Articles Archive http://analyzegreece.gr Thu, 23 Apr 2026 01:09:51 +0300 MYOB en-gb Greek television channels: a new beginning with old materials? http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/politics/item/454-greek-television-channels-a-new-beginning-with-old-materials http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/politics/item/454-greek-television-channels-a-new-beginning-with-old-materials Edward Sakagian,
 
Despina Biri


In the early hours of Friday 2 September, the results of the bidding process granting broadcast licenses to four private television channels were announced. Bidding took over 65 hours to be completed, and bidders were not allowed to leave the building of the Secretariat General for Information and Communication until bidding for all four licenses had been completed.

Since the creation of private channels in 1989, media owners had not paid for broadcast licenses, which, legally, must be granted through a public competition process, providing access to public broadcast frequencies. In a nexus of corruption, private media were allowed to broadcast without paying for the requisite licenses, in exchange for favorable reporting for government policies. Moreover, some media owners are also the owners of large construction companies, which took on large contracts for public infrastructure.

The four new media owners who have secured a license are as follows:

Mr Ioannis Alafouzos, owner of SKAI TV - secured a license for the fee of €43.6m
Mr Christos Kalogritsas, who will set up a brand new TV channel, with a license amounting to €52.6m
Mr Thodoris Kyriakou, owner of the ANT1 TV station, with a license amounting to €75.9m
Mr Vangelis Marinakis, who will set up a new media station for a license fee amounting to €73.9m

The total public revenue from the bidding process is an unprecedented €246m, a sum that even Minister of State, Nikos Pappas (who made it his mission to carry out the competition), did not expect to be so high.

Politically, the competition is a victory for the government,as the opposition, and New Democracy in the main, appeared to side with the oligarchs and their  status of impunity. It is also a victory in that TV channels, despite their very serious objections, were forced to participate and to accept the process. This victory offers no guarantee, however, in matters of substance: the quality of reporting, media pluralism, whether or not new networks of corruption will be created, and, last but not least, labor relations in TV channels.
 
Public reaction has so far been mixed. While the high sum paid to the public purse is generally seen favorably, this is not the case regarding the media owners who have secured a license. In contrast to the government narrative, promising to "end corruption" in the media sector, commentators point out that, by looking at the names of the people who filed an application for a broadcast license, as well as the names of those who did successfully bid for one, it's plain to see that media content will amount to more of the same, i.e. biased reporting, representing the interests of the channel owners. Moreover, the high sum which will be paid to the public sector in exchange for broadcast licenses has been contrasted to the sums for which other public property has been sold, most notably the TRAINOSE rail infrastructure network, sold earlier this summer to an Italian rail conglomerate for €45m, a figure considered to be scandalously low by many.

AnalyzeGreece has previously covered developments in the media sector in Greece:
Interview with National Radio and Television Council member, George Pleios

An analysis of the Greek media landscape by Dimitra Drakaki

Interview with the founders of a new media initiative for Greek news in English


Despina Biri is a researcher and writer on health care issues. She blogs at despinabiri.wordpress.com and bakterienfureureseele.wordpress.com
]]> dbdbdbbullla689@yahoo.gr (Despina Biri) POLITICS Fri, 02 Sep 2016 13:33:17 +0300 The Failed State of Greek Media http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/time-of-crisis/item/453-the-failed-state-of-greek-media http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/time-of-crisis/item/453-the-failed-state-of-greek-media Still from the TV show on which Dimitris Kontominas, the owner of the channel, intervened live on air
The media landscape in Greece has been described as suffering from a lack of pluralism, whereby a handful of media moguls set the predominant discourses through their newspapers, TV stations, and online outlets. In 2016, Greece finished 89th in the World Press Freedom Index, making it the second-lowest country ranking in the European Union with 80% of the population showing distrust in the country’s TV channels.

Before the leftist ruling party SYRIZA came into power, it pledged to regulate the lawlessness of the media scene and dismantle the old establishments of interest-driven reporting. A series of recent consecutive incidents like the on-air intervention of a media owner in a morning show on his TV channel, or the resistance to a new law introducing a bidding process for private broadcast licenses, highlight that the regime of media “oligarchs” is still firmly rooted.

The boss on line one

On June 6, Dimitris Kontominas, the Alpha media group owner, a leading TV, radio and production group, intervened in a morning talk show on Alpha TV channel to express his dissatisfaction about what he described as shameful comments over private initiatives. Mr. Kontominas called on live television to state "I am ashamed as I have never been in my life with what I heard today from Greek citizens who work in a TV channel that does everything to help the people”!

He continued by demanding that the journalists apologize, while angrily adding that “it is a shame, when we have such a big investment, to talk nonsense. It is an area full of refugees, crooks, prostitutes and the like and you talk against this investment. Instead of feeling ashamed for all those things that are not being done, we feel ashamed about the things that are being done.”

The incident was sparked when one of the panellists criticized the deal for the sale and long-term lease of the old Athens airport of Elliniko, a prerequisite demanded by international lenders in order to unlock loans needed to pay off debt to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. The Lamda-led consortium, a Greek developer that will own part of the property and get a 99-year lease, is planning to turn the 444-acre site into a tourist, business and commercial hub.

Since the beginning of the debt crisis, state assets have always been on the table for privatization as an integral feature of paying off international bailouts. While supporters of such investments claim that they generate jobs and ultimately boost the economy, critics see them as “selling off” public property. “These investors pay out of their pockets, instead of robbing the state with oil, cigarettes, cocaine. It is a shame to say all those things. You should apologize. This is not an opinion,” Mr Kontominas yelled when the TV show host tried to calm her boss down.

The intervention was an extreme incident in the history of Greek media but not a surprising one. In a blatant, upsetting manner, the media mogul crossed the line between covered manipulation to absolute muzzling, only to set an unprecedented level of censorship. The incident symbolizes the intertwined connection between private media, state and business that has historically dominated the Greek media scene.

Manor House

Although there are no recent official data on the total media numbers, the deregulation of the state monopoly of broadcasting frequencies in the late 1980s has led to an overwhelming amount of private TV channels and radio stations, on national and local level. According to the report "Media Policy and Independent Journalism in Greece" by Open Society Foundations, “from a broadcasting field of two public television channels and four radio stations in the late 1980s, it has become an overcrowded environment comprising 160 private television channels and 1,200 private radio stations, none of them equipped with an official license to broadcast, but only temporary licenses renewed by successive governments”.

Despite the high volume, pluralism has not benefited. Media legislation does not contain specific thresholds or limits to prevent high levels of horizontal concentration of ownership as noted by the 2014 Media Pluralism Monitor. This legal and regulatory framework has urged the concentration of private press, television, and radio outlets into large organizations since its early days. To this day a handful of media groups own the biggest nationally circulated newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, as well as press distribution agencies.

Traditionally, the owners of the biggest media conglomerates, the “oligarchs”, as they are commonly referred to in Greece, are also active in other sectors of the economy, such as construction, shipping, health services, new technologies, and banking business, and often end up with favourable government deals. The support is granted through advertising of banks and state owned enterprises, approving loans to private broadcasters that are currently in debt due to the sharp decline of income from advertisements; assignments of public works (roads and government buildings construction etc.) or public property management to media owners with investments in other business sectors.

In this way, media are used as spaces for indirect profit through the strengthening of relations with politicians and the acquisition of state contracts. “Greek media industry controlled by business tycoons whose other successful businesses enable them to subsidize their loss-making media operations. These media operations in turn enable them to exercise political and economic influence. The result is that the media often provides an image of national and international events that is almost uniform but for its division along party lines” as a US Embassy cable by Wikileaks reveals.

Taking MEGA Channel, one of the most well known private channels, as an example, its three main shareholders are some of the richest and most influential families in the country. George Bobolas, the main shareholder, is also the owner of Ellaktor SA construction company which has participated in multi-billion euro contracts with the state, such as the Athens Ring Road, the Rio-Antirio Bridge, the Acropolis Museum and the Athens Olympic Sports Complex. Vardis Vardinogiannis is engaged in the oil and shipping industry, while Stavros Psycharis controls the DOL media company.

The triangle of power between media, state and business is well intertwined resulting in a state whereby journalists are too careful to avoid criticism to the government of the day, while media owners exploit their outlets for purposes beyond communication. The relationship is a dialectical one and a vicious circle is fuelled by governments offering financial support to the media that in exchange offer favourable reporting to the ruling party’s actions. Over the last year, many cases have highlighted how the two sides interfere in each other’s work.

In February 2016,  the publisher of a low circulation newspaper was arrested with two other journalists on charges of extorting huge sums in advertising from officials at public organizations, banks and businesses. The publisher Panagiotis Mavrikos, who was charged with felony and misdemeanor, including blackmail and being part of a criminal gang, had appeared in the payroll of New Democracy receiving the amount of €18,450 per month, according to the newspaper Parapolitika.

How new is this page?

Prior to SYRIZA’s electoral victory in January 2015 the party had committed to tackle the long-standing relationships of clientelism in Greece and declare a war to the media “oligarchs”. A year later a parliamentary examination committee started an investigation of the legality of advertising expenditure of Greek banks to media and political parties over a period of the last 10 years. The Committee was established following the proposal of the ruling SYRIZA-ANEL coalition last March.

In another attempt in February 2016, parliament passed a law, backed by the ruling coalition and strongly criticized by the opposition and the Association of Private TV Stations of National Range. The new law, which is part of the country’s commitment under the latest bailout, aims to regulate the media market and, allegedly, bring to a halt the link between state and private interests.

The aim is to eventually launch a channel license competition for broadcasting tenders where four out of eight national TV stations would obtain a licence. The biggest media channels dissatisfied with the decision appealed to the Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court. The application of MEGA Channel, which is threatened with bankruptcy due to a huge amount of overdue debts, was rejected on June 30.

