From: gd8f@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory  Dandulakis)
Subject: Greece and the EC
Originator: gd8f@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 07:18:04 GMT



Spyros has been following the western blast against Greece's EC
participation for the last few years, and he justifies it in their term.
But Spyros, look what kind of contradictions you have said:


1.

>I would not try to prop up my pride with this old-wife's story : the
>supposedly ulterior motives of the donor countries. Judging by the
>newspaper reports over the past few years I am willing to bet that
>most EC countries would be willing to be permenantly excluded from
>the Greek market in return for stopping the financial aid to Greece.
>Greece has no significant natural resources - exept (un)civil servants-
>and produces little by the way of added-value goods. It is not
>a market everybody is dying to get into.


2.

>As far as Greece is concerned Turkey is militarily strong - the
>strongest in the region. I do not care how many tvs/1000 of the
>population they have if the shooting starts. Also, many members
>of NATO think of Turkey as a more valuable and constant ally than
>Greece.


According to your reasoning we conclude:

1. Greece was never economically attractive for the EC. Only political-
   military reasons prevailed for our acceptance in the EC.

2. Turkey is militarily and geopolitically more atractive to the West
   than Greece.


From these two arguments combined (both extensively used in the western
mass media lately), then easily we can conclude that if one country should
have been accepted in the EC, this would have been Turkey!!! Obviously
against reality!!! At the very least, neither Turkey nor Greece would have
been accepted. The reasoning about acceptance in the EC because of securing
democracy in Greece is totally misleading; why not Turkey then? She is even
more unstable politically, and according to you more valuable for the west.


I have come to my conclusions, with respect to our acceptance in the EEC,
which are the following:

1. Greece was *economically very attractive* in the EC for the countries
   which had the strength to take advantage of our strategic economically
   geography. These countries were mostly Germany and France and pressed
   for our entrance. The other countries didn't have any direct benefits and
   for that reason they objected on the grounds of avoiding direct financial
   transfers.

2. Greece's balance sheet with EC has not been presented to us. For different
   reasons by different sides: (a) EC wants to say how much money they "gave"
   to Greece such as to maximize their political importance, (b) New Democracy
   speaks about the same direct funding to justify how important and good was
   their decision to accelerate our entrence, (c) PASOK uses the same figures
   to justify how by their "battles" they gained enough funds, which then
   "explains" its 180 degrees change in policy towards EC, (d) Communists
   show only the tremendous imbalance of trade which was created between
   Greece and EC after our entrence because of less competitive Greek products
   (both in prices and quality), thus leading to closing greek production
   units (unemployment and crippled companies) and the surviving ones to be
   sold in EC companies for peanuts from the fear of total loss.

   For me all the previous arguments are true and valid. Like any decision
   of political and economic nature you have always both gains and losses;
   what it counts is the overall balance sheet if it is positive. I believe
   that for Greece is positive; how mush positive depended both on our timing
   and conditions of entrence and on how well we reacted to the stormy tra-
   nsient period after our entrence. Unfortunately, *nobody*  has published
   this overall picture between greece and rest EC (at least to my knowledge).

3. Greece continues to be very valuable to the EC. For that reason they keep
   increasing their direct transfers to Greece. Otherwise they could, at the 
   very least,stop or disproportionately reduce their transfers. The importance
   of Greece mostly stems from its geographic position as a stronghold for
   trade and banking of western european companies towards the Middle East
   and secondarily the Balkans.

4. The tremendous bashing against greece and the threat of ousting from EC
   was for purely greece's internal consumption; to force the population
   to resolve the political and economic instability created after 1988.


Gr

PS: I never considered that blaming a country, which after 1949 emerged with
    an infrastructure (economic, educational and social) equal to that of
    an african third world country, because it has not yet become equal to the
    strength of the ex-colonial states, as a cool and "objective" economic
    internationalism; instead, I always think that behind the information
    presented by various "strong internationally guys" there is strong self-
    interest (absolutely understandable and justified).
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek