An Opportunity for Greece to Save Europe and Itself

EU President and Turkey Prime Minister, photo Burhan Ozbilici AP

Jeff—Saturday

This week the EU and Turkey held an emergency summit in Brussels to address a refugee crisis that is trapping a flood of men, women, and children inside Greece’s borders. The massive warm weather migration season hasn’t begun but thousands sit penned up in makeshift shelters amid conditions it seems few journalists are allowed to witness. Tempers are flaring all across the region, and as frustration grows, there is no doubt things will get worse. 

Photo by Marko Djuirica, Reuters

So, what game’s afoot?

To me it’s obvious.  A half-dozen years ago I wrote this sentence in a book: “Member states kept returning immigrant asylum seekers to Greece claiming that, as their original E.U. entry point, by law they’re a Greek problem—as if Greece were the European Union’s immigration filter trap.”

Today there’s not even the pretext of some other arrangement. Greece is the EU’s de facto refugee filter trap, holding pen, relocation center, or whatever other euphemism one wishes to use.  And with Greece’s ever-worsening financial circumstances—and make no mistake about that reality—it is the EU’s the most vulnerable and malleable candidate for the title. 

As I see it, negotiations are now underway to make Greece the de jure location, with name-calling and finger pointing in full swing to give politicians on all sides of the borders political cover for what is coming.  It seems the perfect scenario is shaping up for Greece to turn to its benefit a situation it can’t escape no matter what.  I say “can’t escape” because the Greek people would never abandon the refugees to drown at sea, or die on land of starvation, disease, or violence at the hands of extremists, despite the apparent indifference of Austria and its surrounding Balkan neighbors to leaving those refugees to such fates. 

Greeks donating food in Athens Constitution Square

Piraeus food distribution center, photo Thanassis Stavrakis AP 

As hard as some in the EU may try to make Greece seem the bad guy, the ploy isn’t working.  Everyone knows Greece’s financial crisis keeps it from properly tending to the refugee flow, and harsh visuals and words out of countries tied to memories they’d rather forget of World War II are beginning to percolate in the media, and will only intensify if things do not change.

A betting man would say the answer to the question, “What will happen?” is found in what matters most to the involved nations’ electorates: debt repayment or repelling refugees.  That’s a harsh way to put it, but obvious from the behavior of the parties concerned.

The refugee crisis has the EU showing sudden flexibility toward Greece on pension cuts the EU long insisted were immutable conditions of a third bailout, and “debt relief” is now formally on the table for discussion. Undoubtedly other financial incentives are there for Greece should it agree to serve Europe in this refugee crisis, a crisis I hasten to point out was not of Greece’s making.  But whether it’s the fates or something else, the Greek government now has the opportunity of extricating itself from a financial crisis for which it most certainly shares a great deal of responsibility.

The question is how will the Greek government handle this opportunity to rescue both the refugees and its own people from parallel crises?  Europe is desperate to rescue itself from the refugee influx—perhaps even so much so as to bite at Turkey’s (current) latest demands for cutting off the flow—but cannot do so without Greece front and center in the mix.  Greece best think long and hard on what it wants in return, for it will not likely have this clear an opportunity again.

It is a time for firm—but civil—negotiations. 

For those cynics of you who see my suggestion as encouraging mercenary financial opportunism to profit off a humanitarian crisis, look closer.  You’ll see Greeks in the depths of their own Great Depression reaching selflessly out to help families fleeing World War II-like horrors.  Then recite this simple phrase: “Greek lives matter too.”

—Jeff