Blogoir

This appears to be a well-sourced Telegraph piece revealing that the FCO has instructed Embassies to start making contingency plans for a Eurozone crash.

If so, it's startling.

Startling!

Partly because our much-diminished Embassies across the EU - cheerily cut back by Labour and this Coalition government alike to redeploy diplomats to the 'emerging markets' - just won't be able to handle the tens of thousands of consular cases which could come their way.

Can someone working at an EU mission quickly drop me a private line (via the site-link above) to tell me what exactly a contingency plan to deal with thousands of people whose credit-cards have stopped working would look like?

But startling also because the FCO is not warning the British public through its formal Travel Advice to start making similar precautions.

Here is the current FCO Travel Advice for France, which 19,000,000(!) British nationals visit each year. It focuses on the eternal issue of the day in Europe - French food:

• Sea France has suspended all of its cross-channel ferry services. Call Sea France on +44 (0) 845 458 0666 for further information and allow extra time for your journey
• Following an outbreak of botulism, the French Health authorities have issued a warning not to consume any pastes or spreads produced by a French company called La Ruche. The pastes are branded as Les Délices de Marie Claire, Terre de Mistral and Les Secrets d’Anais

Here's the FCO's lugubriously out-of-date ungrammatical Travel Advice for Italy:

·         There is a general transport strike planned in Italy on 17 November. All means of public transport is expected to be affected.  If you are flying to/from Italy contact your airline before you travel. See Safety and Security - Local Travel - Major pre-planned strikes.

Germany has another grammatically challenged entry, but at least has some references to money. Maybe the advice should be to carry lots of counterfeit Euros - soon likely to be worth more than the real ones?!

• Like other large European countries there is a high threat from terrorism in Germany. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers. See Safety and Security - Terrorism.
• We are aware of British nationals who have been arrested for possessing counterfeit currency.  We advise against changing currency anywhere other than banks or legitimate Bureaux de Change.

Hmm. Not much in all this on how a few million Brits across Europe might get back to our island fortress if the Eurozone folds overnight and the cash-machines stop working and fuel for cars, planes and cross-channel ferries runs out.

There is a real problem here - any such official warning would trigger panic and make the Eurozone's horrible problems even worse. 

Yet the Telegraph piece archly quotes a "senior Minister" to the effect that a Eurozone collapse is now 'just a matter of time'. Perhaps this IS the consular warning. To lucky Telegraph readers at least.

Croatia is next in line to join the European Union.

But this sort of thing, circulated by the eminent Centre for Research into Post-communist Economies, shows that beneath the surface - or even bang on it - a lot of nasty habits and people and instincts inherited from the communist period and then the ghastly Tudjman era are flourishing.

I am forwarding the CRCE appeal on behalf of H21 to William Hague's office and to senior people in Brussels, urging them to take action.

Come on Croatia. Stop producing this rubbish. And don't bring it into our EU tent. We have enough already. 

A Call for the Release of Croatia’s Political Prisoner - 72 year old Author and Stalwart Anti-Corruption Activist Aleksandar Saša Radović

72 year-old Alksandar Saša Radović (Sasha) - an author and stalwart anti-corruption leader in Croatia was arrested last week just moments after Sasha's name appeared in public as a formal candidate of Hrvatska 21 - Croatia 21 (H21).  The police report given to the press was that Mrs Radovic was present with Sasha when they were arrested on charges of extortion. 

There are major issues involved in this case that require immediate international intervention led by principled leaders of the West:

-  Sasha has been detained at an undisclosed location and denied due process and an attorney for 7 days and counting.

-  Contrary to the police report which claims that Mrs. Radovic was with Sasa when Sasha was arrested, Mrs. Radovic was at their family residence some 60 minutes from where Sasha was arrested.  Mrs Radovic was with her sister and brother-in-law during the period.

-  Due process was denied and lawyers were not appointed or permitted to contact Mr. and Mrs. Radovic.