A few days after the bill was amended by parliament, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was accused of an alleged bribe attempt to media owner Stavros Psycharis. The newspaper “To Vima” – that belongs to Mr. Psycharis’ media group - published an article revealing secret meetings between the two men prior to SYRIZA’s electoral victory in January 2015. According to the article Mr. Tsipras allegedly asked for the support of the influential man, promising that loans taken by his media conglomerate will be erased, and offering political mediation for the acquisition of the total ownership of MEGA TV channel.

After the publication, both sides engaged in a war of words where each one accused the other for falsification of the facts. Whether the allegations are true or not the by now unimpeachable Tsipras began to test the water. The question is whether he and his party will manage to escape immune or will go missing in the media abyss.
]]> TIME OF CRISIS Sat, 09 Jul 2016 20:35:02 +0300 One year after the Greek "OXI" http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/greece-europe/item/451-one-year-after-the-greek-oxi http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/greece-europe/item/451-one-year-after-the-greek-oxi Athens, Greece. 3rd July 2015 -- A man holding two puppets with a yes and a no sign. Photo: Dimitris Parthimos/Demotix/Corbis
Dimosthenis Papadatos Anagnostopoulos

Referenda have supporters but also fanatical adversaries on both sides of the political spectrum. In the case of last year’s Greek referendum, the first one in the country since 1974, its opponents from the Right (New Democracy, but also Pasok’s social democrats and To Potami’s liberals) rejected it as “divisive”, but at the same time took sides in favour of NAI. Its opponents from the Left (the Communist Party, KKE) interpreted it as an effort by the government to entrap the Greek people between two versions of austerity: a hard Memorandum proposed by the “institutions” (EU, ECB, IMF), which the people were called to reject, and a “milder” Memorandum the government was fighting for.

Referenda are not actually divisive in themselves; they just reflect and sharpen pre-existing divisions. So, the 5th July referendum revealed a deep social divide that was not created in a week, and this is why the dispute between NAI and OXI was all but a mere surface effect.

Anyone who witnessed the enormous gathering for OXI on Friday 3 July (but also the unprecedented “pro-European” rallies backed by the bourgeois parties) can understand this; anyone that remembers the lock-outs in small businesses, the discontent at the queues outside the closed banks and the way privately-owned media exploited it, as well as the incessant threats and the blunt political interventions (both from inside the country and from abroad) who equated a possible OXI vote with Grexit and chaos.

For the rest, who don’t remember, a simple analysis of the OXI vote will suffice to convince them: OXI was supported by the many who found themselves at the hard end of austerity, but also those who believed the crisis could recede only if the Greek government ended austerity, and stop servicing the debt. What’s more, a recent poll published in Ta Nea (a daily newspaper that openly supported NAI) shows that 74% of Greeks still believe austerity to be self-defeating. In other words, the division brought to the surface by the Greek referendum was not incidental.
On year on, however, the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets for OXI will not go out to celebrate the first anniversary of that historic victory. So what’s left of it?

For the NAI supporters, nothing at all: the referendum was just a reckless political maneuver that led us to a harsh third Memorandum and capital controls that worsened a market which was already in recession. In reality, NAI supporters were calling for the government to sign whatever deal was available, no matter how harsh or bad, if only it ensured Greece’s place in the Eurozone and the EU. The market was in crisis before capital controls due to the fact that in Greece as everywhere in Europe, profit margins have been shrinking and demand is crumbling; not because of a lack of cash!

Nevertheless, despite their flawed analyses and crushing defeat, NAI supporters seem vindicated today: one year after the referendum, the government that led the OXI campaign was forced into signing a hard third Memorandum that is enforcing to the letter, presenting it not as a product of extortion but as a solution to real problems. This is why the hundreds of thousands that took the streets for OXI will not be there today for the commemoration of that great victory.

The 5th July referendum was one of the rare moments in History when large parts of a society felt they have nothing to lose and stood behind those political leaders who seemed willing to fight in their defense. In reality, the then-government declared the referendum in the hope that it would stop its continuous slip towards the troika positions during the dragging negotiation: at the beginning of 2015 Syriza was elected to put an end to austerity while staying in the Eurozone; a little later it promised a “mutually beneficent compromise”; and when that proved impossible, it aimed for an “honorable agreement”. On the night of July 12th, when the troika enforced a harsh third Memorandum in a way that made international public opinion react with cries about a financial coup, it became clear that elections and referenda are no longer allowed to influence economic policy in the Eurozone –and that, apart from a defeat for the Greek government and those of us who stood beside it, was indeed a political coup.

Still, losing to superior opponents is part of the game – even if the government reassured Greek society for months that this was not a possibility; what was clearly foul play was that  a left government accepted a political coup in favour of the continuation of austerity as the limit of its policy: that happened in August 2015, when Alexis Tsipras called for elections, ignoring Syriza’s central committee’s calls for a conference in order for the party to decide not to impose the new Memorandum as government. That was a second coup that eventually led to the breakup of Syriza. And that had nothing to do with the expectations of the 3.5 million people who had voted for OXI. 

The division the referendum revealed is no longer just about the Memoranda, but also about the correct stance toward a European Union that allows exceptions to its rules only when they come from the Right. There are no easy answers, but the recent Brexit win makes them urgent. Europe, held “together” only by capital for the past two decades, hasn’t been more divided since WWII;  if the answers are not provided by the Left (a Left that will no longer mistake OXI for NAI) the UK example shows who is lying in wait to provide them.
 
Dimosthenis Papadatos-Anagnostopoulos is a member of the editorial board of RedNotebook.

Translated by Dimitris Ioannou, edited by Caterina Drossopoulou
]]> jniuoqdjerpu39r4ur8yyr@gmail.com (Dimosthenis Papadatos-Anagnostopoulos) GREECE/EUROPE Tue, 05 Jul 2016 16:51:32 +0300 A few thoughts on the British referendum http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/450-a-few-thoughts-on-the-british-referendum http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/450-a-few-thoughts-on-the-british-referendum Illustration: Enrico Bertuccioli
Elli Siapkidou

On 23 June, the majority of the British population, 51.8% voted against Britain remaining in the European Union (EU), after being a member for 42 years. Despite voices from the Left arguing that Brexit is proof that people are reacting to capitalist Europe which imposes austerity, this is not case.  The British referendum result is more a reflection of Britain's failure to accept its post- imperial identity and less of the European project’s shortcomings.

Britain was never a Euro-enthusiast. And this holds true for both its governments and its citizens. Britain chose not to take part in the discussions between the six countries (France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands and West Germany) to form the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) back in 1951, as it was suspicious of any federalist organisation that could erode its sovereignty. It decided to join the European Economic Community (EEC) two decades later in 1974, only after it had realised the limits of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), a much looser form of cooperation which it had championed and helped create.

The British people confirmed their government’s choice to join the EEC, through a referendum that was held in 1975 and in which 67% of the electorate voted in favour. However, the British public was never a pro European one. Even in the beginning of the 1990s when 75% of the Europe’s citizens supported the process of European integration, this percentage hovered around 55% for the Brits, reaching 25% towards the end of the 1990s when support was generally waning.

From a European respective, the other EU countries came to accept that Britain was the club’s “awkward partner”, with its rows under Thatcher’s premiership about Britain’s contribution to the European budget and the various opt- outs from European policies, the euro included. 

Britain’s relation with Europe was a lukewarm relationship, and would remain so, so long as it was undisturbed. Cameron' s decision to hold a referendum changed this. He chose to take a gamble for his own personal re-election trying to appease a part of its Conservative party, which has always been against Europe. But in doing so, he opened the door for British nationalism to be fully expressed, not to say unleashed.

All countries and societies are nationalistic to one extent or the other. What is distinct about Britain's nationalism is that it translates into a deep aversion towards European institutions, federalism or any structure that challenges the core idea of the nation state. This is probably related to the fact that the events of World War II have a distinct position in the nation's collective memory. While for the rest of Europe, the war is an event to forget about, with its fascism, bloodshed and physical and economic destruction, in Britain, it is still glorified as an occasion where the country was victorious. It is not an accident that every year the BBC proms close with the hymn “Rule, Britannia!”, although the British empire has ended for more than fifty years now.  

The British referendum allowed all these nationalistic feelings to emerge. This is not to say that there haven't been increasing parts of the population who have seen their standards of living decline and are trapped in vicious cycles of poverty, precarious employment or unemployment.   But these are the result of the austerity policies of consecutive conservative governments rather than policies stemming from Brussels. If anything, it was Britain, which has exported neoliberal ideas and trade liberalisation as a way to economic growth to the rest of Europe rather than the other way round. By any account, Britain is a more capitalist society, more right wing and less socialist than most of continental Europe.

The Remain campaign did not manage to convince people of the benefits of European integration. There are many reasons for this. First, the inability for campaign in favour of Europe to mobilise people has been a characteristic of all the European referendums so far. The Nons, the Neins and the Nos are always more vocal than the Yeses and the Ouis and it is always easier to react to something rather than argue in favour of the status quo.

Second, the economic benefits of European integration (which Labour could have used as a pro-European centre party) are diffuse and long-term and very difficult to pin down to be used in an electoral campaign.

Third, one of the most important elements of the idea of united Europe, that of free movement of people, the right to study, work and live everywhere within the 28 EU countries was high-jacked by the Leave campaign and was framed as a negative. It was translated as concerns about immigration and foreign residents (raised by even Labour in the 2015 parliamentary elections). Despite the rhetoric which focused on the “Polish plumber”, concerns about increasing numbers of foreigners were more related to Britain’s immigration policies over the last fifty years from countries which were previously part of the British Empire and less about citizens from Central and Eastern Europe.

