Voters are reflecting the unsettled mood across the eurozone, says Ivor Roberts
There's an old jibe about the best argument against democracy being five minutes' conversation with the average voter. Well it's pretty clear that average voters in France and Greece are having their five minutes of irrational behaviour.
They don't like austerity; they only want growth. So they've voted for those who've promised to turn their backs on austerity and to embrace growth.
After successive failures by all party leaders in Greece to form a government -- with the mainstream parties refusing to tear up the bailout agreement they'd signed with the IMF and EU only weeks ago -- it seems inevitable that the Greek president will have to call new elections in the hope that the Greek electorate, having let off steam, will produce a parliament which can run the country and not run it into the ground.
There are parallels with the way the Irish electorate, having voted No in two EU referenda, is simply told to think again and to come up with the right answer this time.
None of this is very democratic of course. The people having spoken, it's usually assumed that they get a break, at least for a couple of years, from having to speak again.
But then, democracy in Europe is working in very unusual ways.
Italy is being run entirely by technocrats who have no electoral mandate nor a single legitimate electoral seat between them. The prime minister Mario Monti was appointed to the senate by the Italian president without a vote by anyone.
Nevertheless the undemocrats are making rather a good fist of running Italy and Signor Monti's views are taken seriously across Europe -- particularly in Berlin, where Chancellor Merkel apparently looks on him as her close consigliere. What a contrast to the embarrassing buffoonery on the international stage of Italy's frequently re-elected previous prime minister.
Yet it is the Franco-German relationship and its evolution under new management at the French end which will ultimately prove crucial to the survival of the euro and the European project as a whole.
Initial reaction to the Greek and French results in the markets has been predictably negative. No wonder, when the winner in France wants to renegotiate the fiscal stability pact and the clear majority in Greece rejects the austerity package imposed by the EU and the IMF.
The prospects for the eurozone look dire with Greece's exit from it now increasingly spoken of as inevitable.
Yet the turbulence of a Greek exit would impact way beyond the eurozone itself. It would cause ripples in any country which does substantial trade with the eurozone.
On a recent visit to the US, I sensed that many Americans regarded Europe as an economic basket case; more and more they think of Asia and the Pacific where growth is still to be found. And even once unfashionable areas such as Africa and Latin America are looking attractive -- particularly the two BRICS members Brazil and South Africa.
So what can a French socialist whose views look to be at odds with Angela Merkel on austerity and fiscal stability do to forge a plan which will save the euro and lead the EU out of its present recessionary path?
He faces the apparently insurmountable obstacle that renegotiation of the fiscal pact has been ruled out by Merkel. But the bitter pill of fiscal rectitude may be sweetened by a complementary growth pact and further loosening of the European Central Bank's monetary policy.
To stave off recession throughout Europe and consequent further rises in unemployment, it may prove necessary in classic Keynesian fashion to print more money. Which will of course bring inflation, that spectre which continues to haunt the German body politic.
But Germany may have to swallow this uncomfortable truth as she had to sacrifice prosperity for a decade to accommodate German unification 20 years ago.
Moreover this week we learnt that Chancellor Kohl ignored warnings back in 1997 and 1998 that Italy wasn't in a fit state to join the euro at its inception. And if Italy wasn't up to snuff, then Greece two years later shouldn't even have been in the antechamber of the eurozone.
So Germany's economic purity has been sullied in the past and may have to be again.
After all, Germany can't continue to crack open the champagne while the rest of Europe is forced to drink from standpipes indefinitely (to quote the Guardian newspaper).
Germany needs the rest of Europe's markets to be prosperous if she is to continue to grow.
And if new elections in Greece bring about a government which will back fiscal consolidation measures (provided the terms are less stringent than those currently imposed), then Mr Hollande should use his newly acquired democratic legitimacy to urge his German counterpart to cut the Greeks some slack.
A Greek exit from the euro and the consequent shock waves throughout the eurozone will be felt not just in the weaker eurozone economies but almost as dramatically, ultimately, in the very strongest. Time for some Gallic charm, Monsieur Hollande.
Sir Ivor Roberts is president of Trinity College, Oxford, and a former British ambassador to Ireland, Italy and Yugoslavia
Originally published in
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