The arrest of Sasha took place on the day when it became public that he joined the roster of 75 brave citizens as political candidates on the list of Hrvatska 21 - Croatia 21st Century.

In his most recent book, Sasha exposed the outgoing Minister of Interior, Mr. Tomislav Karamarko for political corruption and general Ivan Cermak as a war profiteer.
   
Cermak’s unexplained wealth and evidences of smuggling during the West's arms embargo of the Balkan region have been published in Sasha’s four major books which include the selling of oil and weapons to Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro while Cermak was employed in Croatia’s military during Croatia’s independence war. 

Today, Cermak resides in a lavish castle with an estimated wealth of 200 million euros - much higher than the wages earned working for the government.  Cermak’s “business endeavors” included a chain of gas retail outlets which was sold in the meantime.  Cermak's companies have been a major media advertiser in Croatia.

The West’s leaders have been silent in spite of the fact that Croatia is a NATO member and a candidate of the European Union.  The West has poured over 1 billion euros of taxpayer funds into Croatia’s “reform process” without any results.

Aleksandar Saša Radović has published over 20 books on corruption in Croatia and much of his work (with documents and evidences) has been presented in the international arena to place a spotlight on high level political corruption including cabinet members of the ruling HDZ including former PM Ivo Sanader and the communist party SDP.

Croatia is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media."

EU membership criteria emphasize the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law and human rights.  However, Croatia’s politicians have subverted the rule of law and protection of property rights.  More than 1 million back logged cases are in the court system, some for more than 20 years.

Croatia’s elections are slated for December 4, 2011 with over 550,000 illegal votes not addressed by Croatia’s authorities. Efforts by ruling HDZ and SDP have blocked the verification of the voter list.

Sasha is now a political prisoner of a tyrannical state, a compromised member of NATO with an unreformed intelligence structure dating back to the UDBA (Tito’s communist system) and a tainted candidate nation about to enter the EU.

In an independent initiative, Denis Latin, anchor of Croatia’s state-run television and one of the most respected journalists in Croatia and Southeast Europe has joined well-known public figures in a signed letter calling for the release of Sasha.

Over the last four months, over 20 political party candidates of H21, supporters and volunteers have been harassed, intimidated, lost business contracts and had visits by Croatia's "financial police".

The Adriatic Institute for Public Policy and Hrvatska 21 call for the immediate release of Aleksandar Saša Radović and encourage Western leaders from strong rule of law nations to join this effort in calling for Croatia to uphold the rule of law and establish an independent judiciary.

Former FCO Minister Denis MacShane MP has written a small but energetic book praising Kosovo's independence: Why Kosovo Still Matters (sic).

Here it is, a perfect Christmas stocking-filler, the more perfect if bought via this link so that I get a few groats from Amazon: 

The main interest of the book for you folk lies in the more or less contemporaneous Ministerial diary extracts from Denis as he visited various Balkan capitals and attended international gatherings where Kosovo/Serbia was being discussed.

There is a walk-on role by Keith Vaz MP, briefly the Minister responsible for Balkan policy, whose modest knowledge of the subject was exposed back in 2001 when he and I had to give evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:

We find it deeply regrettable that Mr Vaz, the FCO minister responsible for south-east Europe, has not visited the area ... His evidence session with us did not reveal a detailed grasp of the policy issues which the area faces. As the Minister told us, and we know ourselves, the situation in the Balkans is "very complex and very difficult"...

It has to be said that the Committee had a point.

Mr Vaz's eloquent but somewhat insubstantial replies to their many questions were a truly fine example of talking a lot and saying  ... nothing.

In Denis' book too Keith Vaz blandly reveals his insightful approach. During a session of briefing by FCO officials on the complexity of the Kosovo problem, he asks:

"Can somebody just draw me a little map and show me where Kosovo is?"

The main interest of the book for me is ... me. I appear wittily or not at various points, but this line caught my special eye:

"... Charles Crawford, one of the most whizzing catherine wheels of a politically astute ambassador that we have"

*blushes prettily*

The book also records accurately enough one amazing moment in April 2002 when then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw chaired a discussion about Balkan policy.