European integration and capitalism creates losers and winners. This is a point which supporters of Brexit from left-wing parties tried to highlight. However, their voices were lost amidst the nationalistic yelps. A Brexit campaign won on an argument of the European project not being socialist enough would have changed the terms of discussion and the European agenda. However unfortunately, the debate was not fought on the Left-Right axis, but on a nation-state vs Europe one.

Where does that leave us now? At the moment there's an impasse. Cameron resigned to gain some time before invoking article 50 and to pass the hot potato to Boris, and Boris has decided to pass that over to Gove. There is a deadline to how much the British governing elites can fiddle around. As Juncker and other European officials have made clear, Europe will not wait forever. Europe will not allow Britain to threaten the European project altogether, which means that it was has no motive to make this process of disengagement any easier for Britain. If anything, it will try to make an example of Britain to discourage any other countries of thinking about starting pulling threads for the European project (the euro-Greece and migration crises are doing enough of that already).

Similarly, it is not easy for British elites to “take back” the result, as Greek Prime Minister Tsipras did in the aftermath of the referendum on Greece’s loan agreement. Unlike the Greek referendum, which took place within two weeks of its announcement, the British referendum had a long electoral campaign. British politicians will have to think very hard to be able to turn this round.

There will follow a period of political and economic uncertainty with unknown end date. But until then, Britain has become a less welcome place for many foreign residents. Naturally, the Remain media are keen to bring out to all the racist attacks which happened right after the referendum result and raise the issue, but the fact remains that there has been a 50% increase in racist attacks following the referendum and people feel it’s ok to shout insults to foreign-looking people in the street.

The Left needs to regain the debate on Europe. It has been in the defensive too much and unfortunately this referendum result cannot be used to build its case for a better, more socialist and less unequal Europe. There is an urgent need to try to understand what it is that a European Left wants. Is it a stronger European welfare state? Is it a completely different economic model? Is it an increase in Cohesion and Development funds? And then, we need to make this inviting to people. So far, we are losing. We are losing the battles and we are losing the war (see also the disappointing results from Spain’s elections). And meanwhile, with all these nationalistic trends appearing across Europe, it is becoming an ugly place to be.


Dr. Elli Siapkidou is a political economist working as a political and economic analyst in London. 
 

 
]]> kakaka@trobas.gr (Elli Siapkidou) EUROPE Sun, 03 Jul 2016 09:41:10 +0300 Brexit: Scenes from a future to come http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/449-brexit-scenes-from-a-future-to-come http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/449-brexit-scenes-from-a-future-to-come Illustration: Antonio Rodríguez García
Georgios Giannakopoulos
 
In the aftermath of the British referendum, we asked friends of AnalyzeGreece with links to the UK what they thought of the result. We will be publishing short interviews with them over the coming days. George Giannakopoulos, an intellectual historian at Queen Mary, University of London, who has been living in the UK since 2010, gives us his thoughts on Brexit and its implications for migrants in the UK, as well as for UK politics and the rise of the far right across Europe.
ANALYZEGREECE!
 
What was your initial reaction to the referendum result? How do you assess its potential impact on migrants in the UK?
 
The news reached me in a hotel room in Denmark. I spent the night in front of a TV screen in contact with friends from the UK. The whole situation brought back memories of last year's long and bruising Grexit nights. Another summer; another referendum; another set of anxieties. Anxieties about Europe and about the country I've chosen to reside in for the past six years. One could hardly miss the anti- EU mood in the country in the run up to decision day. Brexiters were very effective in framing public discussion around immigration, power and control. It is high time, they argued, to control “our” porous borders with the EU; to empower “our” disaffected English citizens from a dysfunctional unrepresentative Eurocracy; to regain Britain's global so-called “prestige”. Jo Cox’s assassination interrupted the debate. To some of us it seemed that the reaction to the politics of hate might strike a chord with voters and energize the Remain campaign which by then was predominantly led by conservative arguments about the economy and sentimental appeals to abstract European ideals. Then came the moment of truth. The politics of fear prevailed. A misguided longing for national 'control' swept through England leaving Scotland, parts of Wales, Northern Ireland and London adrift in a sea of reaction.

Predictably, everyone in the UK is talking. Social media are full of commentaries and op-eds. Unfortunately, a good number of commentators in the Greek press offer misguided readings of the situation, be it from the left or the right. The tendency to read the British reaction against the EU from the lens of the Greek-EU debacle is distorting to say the least. If I were to point out a couple of interesting pieces offering a less distorting analysis, I’d have to mention Will Davies’s Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit and  Peter Mandler's take on the London/rest of the U.K. divide.
 
My generation has benefited immensely from the open borders policy of the EU. Even those who frequently trumpet their 'anti-capitalist' credentials by pointing to the so-called 'neo-liberal' foundations of the European project have profited from traveling, living and studying across a unified European space. Britain, and London, have been at the heart of this. The ensuing period of uncertainty accentuates fears. It is highly likely that new migration laws will affect directly the prospects of employment for European migrants in the country. Moreover, it is still unknown how the highly internationalized British university model will adjust to the new realities. This is just an example of the huge challenges lurking in a period of protracted instability and anxiety.
 
What are the implications for Europe and Britain?

Living through the rise and demise of the Syriza moment in the UK, I had the chance to witness the hunger for political change and progressive reforms in Britain (and Europe). The unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party came to signify this. Corbyn’s reluctant endorsement of the Remain campaign seemed to be moving in the right direction despite the pressure coming from small factions of the far left which were behind the so-called Lexit campaign. At this moment, it is not clear whether Corbyn’s Labour will survive the unprecedented challenge mounted against his leadership. Corbyn's campaign faults and leadership style has been subjected to much hyperbole. On the whole, I find Martin O’Neill’s qualified account very well-balanced. The Labour Party is in dire need of an effective political and national strategy to address the political and national divisions in a disunited United Kingdom. Predictably, the Tory Brexiters are beginning to backtrack on many of their promises and the one force which seems to benefit at the moment is the right-wing populism represented by UKIP (and the Front National in France).

Finally, one has to mention the resurgence of Englishness as a response to the challenges of globalization and the purported “loss” of national identity. The media have been reporting racist attacks towards Eastern European migrants. A few weeks ago, in a coastal town not far from London, I witnessed an impromptu march by a small group of white middle aged English males holding anti-refugee and anti-immigrant placards and chanting racial slurs. The incident occurred in a very crowded street in broad daylight. What surprised me was the apathy of the crowd. The indifference shown reminded me of the attitude of many Greeks towards Golden Dawn. Scenes from a (dystopian) future to come.

Georgios [Yorgos] Giannakopoulos is an intellectual historian. He studied political science and history in Greece (BA, MA Panteion University, Athens) before embarking on a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London. His research revolves around ideas of nationality and internationalism in early 20th century British thought.
]]> ggeiogi897g5io96843@hotmail.com (Georgios Giannakopoulos) EUROPE Wed, 29 Jun 2016 20:31:49 +0300 Brexit is no victory, as much as it may upset EU elites http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/448-brexit-is-no-victory-as-much-as-it-may-upset-eu-elites http://analyzegreece.gr/europe/item/448-brexit-is-no-victory-as-much-as-it-may-upset-eu-elites Illustration: Daryl Cagle
Despina Biri

In the aftermath of the British referendum, we asked friends of AnalyzeGreece with links to the UK what they thought of the result. We will be publishing short interviews with them over the coming days. First up, it's Despina Biri, from AnalyzeGreece editorial board, who studied and worked in London between 2003-2015, and who continues to have very strong ties to the UK.
ANALYZEGREECE!
 
 
 
1. What is your assessment of the referendum result and its immediate aftermath?
 
Quite frankly I did not expect Leave to win. This may have to do with the fact that most of my social circle in the UK is in London. Before the referendum I thought that the fractured nature of the campaign would be to the detriment of the right and far right groups in favour of Leave. Of course, exactly the opposite turned out to be the case.
 
However, I think we can quite safely conclude that the Left played a marginal role in deciding the outcome of the vote, as, quite frankly, the balance of power in UK politics is not such, at least for the moment, that would permit the adoption of a “Lexit” agenda for leaving the European Union. While it could be argued that Leave managed to harness anti-austerity sentiment among the disenfranchised, it is by now quite clear that Brexit does not mean the end to austerity in the UK. Nigel Farage’s rebuttal of the claim that Brexit would mean an extra £350m could be spent on the NHS goes to show that the Leave campaign is nowhere near advocating even a moderately progressive agenda, as if that weren't obvious enough. The UK under Cameron was not compelled to implement austerity by the EU, as is the case in Greece and elsewhere, but instead had its own agenda for creating a “minimal state” as envisioned by Thatcher and Reagan. Austerity in the UK is therefore less related to Merkel’s flavor of neoliberalism than to its London counterpart. However, Remain’s reliance on “expert opinion” during the campaign was problematic, and allowed Leave to prevail largely on the strength of right wing populism and on a reaction against the realities of inequality, hijacked by anti-immigrant discourse.
 
One important aspect of the referendum is how it is linked to the “refugee crisis”. While much of the debate in the UK centered on migration between EU states, I think Brexit may have implications for refugees currently trapped in Greece and elsewhere as well. The shameful EU-Turkey deal, and EU member states’, including the UK’s,  refusal to take in larger numbers of refugees, contributed to the xenophobic climate leading to the referendum. This effect was of course augmented by Remain’s reluctance to put forward a strong pro-immigration, pro-refugee agenda, brought on by fragmentation in the Remain camp, similarly to Leave.Therefore, the Leave vote can be interpreted as not only an anti-migration vote, but as an anti-refugee vote as well. This is regrettable, not least because the UK has been one of the instigators of the “war on terror”, and  is expected to do even less to tackle climate change, both of which will cause even more people to flee their homes in future.
 
