Can Greek Leftists Change The EU?

The victory of Syriza in the Greek national elections did not come as a surprise, but the size of the win remains remarkable. The coalition of radical leftist parties led by Alexis Tsipras won 36 percent of the vote and almost half of the seats in the Greek Parliament. It was clear for some time that most Greeks were fed up with the two parties that have dominated Greek politics for decades, the center-right New Democracy and the center-left Pasok. New Democracy managed to survive the electoral onslaught because the alternatives for conservative voters were not really attractive.
On the left, however, Syriza copied Pasok's winning strategy of the 1980s and destroyed the political heirs of Andreas and George Papandreou by presenting itself as the voice of the people who suffer most from the economic crisis and the party willing to stand up against the European Union and the financial power centers that are seen by most Greeks as the ones responsible for the current hardships.
Again unsurprisingly, speculation has now started on what Mr. Tsipras's victory means for the rest of Europe. Syriza is the first anti-austerity party to take power in the eurozone and has promised to reverse the immensely unpopular budget cuts and structural reforms that previous Greek governments were forced to implement in order to get the money to pay of the country's debts. Mr. Tsipras has promised to go to Brussels and negotiate a better deal with the EU to reduce Greece's debt burden, a change that would allow him to formulate a more just and less painful policy to get out of the crisis. What will the EU do?
Pessimists have, again, started talking about the possibility that Greece, unhappy with Brussels' refusal to give in, might leave the eurozone and, maybe, even the EU. This “Grexit” would then spark a financial crisis because other weak eurozone members would come under attack. Simultaneously, the EU would be hit by a political storm because of a populist backlash in other EU countries against austerity policies that are perceived by many Europeans as only serving the interests of the banks and other financial institutions that have caused the problems in the first place.
Such a nightmare scenario, however, is highly unlikely. The rest of the eurozone is much better prepared now than three years ago when Greece's financial problems threatened to drag down the whole union. Nevertheless, the EU has no interest in provoking a new crisis with unpredictable consequences no matter how. For its part, the Syriza government knows the opinion polls indicating that 75 percent of the Greeks want their country to stay in the eurozone “at all costs.” In order to remain in, Mr. Tsipras will have to sit down with the EU and other creditors, and he will have to do so quickly because without a deal big funding gaps will soon make governing the country practically impossible.
For those reasons, most observers predict some prickly talks at the highest European level. But in the end these deliberations will result in a deal that Mr. Tsipras can defend at home as a break with the past, while Ms. Merkel and other European leaders will be able to convince their skeptical electorates that the Greeks will continue to honor their commitments. That compromise will be a mix of some limited debt forgiveness and longer periods for Greece to make good on its loans, linked to how rapidly the Greek economy will be growing.
More interesting will be to see whether Mr. Tsipras manages to kick off a real debate at the European level on reformulating some of the basic principles of the EU's financial and economic policies. Many critical analysts hope that Syriza's victory will create a new momentum to reconsider some of the austerity measures that have proven to be counterproductive because they hamper economic recovery instead of stimulating it. It is no coincidence that countries such as France and Italy have welcomed the Greek political earthquake. Both Paris and Rome see in Mr. Tsipras a new ally in their quest to get rid of the harsh recipes prescribed by Berlin.
Who could ever have imagined that a motley crew of Greek leftists would be Europe's best chance to rebalance its one-sided economic policies and prevent further populist uprisings?

JOOST LAGENDIJK (Cihan/Today's Zaman)