"COMMON QUEST" AT TIME OF CRISIS

Greece has officially taken office as president of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. Having been regarded as the EU's most troubled part for more than five years, Athens will be charged with problems of European policy during the next six months.   

Greece has chosen quite an unambiguous motto for its fifth presidency since it became an EU member: "Europe: Our Common Quest". Athens is making it clear that not only its problems are common for the entire European community but Greece itself is determined to help the EU in settling its pressing issues. It must be admitted that there is quite a lot of them even without problem-plagued Greece. The Old World countries need to implement efficient measures aimed at restoring economic growth, creating new jobs and deepening the monetary union. Therefore it is no accident that Athens has presented the issues of economic growth, employment, migration and stability of the euro as priorities for its presidency. Greece is positioning itself as a country potentially capable of achieving success in the said areas despite the fact that, in the minds of many Europeans, its very name is synonymous with crisis, a notion they are quite a bit tired of. And there is a strong reason for that, according to Athens. 

"Greece is leaving the crisis behind, following tremendous sacrifices. Europe is leaving the crisis behind it," the country's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said at the opening ceremony of the Greek presidency of the EU Council. However, being aware that it is impossible to ignore challenges facing Athens, he added that not all problems had been solved, that there was a lot to be done but he expressed certainty that the upcoming Greek EU presidency would be one of "opportunities, not a presidency of crisis". 

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was also quite optimistic on prospects for the Greek presidency: "Let's not forget that not so much time ago people were making speculations about Greek exit, about the implosion of the euro, about the implosion of the EU. So the fact that we are here is clear evidence that those predictions were wrong". 

Yet while the government leaders of Greece and the EU were exchanging pleasantries and celebrating the opening of Athens' presidency, the Greek capital's central streets were seething with angry protesters. A crowd of many thousand people was chanting anti-European slogans accusing just the EU of provoking the heaviest crisis in Greece with which it still cannot cope despite premier Samaris' upbeat statements.  

The year 2014 indeed promises to become the first year of economic recovery for Greece over the last six years. Yet it should be taken into account that overall decline in the Greek economy during the crisis period reached 20 per cent. The unemployment rate in Greece continues to break records throughout the EU. According to estimates by the S&P Dow Jones analytical agency, in March-June 2013, for the first time in the practice of international financial agencies, Greece lost its status as a developed country and returned to the category of developing countries. 

In December last year, the Eurogroup approved the allocation of another 1bn euro tranche in financial aid for Athens. The second international anti-crisis programme for Greece is expiring this year. According to expert outlooks, this country will need a third anti-crisis programme as one cannot expect Greece to enter the financial markets in 2014 single-handedly. 

Foreign aid to Greece continues coming against the background of austerity measures being taken in the country. The Greeks are complaining not without reason that those measures were imposed by the troika of its creditors: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The protesters in Athens' streets are saying that the "radical reforms" being carried out according to the troika's prescriptions are only exacerbating the economic and social problems in the country. 

The deplorable realities of the Greek social and economic life are strengthening the positions of eurosceptics both in Greece and throughout the Old World. The adjustments declared by Greece on the list of diplomatic priorities can also be viewed as an indication of how unsteady European politics is at the moment. It is hard to expect that Athens can essentially change Brussels' foreign policy (the presiding states have no prerogative in this sphere which is now in the hands of the office of Catherine Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs). Nonetheless, the expected change of the European Neighbourhood Policy vector "from the east to the south" deserves attention. This was said by Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos. He recalled that Lithuania had focused on the Eastern Partnership programme during its presidency. For its part, Greece is aiming to realize the southern vector, i.e. to develop priority cooperation with countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. The Greek position is explainable: rapprochement with the southern neighbourhood states is important for Greece as it is located in the Mediterranean region. 

Still there is another explanation to this stance. Greece (or the EU through its mouth) is stating that the Eastern Partnership programme providing closer ties with the EU for six member states of the CIS (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) is no longer a key area of European foreign policy interests. And this actually implies recognition by the EU of its recent failures in the former Soviet Union. 

Athens is openly making it clear that it is not going to interfere in matters that aggravate Europe's relations with Russia. Instead, Greece as a traditional partner of Russia will try to work out a trade-off approach at the level of EU-Russia cooperation to solving geopolitical problems in the European part of the former Soviet Union. However, Athens' desire to avoid conflict with Russia  naturally does not mean that the EU will refuse during the Greek presidency to assist Georgia and Moldova in setting their feet on the path of European integration (association agreements with those countries were initialled at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in November last year). Or that it will not try to win over Armenia and Ukraine who refused to sign their EU association agreements at the last moment under obvious pressure from Moscow. These and other objectives pursued by the EU in expanding its influence in the former Soviet Union will just take more account than, let us say, during the Lithuanian presidency, of the factor of Russia promoting Eurasian integration projects, as well as the specifics of the geopolitical situation of the "eastern partners" themselves. As can be seen, in particular, from the experience of Ukraine backing out of EU association, most of the latter are still unprepared for a final and irreversible choice of one or another civilizational model for their development.