I can only speculate what the Leave result means for UK politics, looking beyond obvious things we already know much about, such as who the next prime minister will be, and the possible eventual secession of Scotland. I do think that David Cameron’s resignation was the right thing to do, but I will be sad to see Boris Johnson, whose terrible politics I am all too familiar with as a former Londoner, as his successor. It is perhaps more interesting to see what happens to Labour, the leadership of which adopted a more cautious stance visavis the referendum, perhaps contributing to the weaker than expected Remain vote. What's certain is that things cannot and will not continue as before.
 
2. How, if at all, do you think Brexit will affect you personally?

While I have not managed to return to the UK since I left last year, my family, friendly, professional, and academic ties to the country remain strong. At this point I am therefore worried about what will happen to those close to me who live in the UK. I'm also worried about my own future, seeing as finding a job in Greece is difficult (even, or especially, for a highly qualified person such as myself), and I have considered moving back to the UK, though this will likely be more difficult after Brexit. We are already seeing reports of racist comments and bullying taking place all over the UK, and it may be some time before they subside, if indeed they do.
 
Of course, I cannot help but think about British friends and former colleagues, who I am happy to say voted overwhelmingly in favor of Remain, as did London, where I spent nearly all of my adult life until last year. At this point, I am cautiously concerned about what a Leave vote entails for EU citizens living in the UK, and for UK citizens living in the EU.
 
3. What do you think are the implications of Brexit for the European project and for the European Left?
 
I have been feeling pessimistic about the future of the EU for a very long time now. Quite simply, I believe that the European institutional framework is such that states are unable to function as democracies. The issue of EU expertise, mentioned in my answer to the first question, is a parallel but distinct issue to that of experts in UK public policy. I am therefore convinced that the disintegration of the EU into other formations –a “small Eurozone”, for example, or a “Visegrad group”, or something else entirely– is already underway (not necessarily triggered by Brexit, but by other events such as those following the Greek referendum in July 2015, compounded by the “refugee crisis”).
 
As things currently stand, I think that the Left in Europe is trapped into a cycle of trying to come up with alternatives, but has not come up with concrete proposals that would allow it to put those alternatives into practice as government. In Greece,  Syriza’s about-face bears a lot of the blame for this state of affairs, as the Left is too fragmented and sore from the defeat to recover quickly. I think the case of Greece serves as a cautionary tale for other EU members as well, in that it goes to show that changing European institutions “from within”, as Syriza tried to do, is an impossible task.
 
With reference to Brexit, I think the Left played a marginal role in the UK referendum. I therefore think that, barring significant developments in the Labour Party, the state of affairs in the European Left as a whole will not be affected much. However, I must say that I am sad to see many from the Left interpreting the referendum result as being “a blow to the establishment” when it is quite clear that it is elites who led both the Leave and Remain campaigns, and it is the worst off in the UK who will be hardest hit regardless of outcome, seeing as austerity and anti-immigrant policies will continue to be in place, perhaps with even greater force than before (the expected amendment of the Human Rights Act is a notable example, but not the only one). Therefore, I cannot see any reason to be jubilant about the Leave win, seeing as it goes completely against the Left’s permanent demand for open borders and freedom of movement, extending from the symbolic to the far reaching implications for many people who call the UK home, and who on the whole enjoyed living in a relatively tolerant (especially compared to those in other European countries) and forward thinking society, which is among the first in Europe to recognise same sex marriage, and the rights of trans people, to name but two areas in which the UK has been pioneering as regards social rights. Put simply, I can foresee a regression of these freedoms following the Leave win, because, let us not forget, racism often goes hand in hand with other forms of discrimination. Frankly, this cannot be called a victory, as much of an upset it may be for EU elites.
 
PS. Can you really cough it up loud and strong?
The immigrants, they wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere
Most likely could be any frontier any hemisphere
In no-man’s-land
There ain't no asylum here
King Solomon he never lived ‘round here
 
(The Clash, “ Straight to Hell”, from the album Combat Rock)

Despina Biri is a researcher and writer on health care issues. She blogs at despinabiri.wordpress.com and bakterienfureureseele.wordpress.com
 
 
]]> dbdbdbbullla689@yahoo.gr (Despina Biri) EUROPE Sun, 26 Jun 2016 15:07:30 +0300 Open letter to Y. Mouzalas, Alternate Minister of Immigration Policy http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/immigrants-rights-and-racism/item/447-open-letter-to-mr-mouzalas-alternate-minister-of-immigration-policy http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/immigrants-rights-and-racism/item/447-open-letter-to-mr-mouzalas-alternate-minister-of-immigration-policy Lesvos, September 2015. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP]
Recommending policies as win-win strategies for both Greece and refugees

Kester Ratcliff

Dear Mr Mouzalas,

I read your comments  reported by Reuters yesterday, “Greece wants to send thousands of migrants back to Turkey in coming weeks”. I sympathise with your despair, I can imagine what it feels like to be forced to implement policies which you don’t really approve of and then blamed for doing it too. However, policies created out of despair do not tend to be realistic or rational in a long-term way, and I imagine you worry about that too. I wish you could take a holiday and then read and reflect on this when you’re more refreshed after a couple of weeks!
This is not just another criticism of Greece. I get it, I really do. The point of this letter is to suggest some policies that would be win-win strategies for both Greece and refugees. This doesn’t have to be a pro-refugees and anti-Greece vs. anti-refugees and pro-Greece debate. The four policies I propose, in brief, are:

1. Publicly and officially demand that the Temporary Protection Directive 2001 be activated. In the last two years, we have seen the clearest mass influx in the history of Europe since the aftermath of WW2, so for the rest of the EU to not acknowledge it as a ‘mass influx’ is just a dishonest way of evading their obligations. You do not have to stand for this any longer. The facts and the law are on your side, and a much larger share of European citizens would support you if you took a coherent principled stand, with positive alternative plans. Amnesty’s global survey of public attitudes to refugees found that in every country citizens are more welcoming of refugees than their governments, and the gap between public attitudes and government policy is widest in my own country, the UK. The EC and EuCo, naturally, only represent that share of public opinion which bays for their draconian approach, but the share of public opinion that would support you if you opposed them is not only comparable in numbers but qualitatively more committed in terms of democratic engagement and voluntary action.

2. Insist that the EU Relocation scheme, which is the only mechanism agreed so far to implement all Member States’ common obligation in Article 78(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU to practice solidarity and responsibility sharing when there is a mass influx of refugees into the EU, should be made to work properly. Not just token numbers, realistic numbers. We can all see that extreme slowness of the asylum procedures across Europe is not just due to lack of resources, administrative incompetence, or just a consequence of thoroughness, but is part of the overall political strategy of deterrence. However, as the Asylum Service said, inefficient asylum procedures are effectively a pull-factor for unfounded asylum claims, or I would suggest more specifically it makes it more likely that mass influxes will be more mixed and thus harder to fairly and efficiently assess who really needs international protection and who doesn’t. The European Council and Commission’s strategy of making the asylum procedures in Greece even slower by inserting admissibility interviews regarding Turkey, for political reasons having nothing objectively to do with the present or recent applicants’ claims, to increase waiting times and then use their desperation as a deterrent signal to others who might otherwise try to seek protection in Europe, probably is postponing another mass influx, but when it comes it will be more mixed and then even harder for Greece and Italy to deal with.

3. Refuse to carry out or make refugees wait longer for admissibility interviews before they get access to the EU Relocation scheme. This insertion of admissibility interviews into the Greek asylum procedures is for reasons totally different from the “rules of methodology” and “individual, objective and impartial assessments” in EU law. Comparison to the admissibility interview procedure in the context of Dublin III transfers is inapplicable, because the main objective of the Relocation Decision was to relieve the burdens on Greece and there was no such provision in the Relocation Decision for admissibility interviews before access to the EU Relocation scheme. If the Asylum Service and EASO respect the facts of each individual’s case, there will be no significant number of asylum seekers returned to Turkey. The asylum seekers now on the islands are going to be here indefinitely until politicians acknowledge reality and accept that it is necessary to find or make a solution, which should be relocation. If you stand up to the bullying by the European Council and the Commission rather than passing on the same kind of treatment onto refugees, many MEPs would support you in this - just call them, please.

4. Paragraph 25 of the Relocation Decision is discriminatory, because it permanently excludes individuals from eligibility for relocation based on general statistics about other people from their countries of origin. Relocation is not in itself a right, but whenever a State or an agreement of States grants a significant benefit to a certain group and not another based on a status, the difference in treatment must be proportionate to a legitimate objective. The legitimate objectives here are efficiency of the asylum system and not relocating a significant number of people who will later be found to have no needs for international protection and then incur further costs removing them. If the scheme positively presumed in favour of applicants as provided for in paragraph 25, but allowed beneficiaries of international protection from other countries of origin to access relocation after their substantive claims have been found to be well-founded, that would be proportionate to the legitimate objectives as well as non-discriminatory. Furthermore, increasing the scope of the Relocation scheme in this manner would also relieve the administrative and reception burdens on Greece even more.

Greece so far has been more humane and decent while in more economically and politically challenging circumstances than any other EU country. But the European Council and European Commission’s set of policies are so flagrantly unrealistic that they have no chance of succeeding even according to their own aims, which are evil. Greece is suffering from the same crisis of solidarity and forgetfulness of the common values which the European post-war peace was –and still is– founded on as the refugees are now suffering from.

