Why we should give the Elgin Marbles back to Greece

While we’re talking about countries on the brink, it’s worth taking a look at Greece – which has probably passed beyond it.  The government has published its package of austerity measures – aiming to reduce its deficit to 8.7 percent of GDP by the end of 2010 – and the markets are deciding what they think. But, in the meantime, the country faces strikes; the Euro is taking a pummeling; there are fears that problems may spread to countries like Portugal and Spain; and Greek foreign policy – particularly with regard to Macedonia and the Balkans – is stalling.  Nobody is through the woods yet.

All this mean that George Papandreou’s problems are also the EU’s problem. Sure, as one of Greece’s best known scholars Loukas Tsoukalis says, “there is no denying that the prime responsibility for dealing with the Greek problem lies with the Greeks themselves.” But answers to these problems will also have to come from Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt, home of the ECB.