Paddy Ashdown (then High Representative in Bosnia) had nobbled PM Tony Blair to argue against drawing down UK forces too far in Bosnia while maintaining a sizeable UK military presence in Kosovo. The Foreign Secretary asked officials where we all thought the main UK military effort should now focus:

Charles Crawford, the sharp but rather cocky Ambassador in Belgrade, says that we should stay in Bosnia and that Kosovo should be persuaded to stay in a loose federation with Serbia and Montenegro.

The arguments about where UK troops made most impact on the ground and where the main threat to the region's security lay went round and round the table. Finally, as he describes in the book, Denis proposed a vote. And before anyone could question his sanity he quickly had torn up a piece of paper and handed round slips for voting: B for Bosnia, K for Kosovo.

We voted. The votes were counted by Denis. 10 - 5 for focusing on Kosovo. I voted for a heavier UK military presence in Kosovo (of course), even though the book suggests that the opposite was my view.

Denis' case therefore won the argument:

Thus, British foreign policy is made

Hmm. The exception, not the rule, I think.

Otherwise the text is a gay romp through the politics of the Balkans over a thousand years and the latest decades of convulsion, with no opportunity spared to extol the Kosovans and cast Serbs in general and most UK Conservatives in particular in a bad light.

In other words, a typical MacShanian production. Top quality insider gossip, lively, sometimes irreverent, impossibly light, blithely tendentious. And with handy insights. I especially liked the way he linked the events in 1980s' Yugoslavia to the Solidarity pressures in Poland - important to recall that there was a wider European anti-communist context to the issue.

It's also noteworthy that he does not (now) dismiss out of hand the idea of some sort of small territory swaps as part of an historic deal between Belgrade and Pristina, an idea whose time may yet come.

The main problem with the book, apart from myriad other problems, is that it does far too little justice (in fact none at all) to the significant arguments of the Russians and others about the inadmissibility of border changes in Europe "without the consent of all concerned" as per the Helsinki Accords.

Because, Minister, foreign policy is all about balancing realities against principles and rules.

And for all the merits of the Kosovans' claims against Belgrade, is it really such a good outcome for the UK and the world - and even for Kosovo - that international opinion has ended up so divided in a way which shows that deeper Western policy on this subject has spectacularly failed to be convincing (ie Russia, China, India, Brazil, S Africa and many other non-Western big hitters firmly not recognising Kosovo independence on principle)?

Anyway, did I say buy it via the Amazon link above? Go on. You know you want to.

But better not if you're a Serb.

Six days since I wrote anything here. The longest gap since the Crawfblog began back in early 2008?

I have been running around, not least to Brussels where my training presentation on Political Reporting to startled European diplomats went down well. I banged on self-indulgently about my life and times writing telegrams back to the FCO (including my highly praised telegram on the morning after Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic was assassinated), urging the following general rules:

• if you want it to be read, make it readable
• some things are important - but don't matter
• no stupid words!
• don't be boring

These strictures and accompanying illustrative slides of inter alios Mr Incredible, Clint Eastwood and Spider-Man's Aunt May caught their attention.

Part of the problem with political reporting is getting right the balance between what HQ wants to know and what it needs to know. Usually HQ is several months behind where any given overseas problem 'is' - standard briefs get word-processed and stale, drawing on expired assumptions.

So just as it is right to try to keep HQ up to date, Embassies also need to remember that HQ usually won't be that interested in anything which significantly changes the 'narrative' unless it is dramatic enough to catch the headlines in the HQ country.

Likewise you can say what you like in an urgent telegram, but the dominant thought about any given overseas development back at HQ will be whatever the media are saying that morning about it. Ministers pay more attention to the newspapers read in the car on the way to the office than to diplomatic cables, since any questions they will be asked during the day will draw on that media reporting, even if it is wrong or stupid...