The previous approach of Greece making common cause with the refugees and demanding that Europe live up to its claimed values and really practice solidarity and share responsibility for the common good was the right way. In working with refugees everyday, I have observed that despair is socially infectious, so for those of us working with refugees it is important for our own sanity and theirs to keep reminding ourselves to take courage and be determined about finding genuine solutions, and never giving up.

The refugees are, rightly, required to substantiate their claims, with detailed facts about what happened to them. How about you do the same with your claims? Or the other politicians in the European Council substantiate their claims? Never since the 1930s has the popularity of a political opinion or policy mattered so much more than its objective truthfulness.

This is a global problem of a swing to populism, across the political spectrum, not just on the right-wing, and it is not just a European problem. It has been characterised as a ‘Post-Truth’ political era. I am instinctively and dogmatically an egalitarian, but this consumeristic kind of populism which disregards or despises objectivity and thinks justice is merely a procedural technicality or a matter of opinion made by authorities and not a matter of truth that should concern every human being makes me seriously afraid for humanity in my lifetime. We are currently accelerating backwards in terms of human rights in practice and functional democracy in Europe, and Greece is on the frontline in more ways than one.

Returning “more than half” the asylum seekers on the islands now and “in full accordance with international law” is so unrealistic it is nonsense. It would be possible to return more than half the asylum seekers on the islands now, but, if objective facts matter at all in this process, it is certainly not possible to do so in full accordance with international law, or Greek law, or just common human natural sense of justice.

I am here every day for the last six weeks listening to the refugees’ stories. Listening and asking open questions to just draw out the facts. Speaking objectively and impartially, as asylum decisions are required to be by law, almost everyone has strong factual and legally pertinent reasons why Turkey is not safe for them and they cannot genuinely get asylum there.

I’ve listened to about 80 individuals now, for about an hour each. Honestly, if you were to listen to the detailed facts of what happened to them, you could not say that “more than half” should be found to have inadmissible claims in Greece. Some politicians refuse to acknowledge realities which they think their voters don’t like, but this does not actually change objective reality. This sort of political avoidance tactic actually leads to policies which make reality even worse and then the reality still has to be dealt with later. It would of course be a very good thing if Turkey genuinely became a safe third country, but it is clearly not now, and it is hard to imagine how it could really become a safe third country for decades starting from where they’re at in terms of functional democracy and human rights applied in practice now.

Almost everyone has been shot at by Turkish border guards or soldiers to force them back across the Syrian border, and many people were thus forced or terrorised back into Syria and made several attempts at crossing before they eventually got through Turkey. Several people told me they saw other refugees, including children, shot and killed while trying to cross the border. Many people said they were severely beaten by Turkish police or soldiers in prison, and in some cases it clearly crossed the line into torture. Many people either experienced being forced back to Syria on a previous attempt before they succeeded in getting across Turkey or were threatened with forcible return or expulsion to Syria when they were captured by Turkish police. This is not the behaviour of a State that “respects the principle of non-refoulement”. Refoulement is not exceptional in Turkey, it is routine and increasing since the EU’s interventions, and that is only one of five criteria in the safe third country concept.

Whereas Greece cannot offer jobs to most of the refugees here now, Turkey chooses not to register most of the 3 million refugees it ‘hosts’ for any sort of international or temporary protection status and give them work permits because keeping 85% of them unregistered means allowing them to work illegally so that they be illegally exploited and mistreated in work with no recourse to police protection because they are ‘illegal’. This is how Turkey has the highest number of refugees of any country worldwide now but also extraordinarily high economic growth, because it has gained a slave / trafficked persons labour force.

There is no significant proportion of inadmissible claims to be found here. Unless your administration is willing to completely ignore the facts of people’s cases or ignore the law, there is no way, no chance, to forcibly return any significant number of asylum seekers to Turkey legally. Even by gerrymandering the Appeals Authority committees, the appeals will still go onwards to the European courts, and the European Council and European Commission do not have as much undue influence there. If anything it could speed up the demise of the deal by hastening a European court judgement against the whole system.

Let’s be realistic - the EU-Turkey deal is not going to hold, and I’m sure you know the reasons better than me, and that’s why you’re so desperate to make it hold.
For the benefit of our mutual readers, let’s recap a few points it may fall at:

Firstly, it was founded on fantastical assumptions in the first place, because there never really was a significant proportion of inadmissible or unfounded claims here. Almost everyone here has strong reasons to need asylum, so claiming to return asylum seekers and other migrants to Turkey “in full accordance with international law” is literally preposterous.

Secondly, Erdogan is not going to keep on stopping the refugee boats leaving Turkey or pushing them back by any means necessary before they reach the EU frontier at the Greek territorial waters line when he realises he is not going to get visa-free Schengen travel for Turks, because there is no way Turkey can or is willing to go through the 73 legislative amendments required to make its legal system sufficiently compatible with European law. The EU’s payments for extraterritorial refoulement services are not enough to maintain the deal on their own, because the bribes collected by the smugglers’ networks, of course largely overlapping with the Turkish state authorities, are probably between half and about equal to the EU’s counter-bribes, which are as yet only pledged, and we both know what EU pledges of money are like at actually turning up on time.

Thirdly, there are at least 4 legal challenges going to the European courts so far just that I know of, and it only takes one of them to succeed to blow a big legal hole in the implementation of the deal. The European Parliament is also catching up and may even break out of its apparently merely advisory role at some point in the not-too-distant future.

You do not have to make policies out of despair. Greece does not have to continue to take the blame for being forced to implement at arm’s length Europe’s systematic human rights abuses.
Greece still could and should insist that the Temporary Protection Directive 2001 be activated. It is the only implementation system available and agreed so far for a constitutional commitment of all Member States, not essentially something optional. If Greece must pay its a pound of flesh, blood and all, because of mere contract law, the rest of Europe must observe fundamental human rights in practice which are more essential to justice. There has been no clearer instance of a ‘mass influx’ since the refugee mass movements after WW2, so the fact that the European Commission still refuses to acknowledge what this is and trigger the legal mechanism designed for this kind of situation, is nothing short of disingenuous.

At least it would be a wise contingency strategy to begin campaigning now to get the Temporary Protection Directive activated if or when the mass influx of Syrian refugees resumes again. Again, to do so would be a win-win strategy for Greece and the refugees.


Kester Ratcliff is a refugee solidarity volunteer and human rights activist. He is one of the coordinators for Calais Refugee Solidarity Bristol, Calais People to People Solidarity - Action from UK, and People to People Solidarity Southern/ South-Eastern Europe,

 
]]> kkllpprr33@gaidaros.com (Kester Ratcliff) IMMIGRANTS & REFUGEES Wed, 22 Jun 2016 07:51:36 +0300 The governement manipulates the Asylum Appeals Committees http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/immigrants-rights-and-racism/item/446-the-greek-government-manipulates-the-asylum-appeals-committees http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/immigrants-rights-and-racism/item/446-the-greek-government-manipulates-the-asylum-appeals-committees Refugees in Greece. Photo by Enri Canaj

On the 16-6-2016, with a last minute amendment,  the Greek Government changes the composition of the Asylum Appeals Committees, because the existing ones were not sending refugees back to Turkey, were not considering turkey a safe third country for each applican as the implementation of  the EU-Turkey refugee deal imposes. This is a disgraceful intervention and some members the existing Asylum Appeals Committees explain about it.
 
Statement of members of the Asylum Appeals Committees of Greece
 
By the present, the undersigned wish to make a statement, as members of the Asylum Appeals Committees of Greece (Presidential Decree 114/2010), regarding the latest developments in the asylum claims review process.

An  Asylum Appeals Committee is a three-member quasi-judicial body, consisting of a Civil Servant as Chairman, a member indicated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and a member selected by the Ministry of Interior from a list drawn up by the National Commission on Human Rights (E.E.D.A.), an independent advisory body to the state. Their mandate is to examine on second administrative (and final) instance appeals on asylum applications submitted by June 6, 2013 and rejected at the first instance by the hitherto indicated Ministry of Public Order (Greek Police officials). Since January 2011, when the Committees started to function, to this date, only a minimal number of their decisions have been challenged before the Administrative Appeals Court (as provided by national legislation). Shortly after the joint EU-Turkey statement, the Committees were temporarily entrusted to examine appeals of asylum seekers who had entered the country from March 20, 2016 onwards - the date of application of the, legally non-binding, Joint Turkey - EU Statement. These asylum requests were deemed inadmissible at first instance examination, based on recommendations of the European Support Office (EASO) representatives who conducted interviews in English.  Law 4375/2016 appointed the Committees as the competent body to examine appeals on the inadmissibility decisions until the establishment of a Standing Appeals Authority.

After assuming their additional responsibilities the Committees responded with speed and professionalism to the requirements of this new procedure, in compliance with the extremely abridged deadlines stipulated by new law. During two meetings of the Committees held by consultants of the Migration Policy Minister (the first) and with the participation of Mr. Mouzalas (the Migration Policy Minister) himself (the second), a number of legal issues were raised, concerning unlawful, in the opinion of some members, aspects of the process in the first instance, but also a series of questions about the proceedings before the Committees. Besides procedural issues, which are anything but secondary to legal issues on substance, the most critical issue was the individual judgment for each applicant as to whether Turkey may be considered a safe third country. In this matter also lies the crucial contradiction between the wording of the Joint Declaration that "all will be returned to Turkey" and the asylum system and the safeguards provided for each applicant himself. In this respect, it was pointed out emphatically by both the consultants and by Mr. Mouzalas himself that being an independent second instance decision making body, the Committees’ independence would be undisputable and their decisions would in no way be influenced directly or indirectly, adding however the  political intentions of the government to rigorously comply with the Joint Statement. In spite of those assurance, the Ministry communicated to the Committees a letter by the European Commission which acknowledged briefly and without legal reasoning, Turkey as being a safe third country, in contrast to most international organizations reports (which were never communicated to the Committees), placing in question the political leadership’s  declarations to not interfere with the independence of the Committees.

