It’s time for a European Revolution! YAY! Emancipation of the troubled EU citizen, active participation and social media! YEAH! Europe-wide referenda! Whoohoo! Hear! Hear! The proposal to revolutionize the European Union comes from a man who led his own country to ruins and unconditionally surrendered to the demands of the country’s creditors.
After saving Greece by deliberately taking the country to IMF mechanism and accepting all imposed terms without any negotiations, former prime minister George Papandreou plans to save the whole of the European Union.
In an article he posted in Huffington Post, the former PM who wanted to restruct Greece from its fundaments and ended up in ruining the lives of the majority of citizens, dares speaking of active EU citizens who need to have a say in decisions-taking EU mechanisms.
Referenda across Europe and social media everywhere will help emancipate the troubled EU citizen:
“Europe can regain the confidence of the markets, but first we must regain the confidence of our citizens. That is why I called for a referendum in Greece, so that people could debate and decide on their own future.
There is nothing wrong with European countries ceding sovereignty in the interest of creating a stronger Europe. (Indeed, they already have.) But as we do so, we need to rethink how our representatives in the Union are elected and how decisions are made. An EU president, elected by a European Parliament (or even a directly elected president), European-wide referenda, forms of more direct citizen participation and the use of social media are ideas already ripe to explore.
This new Europe, as I see it, will not be the product of one grandiose decision, dictated by an elite minority of powerful nations or some anonymous bureaucrats in Brussels. Small, incremental but complementary steps — made by each of us individually and all of us together — will build the values and the foundations for the Europe that we want.
Democracy and education will give new capacity to our citizens and that, in the end, will empower Europe and reinforce its legitimacy in our societies and around the world.” (Full post)
…without an apology, without a word of regret. And not a single note that while he goes around the globe delivering speeches and giving lectures in Harvard, Greek taxpayers come up for his salary and benefits as MP.
Politicians don’t do apologies, don’t do regret, and don’t what they are supposed to do. Ever. Be they Greek or other.
Not only do Greek taxpayers stump up for his salary and expenses while he’s telling people how he will save the world, starting with Europe, he gets paid handsomely on top of that to spout this BS. Wonder how taxable his “fees” are?
I was actually discussing democratic reform in the EU, with a friend who is an MEP candidate in Scotland and what ole’ George is suggesting is what many in that game think is the only way to keep the EU alive. The system of governance that the EU uses is overtly complex and very undemocratic.
Papandreou and others believe the only way to tame the bureaucratic beast is to put more democracy in the hands of people. Unfortunately what works in theory won’t work in practice. National governments aren’t going to give up any of their real power (though as you’ve seen they have no problem in making other states do so), as its they themselves who will suffer in the elections if the beefed up EU parliament makes a decision that their electorate doesn’t like.
There’s also the problem that each European state has different economic systems i.e. Liberalism in the UK, Statism in France, and Corporatism in Germany etc and there is simply no compatibility between these different systems. The real kicker is the EU’s unpopularity has never been higher. People want less EU not more EU.
American academics often say that unless Europe integrates further we will become “geopolitically irrelevant” with some even suggesting there should be further integration “despite the general populations wishes”. I have no problem with being geopolitically irrelevant. The only countries in non- Former Soviet Europe with pretensions of international grandeur are the UK and France and the former being extremely war-weary and in poor economic shape and the latter being on the edge of financial catastrophe, I think their global policemen days are over.
In Summary, ole’ Georges idea’s aren’t anything new, and probably won’t work.
thanks for giving a broader approach to GP-concept, contrary to KTG that saw the whole idea from a narrow-minded Greek ankle. Ypu are right. With this stage of EU, people want less not more ie. with more integration. OK Americans have also a different concept based on the united states but EU can never be USE because the souvereign states of Europe have a much longer history than the American states had. Comparing apples with oranges? that can be only a big failure wedding specially when there’re many grooms & brides bound to their own national interests.
it looks as mission impossible.
democracy starts at home, and if you can’t do it there, you can’t make it anywhere.
“democracy starts at home, and if you can’t do it there, you can’t make it anywhere”
You are 100% correct, KTG. All of this transnational “democracy” is a scam to remove the political class from any effective democratic control.
Mr. Papandreou is not the one who ruined Greece.
It was already a ruin, only hidden.
I want to accuse the writer of this article for slander, all who judge Papandreou for that where he is not responsible for at all.
What is unveiling the last years, and still!! is not from his time only that he was trying to make something out of an already rotten Greece.
