humanitarian tragedy that has been inflicted upon its ailing society in the past four years.
It should be clear by now that the privatization process, in all its scandalous ugliness, is little more than an attempt to extract as much wealth as possible from a country that has already been sucked dry by its parasitic private creditors amidst a catastrophic four-year-old depression. Completing the privatizations is a prerequisite for the release of Greece’s bailout funds, and it is common knowledge that Troika officials have been playing a leading role in drafting up many of the plans in great detail. This, also, is no surprise, as European investors stand to benefit lavishly from future sell-offs, with the Germans eying the healthcare sector (which their austerity measures have already reduced to shambles) and the waste disposal industry, and the French set on Greece’s public water utilities.
It is safe to say, then, that Europe has now fallen to the lowest of lows: having already abolished Greek democracy (insofar as such a thing could still be said to exist), European leaders and EU institutions are now selling off Greece’s invaluable natural and cultural heritage at cutthroat prices in order to “reduce” the country’s debt, which only ends up growing in the process. If Greece is indeed the cradle of European civilization, as the EU’s Hellenophile leaders — EC President Jean-Claude Juncker first among them — still like to maintain, then Europe obviously stands accused of selling its own soul, for a nickel and dime, to redeem a debt that everyone knows cannot be repaid.
The Resistance Builds Up
Still, if recent years have shown anything, it is that wherever there is great injustice and humiliation there will be resistance — and even the paralysis wrought by the neoliberal shock doctrine cannot last forever. In fact, the social and political opposition to the Troika’s privatization drive has been so fierce that the Greek government has already had to scale back its projected proceeds from 50 billion euros by 2015 to a “mere” 11 billion euros by 2016. While this hardly constitutes a victory, it does reveal the hostile social and political terrain on which the Troika and the Greek government currently have to navigate.
Some early signs of hope are also starting to emerge. In recent months, the social campaign against the privatization of the public water utilities in Athens and Thessaloniki, spearheaded by veteran activists from the 2011 Movement of the Squares, has made major strides in rousing public opinion and, in late May, was aided by a favorable court ruling that blocked the privatization of the Athens water utility. The ruling marks the first significant victory in a collective push-back — operating on multiple fronts, both institutional and extra-institutional — that may yet set a precedent and force the EU’s privatization drive to gradually come undone at the seams.
Meanwhile, as the government prepares to relaunch its deeply unpopular coastal and forestry bill — which had been briefly shelved ahead of the European elections in late May and which it now hopes to push through during summer recess, when only 100 out of 300 MPs will be in session — the resistance to the enclosure of Greece’s environmental commons is also taking off anew. While the outcome of this struggle remains uncertain, it is clear that the government’s room for maneuver is rapidly closing down. SYRIZA, the left opposition party, which actively resists the bill and openly commits itself to reclaiming all privatized assets, now leads the polls and will further increase pressure on the last-remaining “Socialist” MPs of PASOK to defect from the government in future privatization votes.
As the heat builds up over the summer months, the Greek resistance may yet save the country’s immense natural and cultural wealth from the rapacious claws of an elite gone mad — redeeming Europe’s lost soul in the process.
Jerome Roos is a PhD researcher in International Political Economy at the European University Institute, and founding editor of ROAR Magazine.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
1 Comment
Why is this happening? [Also in Italy] Read what Guido Grossi has to say (his CV is at the end):
io ci sono stato “dentro” il sistema, e te lo posso garantire: non capivo, non vedevo. Certe cose riesci a “vederle” solo da fuori. Perdonami, ma penso che l’ottimo Agilulfo ragioni da “dentro il sistema”. Sicuramente in totale buona fede, come ero io.
Forse la cosa è talmente grande, più grande di noi, che non riusciamo a vederla nel suo insieme e nella sua semplicità, ma la fregatura, tutta la fregatura, sta solo li: nell’aver concesso il potere di creare il denaro ad un sistema che è totalmente privato, è al di sopra degli stati e dei continenti, ed ha accumulato – proprio grazie a questo potere – una ricchezza talmente smisurata che può comprarsi ( e lo ha fatto) la politica, le università, i giornali e le televisioni, gli organismi sopra nazionali che dovrebbero controllare i mercati, insomma, tutto ciò in cui si decide e si orienta il pensiero.