Roughly two months following the publication of Law 4375/2016 and by virtue of an amendment voted by the Parliamentary majority of the government on 16.06.2016, the Committees ceased to be responsible for these actions, the examination of which was assigned to new "Independent Appeals Committees", each of which will consist of two magistrates (members of the Greek judiciary) and one member indicated by the UNHCR, or in case of the latter’s  inability to indicate a member on time, by the  E.E.D.A. In fact, as explicitly stated in the amendment “the upcoming modification will enhance the judicial character of the Committees and maximize the proper legal protection of the applicants, as their requests will be judged by the new committees with increased impartiality and independence."

What elapsed, then, and suddenly it was considered that the examination of asylum appeals should be passed to “other hands”, suggesting that PD 114/2010 Committees had reduced impartiality and independence? What intervened was a fully substantiated legal reasoning had been cited in dozens of judgments by the PD 114/2010 Committees, after careful consideration of individual appeals, something that was not in line with the objective of mass returns of asylum applicants to Turkey, as expressed in the non-legally binding Turkey - EU Statement. These decisions of the Committees had not been reached because their members acted according to a certain "ideology" as written in the press, or because members of the Committees were not sufficiently "neutral", since they emanated from a "civil society" (let us recall here that the final selection of members from the E.E.D.A. list is made by the responsible Minister and the UNHCR is an international organization which recommends members specialized examinations). The Committees and their members, having examined thousands of cases since 2011, based their judgment on this occasion, as always before, on published reports of international bodies and organizations such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, UNHCR, ECRE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others, which are taken into account also in the ratio of judgments of European courts such as the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice.

It becomes then apparent from the urgency and the invoked (defamatory) grounds of the amendment that the Ministry preferred to wrest the responsibility which two months ago had chosen to confer on the Committees, because the Committees’ decisions were not harmonized with the framework of the Joint EU-Turkey Statement. This constitutes an affront and insult to our professional status as legal and social scientists, specialized academically and professionally in the field of asylum and human rights. Indeed, since the publication of the very first decisions by the Committees, indicative is the statement of the Migration Policy Minister in the international press, that these decisions contravene all UNHCR guidelines for refugees (The Guardian, 20/05/2016). If this is the view of the Ministry, it is really surprising that it has not brought a request to quash the Committees’ decisions before the Administrative Appeals Court, as expressly provided by the law. Changing the composition of the Committees through expedited legislation, rather than judicial examination and resolution of serious legal issues of international law (something which would be binding upon any future committees, regardless of their composition) confirms that this move was not made because the grounds of the Committees’ decisions were incomplete or unjustified, but because these decisions placed in question the political plans of the Ministry-government.

Managing legal issues by use of political priorities raises many questions about the future of the asylum system in Greece, the protection of human rights and the rule of law. For us, it is apparent that the implementation of the EU-Turkey Statement is incompatible with the guarantees of the existing asylum system and the level of protection of human rights which has been achieved within the international and European legal framework. Unfortunately, the Ministry’s orchestrations indicate that whenever any decision making body, old or new, is not in line with the objective of mass returns to Turkey, such law amendments and wresting of authorities and responsibility will not be in the future the exception but rather the rule.
 
This document reflects the views of the following members of the PD 114/2010 Committees:
 
Adamou Efthymia, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Deli Irene, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Giannopoulou Chrisa, member indicated by the UNHCR
Gousis Constantine, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Krinidi Constantina, member indicated by the UNHCR
Komplas Nikolaos, member indicated by the UNHCR
Papageorgiou Anastasia -Asimina, member indicated by the UNHCR
Papadaki Maria, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Patri Maria, member indicated by the UNHCR
Pragkasti Zoe-Eleni, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Proestaki Zafirenia, member indicated by the UNHCR
Ressopoulou Erato, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Svana Christina, member indicated by the UNHCR
Skandalis Orestes, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Stentoumi Joanna member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Tsakiropoulou Evangelia, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
Tsouka Erato, member selected from the list of E.E.D.A.
 
 
 
]]> hatzimitsos@gmail.com (Sadmin) IMMIGRANTS & REFUGEES Sat, 18 Jun 2016 16:31:48 +0300 Hypnos Project. A User's Guide http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/culture-in-time-of-crisis/item/444-hypnos-project-a-user-s-guide http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/culture-in-time-of-crisis/item/444-hypnos-project-a-user-s-guide Hypnos Project. A User's Guide
Beetroot in conversation with Hypnos Project exhibition curators, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis and Theophilos Tramboulis

What happens to the body during sleep? How do we spend one third of our lives? During sleep our most secret and repressed self emerges. At the same time, our body becomes vulnerable. The Hypnos Project is a festival of the Onassis Cultural Centre. It consists of an exhibition of modern and contemporary art, a series of performances and sleepovers, a series of sound works and walks, lectures and discussions, a theatre production, a pyjama party, and a special magazine issue.
Βeetroot spoke to the curators of Hypnos Project exhibition Yorgos Tzirtzilakis and Theophilos Tramboulis.
 

BEETROOT: What is Hypnos Project?

YORGOS TZIRTZILAKIS: It is not a conventional themed exhibition, but rather a segmented programme of happenings, meetings, exhibitions, publications, activities, and performances opening with a two-part question: What is sleep for us today? And what is its relation to contemporary culture and contemporary art? It is a project we worked on with the entire Stegi [1] team and this is one of its most interesting aspects. Preparation took place on the basis of the idea of the editorial team. To this collaboration was added a course at the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly. And, instead of a catalogue, we published a magazine issue. All these taken together constitute a rethinking of curatorial practices: for such a topic, a standalone exhibition is both outdated and restrictive. This is why we attempted to rethink its processing mechanism. That is, the mechanism for approaching, opening up, disassembling and reassembling sleep on multiple levels.

THEOPHILOS TRAMBOULIS: From the perspective of sleep we can understand a lot about contemporary culture and society. Usually, we think that sleep begins where civilisation ends. That when we sleep there is no place for society, the economy, politics. We fall asleep and we forget everything, we retreat and only when we wake up does public life once more begin, the suffering of the body and of work. But it is not so. When we sleep, our bed itself, our bedroom, the person sleeping next to us or not sleeping next to us, what we wear, our hours of sleep make up social life and reflect social life. The history of art is full of sleeping bodies in which relationships are captured: what work and rest means, what the technologies of the body and of gender are, what the representations of health and disease are, what public and private spaces are, and, of course, the known relation between sleep and death, eros and psyche, dreams and the unconscious. These are ultimately the themes running through the exhibition and the entire segmented programme.

Y.Τ.: What understanding did we gain from such “work”? First of all, that sleep is not restricted to what we consider as sleep. What we call sleep culture is not identical to the time we close our eyes but is related to the modus vivendi of rest, indolence, so called Mediterranean nonchalance. That moment of apparent inaction, idleness, désoeuvrement or inactivity, which many consider to be a passive moment, but which is in fact an overheated factory. For the surrealists, real life begins when someone sleeps. That is, the work of a large invisible factory begins. When we talk about sleep, therefore, we mustn't confine it to the trap of the conventional definition or its literal sense. Second of all, are the combinations contained within the word itself: for example, the relationship between sleep and death, the relationship between sleep and love – as Theophilos said earlier: the twin brother of sleep is death, which explains cemeteries. [2]

T.Τ.: Consider how much we look at people sleeping without realising it. We look at people who sleep next to us but there is also an explicit or implicit culture of the sleeping body, the poetic sleeping body, as in the surrealists, of the body surrendered to the voyeuristic gaze, or of the medicalised body, let's say in psychoanalysis, which placed sleep and dreams at the centre of its hermeneutics. Until now, looking at people sleeping was in a way a benefit of intimacy, an intrusion of privacy or a medicalising intervention. If we happened to see someone sleeping in a public place, we felt we were intruding, whether it was a tired person on the bus or a nonchalant holidaymaker. Today this has changed. Public sleep, the way in which the sleeping body is inserted into public space, is one of the major symptoms of social disorder. Public sleep is today a gaping wound. Either in the circumstances of the homeless in cities or of course the circumstances under which displaced people sleep in this global political rupture.

Y.Τ.: During our research we identified a critical change: everyone knows about the cyclical character of everyday life, which distinguished our activities from one another: at night we go to our bedroom to sleep and in the morning we go to our place of work, or wherever else. However, today we observe another mixed kind of space, a new architectural typology, which we could call the “bedroom-office”. Think about how many are those who sit or lie on their beds with their laptops, iPads or smartphones, sending messages or performing various tasks. It is a new form of working in bed, in which not only the labour of the dream takes place, the overheated factory of the unconscious, but also some of the contemporary forms of immaterial labour. Bedrooms no longer are the clean and purified space of rest or love, but a space smudged by the hands of immaterial labour. This is a new phenomenon.  

T.Τ. : The bedroom, that is, is no longer exactly a private space which only the eyes of a select few may penetrate. Here we have once more a correlation between sleep and public space, because new forms of economy which transcend public control, open bedrooms in a form of hospitality exchange. The bedroom is an open space which does not correlate sleep only to retreat but also to the multiple exposure of the body. For the past century and a half in Greek art, sleep, the supine body, is a slow burning theme. There is a thread that makes up a history of Greek civilisation through sleep. We do not profess that the exhibition follows this thread  in a systematic way and goes back to the sleeping or awake Minotaur, it is not an Ariadne’s thread – though sleeping Ariadne in Naxos is a postmodern fetish. Yet it is a thread which attempts to identify the way in which sleep has been imprinted on bodies from the 19th century to this day. And the big gamble and risk for the exhibition –which has made us lose our sleep– is whether this can create a coherent reframing of the 19th century, of Greek modernism and of today. Whether we can see this continuity. Because we consider Gyzis, Lytras, Iakovidis to be great taboos which we do not touch either to love or to reject. We do not touch them at all. And we don't discuss them in relation to today. This is the thread we are trying to weave a little bit, around the great repressed motif of sleep.