Cheating, and name all the other shameful acts, is something that obviously belongs to the culture as it has become, nourished already from the beginning of each Greek’s life, it has become a legal way of living to cheat, to lie, to hide, and to pretend to be honest, even daring to go to church, pretending to love Jesus Christ, cursing him with all what happens out of the doors of the church, and nobody was putting any questions nor exclamation marks. Facade. Masks.
Anyhow, it is not possible to explain to a blind person what is light, or colours. Or darkness. You need to know what is light to know what is darkness. So, a blind person cannot even miss the light. Darkness is okay.
I assumed that you all, from Keep talking Greece, had at least more intelligence than all others with the nationality “Greek” on the very moment.
Europe is very very supersticious, and me also.
I hope for Europe they did not make a mistake with helping you.
The habits have not changed.
Not any control is there.
It is a very dangerous situation for all people, not only for the Greeks.
But again: it needs intelligence to understand that.
If you want to read something very intelligent, and what could help you to learn something constructive, read Klaus Kastner’s blog:
http://klauskastner.blogspot.no/
Do it.
Sharpen your mind. Remove the mist from your eyes. Clean your ears. All Greeks are brainwashed by the media there, and you, Keep talking Greece (but for God’s sake tell the truth) just copy and paste their lies.
I like Mr. Papandreou’s idea very very much.
The first reasonable and brilliant idea from a Greek for a long time.
Bravo, Mr. Papandreou.
from what we here know Mr Papandreou served for years as minister in several governments. so he is part of the system that ruined this country. when he took office as pm in 2009, he was saying more or less the same things to Greeks (active participation of citizens, transparency in who is getting important state mechanism offices (kind of job openings for all), social media blahblahblah. and he was the first to go around in Europe accusing his own citizens for having a series of bad habit (tax evasion, primerily). what did he do to change the national habits and reconstruct the state? fairly nothing. if he tried but the system hindered him, he should come out and name & shame those.
furthermore, from what we know, he accepted unconditionally all lenders’ terms.
From the “Denmark of the South” he proclaimed in Oct 2009 we ended up to a 3.world country of the north, when he left office in Oct 2011.
AIf a prime minister doesnot have a share , I would know who had…
Greeks have chosen him to be their prime minister. Greeks cannot blame him to be there, taking over a government, what has been there after another government, and another, and so on….., to blame him for what is coming out of the doors, when opening the house named “Greece”, and what has been filled with people and furniture what was too bad to show it to the world. But the media are witnessing.
Shame over the country, over what all created. And kept it a secret.
If Papandreou would have opened his mouth from the beginning about what he knew, saw, Greeks would have lynched him, saying: He lies.
Now the world is a witness of what was behind all the locked doors.
Nobody dared to open them. Afraid to be lunched by fellow Greeks.
Now he is blamed for all that came out of the doors. What was inside..
He just opened the front door, it was not possible anymore to keep it closed. It was overloaded with ethical rubbish.
All went wrong IN the house, named Greece, and it was just waiting for that what finally really happened. It is an eruption. Papandreou was there when the eruption of the vulcano was beginning, but he is not the lava. Not the stream of mud. He did not create that.
He cannot be blamed for what was/is IN the house, or in the vulcano….
Each single Greek has to take his or her own responsibility here.
That belongs to democracy.
That belongs to mature behaviour.
Once the Germans said: “Wir haben es nicht gewusst”…
Not one Greek can say that. There is too much social media around, too much cameras and microphones.
All was there already, but nobody spoke about it, not any Greek criticized it.
What did you do during those years?
I did not hear YOUR voice.
Not of your neighbour, not in the news, not any politician opened the mouth, not one.
Not even Tsipras. Not even Theodorakis. But all were IN that what was happening, witnessing all, ALL. Not seeing? Why? Because it was normal!
I have loved, adored, Greece, the Greek culture.
My trust however in Greeks is completely dead.
They lost the trust of their fellow Europeans.
They lost their respect, dignity, honor.
Now everybody is shouting in the streets, in parades and demonstrations. Where were they before 2009? All was there as it is now, only covered.
They were ALL part of the covering.
Not any systems worked, or works, not any control system is there.
Not ONE. THAT is why all failed and collapsed and NOTHING else!
It has become an unmanageable country, it never has been managed, never, because Greeks did not WANT to be managed, to be ruled in systems, nobody cared, it worked, yes, till it collapsed, like all lies lead to the point of Truth, and it is so cheap to blame Mr. Papandreou for it.
So easy.
I did not hear one critical remark of the Greeks against the Greeks themselves.
Yes, I must admit: more and more I hear something meaningful in the political meetings.
Slowly slowly common sense is entering the house named “Greece”.
But it is too early to say it is summer when there is only one helidoni…..
o lala and mama mia in one song