By Vestnik Kavkaza
On January 25th Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left) won the early elections in Greece. It gained 36.3% of the votes. The new Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, already stated that the EU leaders’ statement on the possibility of new sanctions against Russia was published without Athens’s consent. Experts believe that such behavior by the Greek authorities is connected with a deep clash between Greece and the EU not only on economic issues, but also in politics.
Vladimir Chikvishvili, an expert of the Russian Council for International Affairs, former Russian ambassador to Greece, thinks that the victory of Tsipras and Syriza is a result of the serious transformation of the political field in Greece, which started in 2010 after the serious debt and budget crisis. “For 5 years the situation in Greece has been heating up. The budget crisis turned into an economic crisis, then they got social and political crises; there was a governmental merry-go-round.” Syriza fell 1 vote short of securing a parliamentary majority; and it makes the coalition an obvious leader in the political space of Greece. However, several problems which can weaken its positions in the future face the party. According to the expert, one problem is diversity of forces in the party: “Syriza is not a homogenous party. Even though it calls itself a party, it is a coalition of various groups which have different ideological views – from radical left to centrist and radical rights, and even extremist left views.”
The second problem of Syriza is that it has “no experts who could seriously manage the government or become ministers. According to the Greek tradition, after parliamentary elections the whole leadership of ministries and departments changes, i.e. not only ministers, but also deputy ministers and even general secretaries and heads of serious departments. Thus, Syriza will have to find people who would be able to head the government and departments.”
However, Chkhikvishvili thinks that the main problem is fulfillment of the promises which were given and the reaction from European structures. It is not clear what the EU countries, primarily Germany, will do.
Nikolai Topornin, a lecturer of the European Law Department of MGIMO, tried to answer the question: “It is not right to speak about an overwhelming victory of left forces; but the current situation is unique, as Greece is one of the few European countries in which a coalition of the radical left has come to power. The situation is not typical for the EU, it is a stress for them.” It is a new experience for the EU to work with such states and governments, as their political values seriously differ from the ideas of solidarity which Brussels promotes. The initial reaction of Brussels to the Greek elections was restrained, as they couldn’t realize how they should build further relations with Greece.
President of France Francois Hollande was the first to react. He said that he welcomed the new government and invited Greece to cooperate. On the other hand, the Prime Minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, stated that Finland would prevent consideration of the issue of Greek debt forgiveness. Later the Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron stated that Tsipras’s victory made the UK reconsider the behavior of the EU members, and the country would pay more attention to the internal economic and political situation.
According to the expert, these reactions are explained by a fear of strengthening of radical political forces in Europe: Marine Le Pen in France, the radical right UKIP in the UK, the Podemos Party in Spain, which gains 20-25%, according to some forecasts. The expert stressed that countries which suffer serious economic crises are threatened by the victory of radical parties, primarily the countries of Southern Europe: “These are Greece, Portugal, Spain, to a lesser extent Italy, and Ireland which has huge debts.”