Y.Τ. : Great painting from the Greek 19th century, in which we discern a gleam, an explosion of the themes of rest, love and daydream, was characterised as an “ethnography”. Something inferior, that is, which is concerned with representations of the family, the grandfather, the grandmother, the newborn, the ways of life and normality, as well as the supine woman with flowers in the vase next to her, and the woman resting from hard labour. On the other hand there existed expansive rhetorical themes, politics and revolution.  Yet sleep is an existential condition. And this is a major political issue of our time. It is not something abstract and closed, concerning only medicine or architecture, biology or psychoanalysis. This painting from the Greek 19th century is an initial inscription of biopolitics into contemporary culture. The second is that great painting – which some have cunningly and wrongly identified as corresponding exactly to the representational painters of the 1980s and 1990s – is linked to the cutting edge of today. For example, we can link a supine woman by Theodoros Rallis to the odalisques and to colonialism. We can, on the other hand, see it another way, as evidence of an attitude towards life. In essence contemporary life is a mechanism of acceleration, which today is called upon to clash with these phenomena and these repressions. To clash with issues which we do not consider to be political but which in fact are more political than that which we consider political. This is our contribution I think. The fact that we attempt to address an issue which initially seemed metaphysical or ontological, and which we place at the centre of the political consciousness of modern man.

B.: This political aspect of sleep interests me a great deal. So what is sleep? Is it democratic? Is it communism? Is it a monarchy? What is it?

T.Τ. : Sleep is one of the first issues coming to the fore when one thinks of democracy. The idea of large buildings in which all people sleep together, public dormitories that is, is a fundamental issue for philosophers of the Enlightenment. Sleep is neither democratic nor monarchic, there is no politics in it. Where politics comes into it is in the way we think about sleep. Today we think of sleep mainly as a disorder. Either as disorder in public space, homeless, refugees, or as a disorder of individuality, sleeplessness, oversleeping, paralysis. I think that what Yorgos was saying earlier, is that we tried to abandon typical political definitions –communist, liberal, or whatever else– and to create new forms for the political, exactly through such processes. This is the big gamble as set by the biopolitics of our time, the control of the body. This is why I insist so much on the fact that we are looking at bodies sleeping. The body of the other we see sleeping, is the body we wish to appropriate. The time of sleep is the time of our gaze looking at the body of the other. On the other hand, of course, it is also the time of the sleeping subject. Either the erotic body, male or female, which sleeps, or the displaced body of the outcast, the sleeping body has its own time and its own normality, impenetrable to us. Between those two temporalities of sleep lies the political circumstance.

Y.Τ.:  It is true in any case that the democratisation of sleep was a goal of modernity. Modernism tried to establish hygienic living conditions for all of society and, in this sense, attempted an initial democratisation of sleep: all must have a minimum condition of sleep hygiene. Yet here we must go a step further and see that this condition was tackled by modernity as an idealisation of bodily exercise. At the centre lies the athletic body, the sweaty body. This appears contradictory: on the one hand modernity considered that we must have hygienic living and sleeping conditions, yet at the same time we must not sleep too much. As we know, Savoir Vivre and the various Guides for Good Behaviour, already since the 17th century, dictated that we must not stay in bed for too long. Gradually there started to emerge the spectre of work and the anxiety of waking. It is, therefore, a matter that remains marginalised in contemporary debate. In this sense, we can claim that Hypnos Project  wishes to disrupt this immobilised theme. We must also neither forget nor underestimate the fact that the theme of sleep runs through all of popular culture. In a few words, we tried to examine the issue in its entire spectrum, from great artists, such as Gyzis among others, to popular culture. The documentation, for example, of sleeping practices in the experiences of spirituality or hypnotism, already from the dark period of the interbellum.

T.Τ.: And the way in which the juxtaposition between sleep and work changes, to which Yorgos referred to earlier. Sleep in classical capitalist economy is a regulated and regulatory eight hours, an imaginary limit for health which we must reach, in three equally divided parts of the day. Eight hours of sleep, work, rest. To this limit the worker must respond both through their imaginary as well as neurotically. Today when the conditions of production are changing, the regulatory limit for health is different, and smaller, it has been limited to six hours of sleep, or five hours of sleep. And it has been dressed up with the expression "this is how much I need to sleep". A new rule, we need less and less sleep, because economic circumstances are changing.

Y.Τ.: This theme is also a practice of “anti-discipline” if we think about it. We examine the topic from various angles, attempting to not limit it neither to its metaphysical and dream dimension, nor to its instrumental one. Sleep, and everything that relates to it is, in a strange way, a productive moment for humans.

T.Τ.: In the exhibition there are also large (in size) works, from the 19th century as well as very small etchings which have not been shown much, or at all. There are also contemporary works in conversation with these, there are unexpected versions of great artists we know in a different way, there is archive material with photographs from popular culture magazines. The voices of sleep, which make no distinction between high and low culture, run through modernity, from the old masters until today.

Y.Τ.: It is not, therefore, an exhibition, but a machine. The exhibition, in the conventional sense, let me repeat, appears to be outdated at this time. Our goal was to disturb the existing norms for exhibitions. In his sense, Hypnos Project is a machine that perforates the issue.

T.Τ.: A [sort of] hole punch.

B.:  I have the sense that sleep is connected to love. Somehow. Or perhaps to sex. Is this true based on your research? Or through the exhibits by the artists, do they somehow touch on love?

T.Τ.: Look, when you say love, yes, we do sleep after sex –not everyone– or in any case sleep is a very common metonymy for love. We say, I am sleeping with someone, without making clear whether this is a sleeping arrangement –whether we are indeed sleeping next to each other– or whether it’s a nice way of saying you are in fact not sleeping with someone, you do everything but sleep with them.  But what's important as regards love is not whether you really do sleep after sex or not, it's the investments you make on the sleeping body. What can you see when someone is sleeping? That is I think where it is very much linked to love. To what you are allowed and not allowed to see on the sleeping body of the person next to you. What conditions are created in the public dormitories we talked about earlier, when so many same sex bodies are sleeping? Because the big ban in public dormitories was for mixing of the sexes. While the beginning of the 20th century came with mixed beaches, and we could swim together, only much later– and it is still not completely true , for example in trains– was mixed sex  public sleeping allowed. This means two things. It means, on the one hand, that there is a ban on looking at the sleeping body of the opposite sex, but it is at the same time a great reminder that in our culture, that which is repelled –that is, homoeroticism– is that which makes bodies coherent on a social level. Public sleep therefore, and gazing at the other –men looking at male bodies sleeping and women looking at female bodies sleeping– is an erotic and a sex condition going far beyond what we do when tired and sweaty from sex, we doze off a little.

Y.Τ.: I would somewhat disentangle it from the erotic. I think it has to do with how we perceive the ideal place for sleep –the bedroom– which belongs to the realm of woman. The man, drawing from the anthropological tradition and from the stereotype of the warrior, must stay awake. Moreover, let us not forget that the nightmare also belongs to the realm of sleep – and we do have some works relevant to that in the exhibition – as do worry, as does autoeroticism. And of course the vast expanse of the unconscious. The sleeping condition reminds us of a primal natural state of the human body. And this does indeed retain an erotic character.  Equating sleep with the erotic may have to do with our own desire. Perhaps also with our own anxiety: I will fall in love so I can sleep, or I will fall asleep to fall in love. But I think that sleep carries within it some traces of a natural fact that connects us to the retreat of the Ego but also to the movement of the stars or –to exaggerate a little bit– even with how pebbles roll downhill on Taygetus at night.

T.Τ.: We tend to believe that love  –and all which turns on it– are essentialist, our very existence itself. That we are best distilled on that aspect which concerns love. That is and is not true. Gender  –in the sense of the formation of the gendered subject– and our desire are two very fundamental things. Is it or is it not the centre of our existence? I think they extend far beyond love but they always come back to it.

B.: Tell us a bit about the exhibition, because we keep hearing it: it is not exactly an exhibition in the traditional sense. That you tried to create a situation into which us visitors enter, not to see the exhibits, but to feel sleep.

T.Τ.: Exhibitions –particularly exhibitions featuring such artists as Parthenis, Tsarouchis, Moralis– tend to be approached as a space devoid of meaning and miss en scène, where each work retains it its artistic autonomy. We see every work because it is beautiful. And it makes sense for the work to be there because it is beautiful. Our own approach is more dreamy, more sleep-like.  One enters a state and slowly discovers the works, which may or may not be contemporary. They may or they may not be beautiful.

Y.Τ.: They may not even be works. It could even be you who is looking at them. This is a prerequisite we discussed at quite some length. Art exhibitions slowly became identified with the so called white cube. Later with the neurosis of reappropriated space. We tried something different. We tried not to showcase the works one by one but to create a mechanism, a whole through which we wander as somnambulists, in the sense that we move disorientedly. That is we tried to create “de-grounding”, an unreality. For example, one can wander around the Stegi basement and fantasise about the stratosphere for a moment. The concepts of the ground and of the route become unclear and at the same time a part of the exhibition and an exhibit. This is something we persisted with: the precedence of the atmosphere and not just the idealised masterpiece. All the works at the Stegi basement function within the whole narrative. On the other hand, in placing the works inside a historic building, that of the Onassis Foundation, we opted for a different strategy: the logic of the “partial object” and the principle of complementarity through difference.

