Nevertheless, the council’s “decision” does represent something new. Though the European Union has always required a partial surrender of sovereignty from its member states, Greece no longer has much sovereignty at all. IMF agreements also impose conditions, but the language is somewhat different: The indebted country requests help, the IMF responds. In this case, the European Union has decided what Greece “shall” do. I don’t believe anybody, least of all the Greeks, knew that the European Union had so much power over its member states.
Maintaining this intense legislative schedule will not be easy, whatever promises have been made. Modern Greece has a history of foreign occupation — by the Ottoman empire, by Nazi Germany — and some Greeks are already calling on their compatriots to resist the new occupation forces of the European Union and the IMF. Resistance could take forms more subtle than rioting. Athens, after all, is a city in which 364 people told tax authorities they owned swimming pools — and in which satellite photographs reveal the existence of 16,974 swimming pools. If a tax or legal reform is perceived as a foreign imposition, will Greeks abide by it?
Though no one is saying so, this visible imposition of E.U. power on Greece will also serve as a warning to others who want to enter the eurozone in the future.
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