[LINK] "Not Exactly Friends of Greece"

[rfmcdonald]

At Transitions Online, Martin Ehl writes about how post-Communist countries in the Eurozone have angrily given up on Greece--a one-time model for transition--as a lost cause.

The anger and fatigue were visible in the face of Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir 27 June when he spoke to reporters in Brussels about another urgent eurozone meeting on Greece.

“For four months we’ve been solving the electoral promises of Syriza,” Kazimir said to Czech and Slovak TV reporters. “If somebody has promised heaven on earth and isn’t able to deliver that, he shouldn’t blame others. Truth is truth, a lie is a lie.”

And that was the polite version. Behind closed doors, reporters were told, the post-communist eurozone member ministers used even stronger language.

These small countries de facto didn’t have much say in the solution to the Greek crisis, since decision-making was down to big member states, and the biggest contributors to the rescue funds. But having fresh memories of painful economic and political transformation, those governments – even the leftist ones, as in Slovakia – don’t have much patience with or understanding of Greek problems.

“We’re prepared to save Greece but not at any price,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said a week earlier at a conference in Bratislava.