T.Τ.: We must at this point stress that the “we” we are referring to includes Flux, Thanasis Demiris and Eva Manidaki, with whom we discussed at length about the directorial dimension we wished to create, and who created a formidable labyrinth in which we unfurled the string of sleep.

B.: Can you tell us anything about your own sleep?

Y.Τ.: The strange thing is –and this often happens– that when one preoccupies oneself with a subject, it plagues you, it becomes a symptom. We cannot tackle a topic without bearing the cost. The topic itself dictates how you will behave. This does not mean that whoever is occupied with sleep will sleep more. Quite the opposite. It means that you must grapple with the origins, the gaps and the troughs of the issue. Thus, my preoccupation with the topic meant a prolonged disorder in my sleep. Through its becoming a symptom.

T.Τ.: As happens to me often, I am not sleeping well, without knowing why. Now with Hypnos, I know why I am not sleeping well. Afterwards, when the exhibition is over, I will once again not know why I am not sleeping well.
Y.Τ.: One’s preoccupation with sleep can disturb –and thereby uncover– one’s sleep itself. It gradually and over a long period rearranges one's entire existential perception: what the essence and the function of sleep is and, in this context, what you are and –mainly– what the Other is.

T.Τ.: This is always the issue. Of both the exhibition and the publication with which we are going ahead. It is a set of texts, in the form of a magazine, about sleep, without ever getting to sleep in the way we would expect them to. Sleep advice or physiology of sleep, psychology of sleep. No. The texts that are about sleep talk about the other, talk about desire, talk about death, talk about the uses of sleep –in the military for example– or about sleep disorders in people sleeping in the streets, talk about sleep as the construction of an architectural space. Therefore, when talking about sleep one never talks about sleep, in much the same way as when talking about a subject one does not talk about a subject. To talk about a subject, one needs to talk about another subject. If one wants to talk about love one has to talk about sleep. And if one wants to talk about sleep one must talk about war. So one tries to talk about these issues while at the same time not talking about them. It is like a lovers’ quarrel and trying find excuses to address the issue they never want to address.

Y.Τ.: In rhetorical terms we could say that there is no autonomous discourse in sleep. In the sense that when we talk about sleep we are awake. When we sleep we don’t talk. This is the paradox. This is why we talk about sleep by encircling it, fooling it, nudging it.

Transcribed by Vassia Lyri
Translated by Despina Biri
 


Tranlator's notes
[1] The Onassis Cultural Centre ( in Greeek: Στέγη Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών – Stegi Grammaton ke Technon) is informally referred to as “Stegi” in Greek (Translator’s note).
[2]  Cemetery: From the Greek verb  κοιμάμαι [koimamai = to sleep, which we usually call graveyards.

Transcribed by Vassia Lyri
Translated by Despina Biri

First published in Greek on the supplement "Anagnoseis" of the newspapaper "Avgi", 12.5.2016.


Hypnos Project 18 APR – 19 JUN 2016
What happens to the body during sleep? How do we spend one third of our lives? During sleep our most secret and repressed self emerges. At the same time, our body becomes vulnerable.
The Hypnos Project is a festival of the Onassis Cultural Centre. It consists of an exhibition of modern and contemporary art, a series of performances and sleepovers, a series of sound works and walks, lectures and discussions, a theatre production, a pyjama party, and a special magazine issue.
Curators: Afroditi Panagiotakou, Elisavet Pantazi, Konstantina Soulioti, Theophilos Tramboulis, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, Pasqua Vorgia
Coordination: Elisavet Pantazi, Konstantina Soulioti, Pasqua Vorgia
Concept: Afroditi Panagiotakou, Elisavet Pantazi
Architectural Design: FLUX – office (Eva Manidaki & Thanassis Demiris)
 
Click here for more information
Exhibition at the OCC opening hours: everyday 12:00-21:00
Exhibition at the Onassis Library opening hours: Wednesday-Friday 12:00-20:00 & Saturday-Sunday 11:00-15:00
 
]]> hatzimitsos@gmail.com (Sadmin) CULTURE Mon, 13 Jun 2016 18:38:17 +0300 Is growth returning to Greece? http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/politics/item/443-is-growth-returning-to-greece http://analyzegreece.gr/topics/politics/item/443-is-growth-returning-to-greece Diamantis Diamantopoulos,
Dimosthenis Papadatos-Anagnostopoulos

Since autumn,  and with increasing urgency during the last weeks,  the Greek Prime Minister claims that now is the time for the sacrifices of the Greek people to  be vindicated. The view that this will happen in the second half of 2016 is mentioned in the European  Commission economic forecast for Greece, published in May 2016. More specifically, according to the EC a GDP growth to Greece is expected to resume due to an acceleration of domestic demand.

But how would you combine  indirect taxation, the “automatic expenses  and salaries mechanism cut”, the abolition of low income benefit (EKAS) and other austerity measures imposed by the latest  omnibus,  with  strengthening  of domestic demand and consequently with the recovery of economy the next months?

Minister of Finance Efkleidis Tsakalotos himself admits that the above don’t match:
“I fully understand  those we claim that even if we succeed something regarding debt relief, this doesn’t help directly the poor who are already in difficulty, since we impose heavier taxation at the same time[…] This is true. On the other hand, if we succeed something on the debt issue  […] this will be a signal for the markets  that the Greek economy can cope with it and so investors can invest long-term. This can itself offset the recessionary measures that we take.”

From the above statement we don’t  deduct  that the estimated return to growth will come due to the acceleration of demand. According to the Minister,  growth will be the result of the debt settling, which will bring investment. Where is this estimation based?

Investment without a profit guarantee?
Since 2008, the percent of GDP gross investment is constantly falling , with the exemption of the second semester of 2014 and the first of 2015. As usual, the neoliberal explanation ,but also the government’s latest argument , for this decline is political uncertainty in Greece. However, reality is different.  According to Workers General  Confederation Institute ‘s (INE-GSEE) annual report for 2016,  the undistributed profits - particularly since 2013-  are in a higher level comparing with  funds invested: businessmen prefer to keep their profits instead of investing in “real economy”.

This is not a Greek specific. OECD forecast for 2016, published in February, refers to  subdued investment in Eurozone, in addition to high unemployment rates. Political instability has not always been a fact in Greece and certainly is not in other countries;  the point has always been  who do we secure this stability for.  On the contrary, what has been always the case was uncertainty regarding the expected earnings.   Investors are not usually motivated by their will to offer to the society.

Growth means the end of the crisis?
Neoliberal financial analysts as much as the Greek  government  wait for the growth together,  planning as if the global economic crisis is over.  As if labour exploitation by the capital –as described by Marx- up to the level  that “healthy” growth of the capitalist production procedure can be secured  is no longer the case. On the contrary, it is this crisis that accelerates a series of mechanisms to prepare the new phase of “growth”, i.e. capital accumulation.

Some of these mechanisms are familiar:
I. The liquidation of inadequately exploited capital , the cessation of small or large production units, the concentration of capital. From 2008 to 2015, 244.712 enterprises have stopped their operation or moved from Greece.  This is not due to the “anti-capitalistic campaign of the Left and the Unions”, as argued by the  mainstream media. This year’s report  of Greek General Confederation of Labour Institute (INE-GSEE) reminds us that with the liquidation of the weakest funds, the current demand moves from the companies that closed down to the ones who persevere until now. During a crisis, some mourn and some thrive.

II. The increase of long-term and mass unemployment, the reduction of purchasing power,  intensive discipline and transformation of terms in selling labour.  During 2010-2015, Greek GDP shrunk by 24.2% and unemployment exploded: 12.7% (2010), 17.9% (2011), 24.4% (2012), 27.5% (2013), 26.5% (2014) and 25% (2015). The increase of employment by 222.834 jobs in the beginning of 2016, is characterised by “flexibility”. The general trends in the labour market are:   the substitution of  full-time employment to part-time,  no obligation for reimbursement for  temporary employment when someone gets redundant, no payment for overtime. 

During the same period, the actual salary has decreased by 28.1%, while the dropping of purchasing power of the lower salary is not comparable to any other country in Europe : -24.7% for all, and -34.3% for youngsters under25 .
 
Growth? Maybe, but for who?
 
It is against this background,that the growth will eventually happen, if ithappens. During the crisis a redistribution of income against the employment was imposed in order to secure“normal” growth,which has not been feasible. So, this redistribution is going to continue, and now we have a new weapon to support it, the automatic mechanism of cutting expenses.In this case the parliamentary majority will not be under pressure.
David Harvey names this condition accumulation by dispossession”  and De Angelis “new enclosures». The much –awaited investors will come only if the Greek government guarantee profits for them, and this guarantee means the concession of public resources and strategic corporations, through  a new privatisation fund.
 
Under these terms, the Greek economy might warm up, but in reality will be stabilised in a much lower lever than before the crisis. What would this “achievement” mean for the society and the environment? The “red growth” propagandaavoids any reference to that.That’s because the “red” growth is similar to the “blue”with only one difference:in the first case the political party that demanded writing-off the debt, high taxation of the rich (wealth),major public investment and strengthen of the workers’poistion in production, is the same party that calls social cannibalism a “march forward”.

Translated by Caterina Drossopoulou

First published in Greek on RedNotebook, 24.5.2016
 
 
]]> jniuoqdjerpu39r4ur8yyr@gmail.com (Dimosthenis Papadatos-Anagnostopoulos) POLITICS Fri, 03 Jun 2016 22:01:28 +0300