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This is not the EU’s first Greek emergency – I remember the June 2011 European Council that concluded “key laws on the fiscal strategy and privatisation must be finalised as a matter of urgency in the coming days“. Greece has been subject to financial assistance and the Economic Adjustment Programme for more than five years now. The Greek crisis should be of true concern for us all; EU policies focusing only on macroeconomics are not only damaging social cohesion, but also the economic recovery. No matter where competencies lay, the Greek emergency shows us that we cannot focus on just economic or social policies – the two go hand in hand.

The Greek emergency demonstrates the intrinsic link between economic and social policies. The social situation in Greece has worsened considerably since 2008. This has happened at a time when Greece has received economic assistance under the supervision of the Troika (made of the European central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund). However the only “solutions” I have heard or read about are focused on budget consolidation and emergency plans to avoid the worsening of the financial crisis. I haven’t heard much from the EU institutions about their responsibilities and actions to address the detrimental social consequences of the crisis, even though 35.7% of the population was at risk of poverty in 2013 compared to 28% in 2008. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the share of people saying that they cannot afford food has doubled to almost one in five. Greece is the only EU member state to have seen minimum wage decrease since 2008, and unemployment has risen from 17% to 27%. An additional problem is that social hardship also impacts the future economy of the country. OECD reports that young people have been emigrating from Greece in increasing numbers, reducing potential future economic growth and accelerating population ageing – further evidence that implementing economic policies with little to no consideration for social policy is damaging to both.

Beyond the Greek crisis, the EU cannot go from emergency plan to emergency plan without learning from its mistakes and thinking about the policy implications. This is why Social Platform wants the EU to put social policy objectives on a par with economic ones in order to achieve inclusive growth; only by doing so will the economic and social crises in Greece by resolved. The Commission has postponed its first orientation debate on social policies until tomorrow [9 June]. I hope to see concrete actions coming out of this debate to ensure that the EU delivers on its social objectives, to the benefit of the economy, too (read our letter addressed to all members of the college of commissioners here). What I hope not to see is the Greek emergency being used by Heads of State at the European Council on 25-26 June to postpone action on the EU’s other responsibilities. They will discuss the EU’s Country-Specific Recommendations, which only included recommendations on poverty and social exclusion for six out of the EU’s 28 member states despite poverty levels reaching increasingly higher levels. They will also debate the social dimension of the economic and monetary union, and the need for social governance of the EU – one way of finding a balance between economic and social objectives.

Only by making a proper commitment to this balance will we ensure that economic and social crises like the Greek emergency never occur again not only in Greece, but in all EU member states.

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand, Director