Any public body with the words 'European' in the name has horrible problems with 'the hierarchy'. Information rarely trickles down from on high to the working level, and people have to pull their punches in saying what they think lest the 'hierarchy' object.

One interesting issue thus arose. How should a serious middle-ranking diplomat at an EU mission deal with reporting an election in an African country where the result was largely farcical/manipulated? The problem in this case was the fact that the mission hierarchy and EU HQ and indeed many governments round the world were happy enough to hail this wretched outcome as a victory for continuity and 'stability'. A report calling into question the result as an obvious farce would not be welcomed, or even be allowed to issue.

No easy answer. I quoted my own early disagreements with the British Embassy hierarchy back in 1984 in Belgrade, when I had written the legendary MTS/non-MTS paper warning about problems within communist Yugoslavia. Even though the then Ambassador had disagreed with the paper in important respects, he was gracious enough to send it back to London under cover of a letter explaining what the disagreements were about and what his own view was. London thereby at least had the opportunity to mull intelligently over two very rival interpretations.

This elegant and democratic, clever British outcome was a source of much marvelling amongst the assembled Europeans - none of their bosses would be likely to do anything like that!

So there is no easy answer on how a young diplomat should best deal with a situation where the mission and its policy are at variance with reality, honour and common sense. Of course anyone feeling really upset can launch into the various available grievance/appeal processes, but that merely builds up a reputation as a vainglorious boat-rocker and in any case is a hopeless vehicle for changing policy analysis.

As I said to them, it ultimately comes down to how you want to live. Most of us rationalise such things away on the grounds that it just takes time to change policies, and that much of what 'policy' is ebbs and flows anyway. Sometimes it's better to avoid fighting a losing battle on one issue for the sake of making a difference in another.

If that isn't your style, resign and do something else. But remember that if you do that, the organisation you've left will have one honourable voice fewer - does that really help either?

One final thought.

When I was Ambassador in Warsaw a very senior ex-colleague bow with a global energy company swung by. I asked him what was good or bad about having left the FCO behind.

"The good thing about having left the FCO is that at last I can say what I think!"

That for me was an astounding reply. What had he been saying when he was in the FCO for all those years - what someone else thought?!

Yesterday my Sunday was interrupted by a request from RT-TV (Russia's answer to the BBC's world broadcasts) to take part in a programme talking about the Eurozone in general and Italy in particular.

As they asked nicely and as it was not too far to the BBC Oxford studio where the short session was to be recorded, off I went.

Here is part of the transcript of the interview, with my friend Patrick Young as it happens also featured just below (Patrick knows more than any human being decently should know about software programs running Balkan and other such new stock exchanges).

Off I go:

“All the countries in the eurozone which are getting these debt difficulties are having the same problem. This is because they are in the eurozone and cannot devalue their currencies. In effect they are left with borrowing money from the international market and the other eurozone members. They are left with reducing government spending, which is sacking people, which is not popular with the people who are sacked. They are reduced to putting up taxes, which is not popular with everyone else," ...

“Once you’ve got into these very strong difficult debt situations, the ways out are all very painful. So in both Greece and Italy and in some other eurozone countries the choices available to the leaders of the countries concerned are very limited. That is why the eurozone is coming under stress – because the political and psychological pressures are coming up against the way the whole thing was set up in the first place,”

Crawford emphasised that the crisis in Europe is like an impressive house where the foundations, it turns out, were not very well built. And it is very difficult to repair the foundations while inside the house and without moving somewhere else.

If you're feeling brave, watch the full interview (only some four minutes) by pressing the link above. Lawks, I look tired. Maybe it was clear and fluent enough for the occasion, even if I got a bit too involved in one or two long sentence thoughts. Keep it short - and simple!

Fascinating in a grimly painful way to watch one's own twitches and mannerisms (such as starting each answer with "Well, ...") when part of one's work is training others in how to do media work ha ha.

