Articles and Op-Eds

Europe must slay populism – ekathimerini.com 4/12/2019

Articles and Op-Eds December 5, 2019 Comments

Commissioner Margaritis Schinas had his portfolio renamed “promoting” rather than “protecting” the “European way of life.” It was a wise choice. The change may be subtle and the reaction from the apostles of political correctness probably exaggerated, but concern that the original wording might invoke a vision of “Fortress Europe” and be seen as a concession to xenophobic populists made…

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Greece must defend Western Balkans’ EU hopes – ekathimerini.com 20/11/2019

Articles and Op-Eds December 1, 2019 Comments

The history of Greece’s foreign policy is a litany of strategic successes and missed opportunities. The same applies to the foreign policy of the European Union. Our national failures stem from the toxic combination of populism and fear of political cost. The failures of the EU usually result from diverging national interests among member-states. During the recent European Council meeting,…

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Athena’s wisdom and the Brexit folly – ekathimerini.com 27/9/2019

Articles and Op-Eds September 27, 2019 Comments

Ten seconds summarized the steep decline in the status of a great nation in its self-destructive sleepwalk towards Brexit. That was when Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, standing tall next to a crumpled Boris Johnson, described the endless negotiations, from a position of weakness, awaiting the UK. In the Herculean task of negotiating free trade deals “we will be the…

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Two popular fallacies about leaders and the elites – ekathimerini.com 10/1/2019

Articles and Op-Eds January 10, 2019 Comments

Two popular fallacies are thriving in a Europe of populism and diminished expectations. Many argue that Europe’s problem is a problem of leadership. Missing are statesmen with the stature of Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand or Jacques Delors. Historical distance tends to elevate and idealize leaders of the past. In their time, critics denounced Kohl’s provincialism, Mitterrand’s financial illiteracy and Delors’s…

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Lessons for the eurozone from Greece’s painful crisis years – The Financial Times 7/8/2017

Articles and Op-Eds August 7, 2017 Comments

Greece is finally growing again. But it has been arguably the eurozone’s greatest failure. Catapulted into a debt crisis with a 15 per cent government spending deficit in 2009, the country suffered eight years of economic contraction. Unemployment is still 23 per cent, youth unemployment 45 per cent. Greece’s “Great Depression” has been as deep as that of the US…

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