Merkozy orders Greece to cut everything….except its arms contracts with France and Germany.
In the pre-austerity Athens budgets, there were quite a few items on the military’s shopping list… 60 Eurofighter aircraft, €4 billion. French frigates and patrol boats for over €4 billion and €400 million respectively. German U-boats, for €2 billion. But – you’d think – all that’s had to go by the board.
Er, no actually. Last October – during one of their last meetings with George Papandreou – both Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy made a point of reminding Papa that they intended to enforce the contracts. In fact, it has since been suggested, if Greece gets the next tranche of bailout cash due in March -in the region of €75 billion – some new arms contracts will be signed. So Greece has sold Piraeus harbour to Beijing….but will be buying new armed vessels to put in it. Well that’s sensible from a NATO viewpoint, isn’t it?
Thousands are living on the streets, doctors in Athens hospitals are handling only emergencies, bus drivers are on strike, schools are still short of textbooks, thousands of state employees are demonstrating against their dismissal, and every householder has endured a 20% surcharge on electricity bills. But the military has survived unscathed…..thanks to Franco-German pressure.
As far as I’m aware, the only person at the moment kicking up any fuss about this is veteran radical )and former chum of my Dutch Friend Leo Jacobs) Danny Cohn-Bendit. These days, M. Bendit is the leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, and while I would share about 0.003% of his political views, I do share his concern about this.
Because according to the just-released Rüstungsexportbericht 2010 (2010 Arms Exports Report) the Greeks are, after the Portuguese – also a near-technically insolvent EU Member – the German armaments industry’s most valued clients.
During 2010, Greece bought a whopping 223 howitzers and one submarine from Germany…. €403 million worth: in any other field of business, the Troika of Brussels, the IMF and the bondholders would’ve rejected such a ridiculous expenditure out of hand. But it’s all there in the record books. In 2010, the Greek Defence budget was cut by a mere slither at 0.2%. The welfare budget went down by a much bigger percentage, and a lot more money: €1.8 billion.
The main perceived enemy is….wow, Turkey. I can’t say I blame the Greeks for being wary of Recep Erdogan. But the 2012 budget proposes cuts to welfare spending of another 9% – aka, €2 billion. When referring to the military during that year, the mealy-mouthed Foreign Ministry in Berlin offered this press release to a bewildered world:
‘The German Government supports the policy of consolidation of the Greek Prime Minister Papademos. The Government’s guiding assumption is that the Greek government will, on its own responsibility, contemplate meaningful cuts in military spending. The Federal Government has expressed its fundamental expectation that military contracts will be fulfilled.’
You’d have thought that, under the circumstances, there might have been a waiver on that ‘fundamental expectation’, given that the founding members of the EU ‘contemplate meaningful cuts in defence spending’. But apparently not.
The Slog 