A random comment below from one Bogdan shows that he/she has not quite grasped the point of a TV interview:

A weaker Italy might appeal to many inside the EU. It would be very interesting indeed if Mr Crawford could as well analyse the dire status of economy in his own country, which should be the UK by the biased style of his article...

The medium is the message, or something. Even in Russia.

Readers here know all about MTS and non-MTS.

It seemed a good idea to explain the idea to Telegraph Blog readers. Done here, with a nice stormy seas picture:

Hence the core diplomatic policy conundrum: over what timescale is success measured?

One of the metaphors I deployed to explain Bosnia’s problems to bemused Whitehall officials was the tall, steep sand-dune. You rush at the sand-dune and try to get to the top, but find yourself stuck. If only you had seen that strong tuft of grass over to the right before you made your dash! You could have reached that and tried to pull yourself upwards. But any movement towards it or in any other direction makes you slide backwards.

From good if over-optimistic or even naive intentions you can end up in a hopeless place, where no good move is available. This is why the eurozone problem is so difficult for our top policy-makers.

Eurozone leaders designed an ornate gondola for drifting affably round the elegant decay of Venice. They now find themselves swept by an unimaginable (or at least unimagined) current into horrible stormy seas.

The vessel is sinking! No life-jackets! The Greek can’t swim! The German is hooting that everyone tighten their belts! The Frenchman blames capitalism! The odious Brits preferred their own shabby dinghy: they watch with cynical amusement from choppy but still (they believe) manageable waters.

Basically, the eurozoners have allowed themselves to get far out of their depth. And they smugly refused to pack any safety kit.

I swung by the FCO today for a quiet adult chat about repatriating powers from the EU. What does that mean, if anything, and how might it be done or at least systematically attempted.

Many interesting points emerged. Some unexpected, to me at least. Watch this space.

Plus, a Scary Thought about FCO consular work: what would HMG do if Greece's money system crashed during peak holiday season, leaving a million Brits stranded there with cash machines not working?

The FCO mind boggles.

In case readers here have missed it, my second Telegraph Blog contribution:

Most people reading this website will have been brought up to believe that "liberal democracy" is a natural state of affairs. It trundles along in the background for the British public as for the Foreign Office, without needing much attention.

We also were brought up (usually without realising it) to agree with Hayek that only free markets and free voters deliver the free information which allow modern society to work.

Hayek was surely right over the long term. Goodbye USSR. But what about the medium term? Or short term?

What if the sheer complexity of decisions facing national leaders in a democracy combines with greedy or ignorant or pig-headed voters to produce completely stupid results? Could autocracy plus modern IT in practice look more rational and efficient (and therefore more “moral" or at least more credible) at taking strategic decisions, such as not running up state borrowing far beyond the credible capacity of the state to repay its debts?

... You don't have to be a raving Eurosceptic (although of course that helps) to have profound, urgent misgivings about the way the eurozone crisis is eroding European democracy, including our own. The Greek referendum announcement is bad news for manifold practical reasons. Maybe a referendum won't in fact happen. But given the steep collapse Greece now faces, is asking voters to make strategic choices for inevitable sacrifices so unwise an idea?

Bottom line?

I spent most of my professional diplomatic career in one way or the other working hard to build a decent, peaceful democratic Europe. It turns out that the specific model chosen by the continental EU elites is a moral and (worse) philosophical failure.

Am I alone staring at this dangerous disaster and asking myself a painful question: “How do I withdraw my consent from being governed like this?"

Some vivid comments (over 300 and rising), not all humming the same tune:

Most people are bewildered by what is going on in Greece. So am I.

But here is a wily view from everyone's favourite Serb Paleocon, Srdja Trifkovic, who explains how the whole manoeuvre looks like a quirky judo move to floor the opposition and so end up making the whole EU austerity policy towards Greek debt more likely to be implemented (not that that is necessarily good for Greece).

