The Hanns Seidel Foundation, the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies (WM CES) and the Konstantinos Karamanlis Institute for Democracy held a conference on the outcome of the elections in Greece and their consequences for the country as well as for the European Union.
The panel considering that Greece’s fiscal consolidation course is now at stake, tried to analyze the implications of the surprising Syriza’s win in Greece and Europe. This ‘incident’ – as they called – has happened due to the social situation in Greece where 60% of voters expressed their frustration against the applied policies and the failure of the programme. The party system is set-up in a different way, radical forces create harsh tones in home affairs, the government is facing the threat of being voted-out and even the Greek exit from the Euro-zone becomes a possible scenario. Greece, in a 5 years period has held 4 parliamentary elections. The new government could give an impetus for new institutions, it could eradicate all the structural reforms that have been established all those years, though.
The MEPs underlined the mistakes of the previous government which missed the momentum of the reforms and said that there is need of ‘ownership’ of the programme for Greece. They were doubtful if Syriza’s win would signalize the desire for change and drive Greece to a ‘Grexit’. Although, this different political set-up that took place in Greece may provoke the change to other EU countries.
The new Greek coalition-cooperation for some of the speakers – is not in a good faith and it seems to be unlucky in a national and European level. Their common rule and guiding principle is the populist rhetoric even when it has to do with the Greek-Russian relations. They support Russia on the shake of populism. Even though, the MEPs agreed that Russian aid does not constitute an alternative. By concluding, concerning the legal framework of the European Union the main point of acceptance was that Troika has to be replaced.