We Europeans keep forgetting about our common culture: It is in Greece that the tragic hero was invented. Alas, heroes are nowhere to be found these days, but there’s tragedy aplenty: the euro zone adrift, markets astray, people shouting their despair in the streets, Europeans and Americans blaming one another for their common lack of resolve in the face of the financial crisis.
So perhaps a more relevant Hellenic invention is catharsis, a purification that only powerful drama can produce. Let’s hope it can still work.
The unfolding drama in Europe is not so much about the euro as it is about governance. Governments seem powerless, out of sync with market reactions to their short-term efforts to contain the crisis. Instead of preventing contamination from one sovereign debt to the other and taking the massive measures required by the scope of the crisis, they keep muddling through.
Last July, euro-zone leaders announced with some fanfare another definitive plan to refloat Greece. Two months and more billions of wasted euros later, no one seems to be in control. The level of trust in political and business elites is plummeting and markets remain erratic.
Democracy, of course, has its constraints, which mitigate against political heroism. Key elections are about to take place in Europe as well as in the United States. Our politicians keep talking as if we live on another planet.
In France, left and right still pretend the state has a magic wand. Contenders in the Socialist presidential primaries, set for early October, compete in surreal campaign chatter, vouching for more budgetary discipline but also for more teachers, more police officers and more welfare subsidies. Conservatives worry about Nicolas Sarkozy’s ratings, even among their own, and search for a saving message. Let him talk austerity to the Greeks in the morning and pamper domestic interest groups in the afternoon!
Then look at southern Europe. In Spain, which will hold general elections in November, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is exhausted, and looks it. The victory of the conservatives is so likely that their leader, Mariano Rajoy, does not even bother to propose solutions to his country’s plight. And the “indignados” of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, these outraged, educated young people desperate to find jobs, have not forged a new political outlet.
In Italy, it is worse: Bunga bunga has become tiresome, and politics even more so. Silvio Berlusconi is all but out, but no one seems to be in. The country’s debt has just been downgraded: Rating agencies seem to be evaluating governance more than credit.
Catharsis, if it is to work, requires drama and strong characters, and Greece, again (or still), provides both. Prime Minister George Papandreou has demonstrated courage and obstinacy in confronting a desperate economic and social situation for which his own father, Andreas Papandreou, twice in the same office, was greatly responsible.
The prime minister’s name may be cursed by fellow citizens who have taken their despair to the streets, but Papandreou shows the kind of political heroism that is dangerously lacking elsewhere. Addressing businessmen in Berlin earlier this week, he talked about the rebirth of his nation and the superhuman sacrifices it requires. The markets immediately reacted positively: They have become the real sounding boards of our political systems.
“You have to know how to talk to the markets,” Jacques Delors, the founding father of the euro, told me the other day, deploring the lack of vision and resolve of the current generation of policymakers. “Heroes are tired,” he added with a sigh.
So let us hope for a heroine. That would be Angela Merkel. The vote in the Bundestag on Thursday will be her moment of truth. Her coalition is crumbling, her party is divided, she keeps losing local ballots, tabloids spread Europhobia and Germany’s federal system encourages her propensity to endlessly test the political waters.
Can she now ride the storm like a Valkyrie determined to save Europe? That is exactly what is expected of her. Sarkozy may have the political will, but he lacks the budgetary virtue and economic weight. Merkel alone can do the job: She must convince her Parliament and her fellow citizens that it is in their interest to keep the European Union, the euro and even the Greeks afloat, or there will be an even greater global meltdown.
Her time has come to take the lead in the European drama. And if she does, perhaps Europe will have its desperately needed catharsis.
By Christine Ockrent, a journalist based in Paris.