Not just the Greek opposition feel unbalanced and dizzy. Perhaps the French too:

On the foreign front I still suspect that Germany (but not France) may have been briefed in advance of Papandreou’s referendum gambit, and that he will use the aftermath of the scare to exact an even greater “haircut” in the weeks to come—primarily to the detriment of the three big French banks.

Meanwhile anyone with any sense (and, more importantly, any Euros) in Greece will be shipping out those Euros in case Greece crashes from the Eurozone and those Euros end up worth massively less in newly denominated New Drachmas.

This capital flight of course makes it all worse! As is happening in Italy. In effect 'Italian' and 'Greek' and some other national Euros are now worth less than 'German' Euros. This is a farcical but inevitable result of trying to push economic water uphill.

But of course it's all the wicked banks ripping us off, wail the thick Leftists. To which comes more elegant analysis from Tim Worstall:

The banks have already lost their money. Deutsche Bank carries Greek debt on its books at 50% of nominal. So does RBS. So, in fact, does every bank that has even a modicum of sense (this excludes certain French banks but then we knew that was likely, finance and Frenchmen not mixing well).

For the banks Greece going bust has already happened, they’ve already lost their money. What’s next on the banks’ agenda is, OK, so, they’re bust. What do we all do to get them moving again?

The people who are not being asked to take a haircut are the IMF, the ECB, the EFSF, the whole lot of public sector holders of Greek debt. They too have, in reality (perhaps not the IMF as it is always first in line as a creditor) lost 50% of their money…..because Greek debt is trading at 50% of nominal.

This whole farce of a bailout, the austerity, the entirely counter-productive wringing out of a nation, is all to try and make sure that those public sector holders do not have to acknowledge the loss they have already made...

Wait! It's all the fault of the evil anonymous markets! How dare 'markets' dictate to governments!

Er, not that either.

Governments choose to borrow from different parts of the planet because taxpayers won't pay enough tax to finance things governments say taxpayers must have even though they won't pay enough tax.

And if you borrow money, the lenders may politely ask how you plan to pay it back, and trust you to give an honest answer. If they don't get an honest or credible answer, they are inclined to put up the cost of lending you more money.

That's not an evil market at work. That's good manners.

Last word with Tim who explains why the EU elite won't do what is needed to end the crisis:

... What wouldn’t survive is the Grand European Dream, that the disparate continent can be turned into one Great Country ruled by the technocrats in Brussels. Which is why the technocrats in Brussels won’t solve the problem in the obvious and simple manner. Because the Dream is more important than the People.

Sadly, an economy, a country, where a Dream, any Dream, is more important than the People isn’t a nice one for people to inhabit.

A feisty but realistic article in the Guardian by Nikos Dimitriou looks at Greece's deep problems whatever happens:

Greece relies on imports, fuel and food especially. The agricultural sector has dropped to less than 4% of GDP – can enough be grown to feed the population? How many more businesses will close because they can't get stock or supplies? Where do we get the cash and specialised skills to revive moribund industry to produce products needed in the country, let alone exports? Will stagflation and harsher austerity be survivable?

Tourism may boom, at least for those who don't mind things scruffy and simple. Hopefully they won't expect quality, and will be content with what we used to offer in the 60s – as long as it's dirt cheap...

... The disconnect is mutual. It's rare to find anyone who retains faith in any bastion of the state. Polled regarding corruption among various professions, 94% believed politicians are all or mostly corrupt, journalists 80%, the church 67%, judges 64%.

Such animus is justified, by revelations of how much of the country's money they have simply lost (the state bank president reported that 30% of the budget was unaccounted for); by endless scandals that never lead to punishment; by more than three decades of much-needed improvements promised, enacted into law, then ignored.

Fear and anomie increase as we realise how profoundly wounded this society is. It seems the price of freedom from the bloated, feckless bureaucracy in Brussels is to maintain the status quo; that the opportunists will flourish; the political cabal will expand their power; that justice won't prevail.

The only certainty is how wrong the pundits are to presume Greece's recovery is simply a matter of "weathering the transition, increasing exports and returning to the markets".

