There’s a common theme flowing through Brussels corridors this week: Trust. Trust in the Greek ability to deliver on their promised reforms; trust in Juncker’s new system to ensure transparency; Jonathan Hill was in the US urging trust in EU capital markets; and the announcement of an Energy Union hailed as the “most ambitious European energy project since the Coal and Steel Community” to help strategically address the trust/mis-trust (depending on your view point) in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
For the Greek Government it may have felt like they were bringing gifts this week as their trials and tribulations continued to headline as Eurozone Ministers approved a set of reform proposals - including plans to tackle corruption and tax evasion - submitted by the Syriza Government, thus kicking the ball down the road, and keeping Greece funded for a further four months.
Although the proposals - or gifts - were accepted there was far from ringing endorsement - the kind of gift you pretend you are happy to receive, but then turf to the back of the closet at the earliest opportunity and hope you’ll get something better next time. As the first violence broke out in Athens since Syriza took office, senior figures from Christine Lagarde to Jeroen Dijsselbloem lined up to lob their own bombe essence at Greek Finance Minister and “Accidental Economist” Yanis Varoufakis, reminding him that he cannot back track on the reforms promised by the previous Government.
The most stinging assessments were landed by German figures, the country most Greeks see as holding their economy to ransom, with Wolfgang Schäuble saying “There is a lot of doubt in Germany, that has to be understood. Only when we see that they have fulfilled [their promises] will any money be paid." and in a candid interview with Stephen Sackur, the uncompromising and unyielding, Michael Fuchs, a Senior Economic Adviser to Angela Merkel, was doubtful that Greece could remain in the Eurozone and, rather optimistic of a future without them.
Greece’s reforms still need to be ratified by Eurozone members - this should happen - but what does this mean for the future: To quote Frank Crane “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough”.
Transparently intransparent
Critics of the European Commission’s transparency register this week drew attention to the strain the “chaotic and dysfunctional” system was under, as thousands of individuals and organisations continue to sign up.
It is however, rather ironic that in a week when Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind, two figures that have been central to political discourse in the UK for the last 20 years, have both been found with their fingers if not in the till certainly hovering over it, that it remains the Council - or National Governments, where accusations of an “intransparent… unaccountable EU elite” emanate, that remain the most against the introduction of such a system to themselves. I guess we have to trust that they know what they’re doing…