Riassumo le motivazioni di Agilulfo : eliminiamo l’austerità e facciamo circolare il denaro (com’era fino a poco tempo fa, prima del 2007) e tutto tornerà come prima (crescita economica e illusione del “benessere”). Vero, ma… l’origine del debito è tutta lì: fino a quando la moneta che circola ce la deve prestare qualcuno (che la crea senza limiti e senza costi), il debito non potrà che aumentare. Togliamo il fiscal compact, anzi sforiamo il 3 per cento, ed avremo crescita economica, ma anche crescita del debito (che è già esagerato). Stiamo solo rimandando la soluzione vera del problema, e quando un problema si rimanda alla fine diventa ingestibile, giusto?
Secondo te, gli economisti che hanno suggerito il Fiscal Compact, sono cretini? Oppure sono in mala fede ? Io non ho dubbi. Lo sanno perfettamente che l’austerità non può produrre effetti economici positivi. Ma loro non ne hanno bisogno. Anzi: la depressione causata dall’austerità ha uno scopo preciso ed importante : obbligarci a svendere i beni reali. Chi controlla la moneta ed i mercati finanziari ha una ricchezza “virtuale”. Ha potere d’acquisto. Ma è tutto sulla carta. E’ una bolla che scoppia da un momento all’altro. Le politiche espansive sulla liquidità delle banche centrali servono esattamente ad evitare che scoppi subito. PRIMA CHE SCOPPI LA BOLLA , i detentori dei crediti hanno bisogno di trasformare la ricchezza di carta in beni reali : case, terreni, aziende, oro, etc etc. L’austerità costringe Stati e privati a svendere questi beni. E’ esattamente quello che sta accadendo. Ci vuole tempo, per questo l’agonia è lunga.
Vuoi sapere cosa penso? che il Fiscal Compact comunque non verrà applicato, perché l’austerità eccessiva ha funzionato in Grecia solo perché ha colto impreparata la popolazione. Piano piano la gente sta mangiando la foglia e rischia di ribellarsi all’austerità. L’applicazione del Fiscal Compact, in Italia, ora, scatenerebbe la rivoluzione.
Hanno intenzione di cuocerci a fuoco lento, perché è lentamente che vogliono prendersi il patrimonio pubblico e le ricchezze private degli italiani. LO STANNO FACENDO: dal 2007 ad oggi la ricchezza privata nostra è diminuita di oltre 2000 miliardi… Monti è stato mandato via per questo, Serviva uno più buono. Letta neppure è bastato. Ecco Renzi, che accompagnerà l’allentamento della tensione in Europa. Lo fa per noi? Ma dai.. lo fa per loro, per la finanza internazionale, per darle il tempo necessario a consentire il trasferimento di ricchezza reale SENZA CHE LA GENTE SI RIBELLI
Cosa fare ? La Rivoluzione nell’informazione. Non vedo alternative. Far sapere a tutti quali sono le vere cause dei problemi. Scoprire lo strapotere della finanza internazionale CHE VIVE SOLO DI MANIPOLAZIONE DEL CONSENSO e così toglierle il potere.
Se però indichiamo falsi obiettivi… la gente non capirà mai, e continuerà ad essere fregata.
E’ esattamente quello che fa comodo alle élite. Renzi ce lo hanno messo apposta. Ci pensa lui a non fare applicare il Fiscal Compact.
Noi da che parte vogliamo stare ?
Curriculum di Guido Grossi: responsabile della Struttura Centrale dei Mercati Finanziari della BNL (tesoreria, attività in titoli
azionari e obbligazionari, cambi, strumenti derivati, intermediazione e portafoglio investimenti della banca, con supervisione delle attività sulla rete estera); Vice Presidente dell’AticForex (associazione dei tesorieri e
cambisti Italiani); membro del consiglio di amministrazione di E-Mid (società mercato interbancario);
membro del gruppo di contatto presso Banca d’Italia.