See also an unusually cogent stream of Comments, going to and fro over how far Greece and its Leftist culture have created all this misery.

The key issue is simple. How can a country like Greece create wealth and so avoid being like a dusty poor part of Africa?

The traditional route is obvious enough. It exports sunshine in the form of tourism. But modern tourism needs decent facilities and one or two basic things like water and petrol. Cheaper-end tourism won't pay for the imports to keep up standards on the scale Greece needs. So wealth-creating industries and activities are needed too.

Greece's problem now is that no-one wants to lend Greece the money to help these things keep going, except at unaffordable interest rates. For all the reasons described in the above article, Greece has collectively lost credibility as a society.

Commenter Demetri is on superb form here:

Too many Greeks want money.... from someone else.The believe their are "owed" money by other Greeks...the government... .the banks... the EU.... rather than take personal responsibility for their own lives. The unions are still holding Greece hostage with their endless strikes and riots (destroying their own country)/ This is not out of principle and human goodness. Its because austerity hurt their pocket books. Their motivations are personal greed and petty envy of those that have more money than themselves... not ethics.

In reality far leftists in Greece are tax evaders and corrupt in no lesser frequency than the very "elites" they constantly scapegoat for their problems. The main difference is the far leftists expect the same money as others... but don't actually produce enough to earn the money they think they are owed. They would rather hug a tree and write poetry rather than build a factory that produces jobs and goods.

In short, they want to live parasitically off others while whining about the injustice of it all.

... If Greeks want their dignity back they will now have to earn it through their labours not borrowing money or expecting others to fund their lifestyle. Rather than constantly whining about how the government owes them money and calling for revolution far leftist Greeks need to grow up and start thinking about how to start an export business. Or how to get practical in demand technical skills.

Rather than scheming for new ways as to how they can taking the wealth of others, far leftists in Greece need to start thinking how they can produce wealth themselves. It is morally stronger position to give than to take.

A profound conclusion lost on the tedious #OccupyLSX tent-dwellers and all the other 'occupiers' now being roundly ignored everywhere.

Their remedy - to make things better by 'protesting' and 'making demands' while offering not a shred of a sensible idea - is just what is NOT needed to impress foreign investor who now have money which we don't have.

The Great Unravelling continues apace.

As readers here know, the Spiegel Online site is a fine way to find thoughtful pieces on the goings-on in Europe from a German perspective.

Try these two for size.

The first is an interview with Polish Central Bank Governor Marek Belka (who served for a while as a technocrat Prime Minister while I was in Warsaw). Belka is a smart, steady operator who chooses his words well. Here he tries to present a cautious but optimistic picture of Poland's prospects for joining a reformed and disciplined Eurozone:

SPIEGEL: The phrase "Polish economy" once stood for inefficiency. How did Poland manage to be the only EU country to keep on growing its economy during the financial crisis?

Belka: We did a few things right. Our economic policy was cautious. We took integration into the EU very seriously. Many of our rules are more modern than the rules in Germany or France. We have had a debt limit enshrined in our constitution since 1997. We have low taxes and competitive labor costs. The Poles complain a lot, but we are basically optimists. Optimists spend money, while pessimists do not. The Germans believe that after the Hartz (welfare) reforms, they now have a flexible labor market. But ours is even more liberal. We have avoided financial turbulence. And there was no credit bubble.

...  The euro zone is heading for an increasingly closer political union, without which the euro can't be saved. One day Poland will join a new and different euro zone, which will have more of the characteristics of a federation than it does today. We have to be strong and healthy to avoid losing our economic sovereignty, which is now happening to a few countries that have problems.

And this is an important corrective to those of us in the richer parts of Europe squealing about 'austerity':

SPIEGEL: ... Why are the people in Eastern Europe so much more patient?

Belka: Because the people here still aren't used to prosperity. Let me give you an example from my days at the International Monetary Fund. It was at a time when the Latvians had to implement a drastic austerity program, which caused consumer spending to drop by 25 percent in a year.

I asked a Latvia negotiator how his country expected to survive this dramatic crisis. He said: What crisis? We had a crisis when the Soviets were sending us to Siberia. Here in Eastern Europe, many still remember why they were once poor, and they're not afraid of reasonable reforms that are painful in the short term.

But see also this tricky argument that failure to give Poland lots of EU money in the next Budget spending round would be a Breach of Promise:

SPIEGEL: Is it conceivable that the EU will cut back on other spending in the future because of the unimaginably expensive bailout funds? Spending such as subsidies and structural assistance, which has also helped Poland in recent years?

Belka: We're worried about that, of course. It would be a violation of the accession agreements. The deal, at the time, was this: We adjust our markets, and you help us in the process. If this were no longer the case, it would be a breach of promise.

Nice try. But no.

Then read this piece vividly describing how Germany's insistence that all countries make a 'real effort' is now creating a divided Europe:

... the price of her success in Brussels is the division of Europe. Those countries that are not part of the euro zone are now no longer part of a core Europe, and are now being asked to leave the room when the truly important issues are being debated. While the 17 euro-zone members walk at the front of the pack, the 10 non-euro-members are forced to walk behind, like stragglers and second-tier nations.

And now they have it in writing. In the closing document of last week's summit, euro-zone member states grant themselves the right to work together more closely without having to wait for the non-euro countries. The EFSF also deepens the divide. It is a facility set up by the 17 countries in the monetary union for the 17 countries in the monetary union...

The 17 euro-zone leaders decided to make the bailout fund and its director, Klaus Regling, even more important in the future. Regling will receive more power and influence, as well as more money. He will become the nucleus of a new Europe driven by fiscal policy.

The EU summits last week saw difficult exchanges between the UK and Eurozone countries about all this and a classic drafting fudge:

Most readers of this website are interested in one way or another in 'foreign affairs'.

As I have described on different occasions here, the heart of international diplomacy is the state. That idea in its modern form emerged from the Peace of Westphalia. Here are some passages from my 2009 DIPLOMAT article on this subject:

A vital date in the history of the modern world is 1648. That was when the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster were signed. All readers of DIPLOMAT know these treaties off by heart. They together are more usually known as the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War within the Holy Roman Empire and the even more geriatric Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

The negotiation of those two treaties invented modern grand scale diplomatic junketing. Haggling meandered on for six years. Over 100 different delegations of states, ‘imperial states’ from the Holy Roman Empire and interest groups (today known as NGOs) jostled for good outcomes, all on generous expenses.

The Two Treaties were mainly about settling Europe’s violent religious differences. But in doing so they set up new principles of sovereignty, under which the rulers of ‘nation states’ agreed to manage their relationships in a peaceful or at least civilised way. As democracy slowly came to qualify the power of those rulers, such sovereignty was seen as lying not with the national leader but rather in the ‘nation’. Which opened the way for ‘nation states’ to emerge as independent actors on the international stage.

Hence two tricky questions, still alive and well today:

·         how does a defined territory join this grand process (ie what is a ‘state’)?

·         which people join this grand process (ie what is a ‘nation’?)?

... Meanwhile Yugoslavia too had broken up. That hard question at the heart of Westphalianism – nation or state? - posed itself in acute form

Should the rest of us recognise the former internal borders of the USSR and Yugoslavia as the borders of the new countries concerned? Or should we negotiate border changes in some cases, better to reflect the principle of self-determination? Who or what should be sovereign? 

... The West looked at Slovenia (predominantly Slovene-populated, borders mainly not contested) and decided to have its cake and eat it. Slovenia handily ticked both boxes: internal borders as new international borders, and self-determination.

Which was fine for Slovenia. But not for Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro or Serbia, the other five republics in communist Yugoslavia each with different ethnic/national identity tensions. Not to mention the sizeable category of ‘Yugoslavs’ – people not identifying themselves with one or other ethnic community...

You know the rest. Calamity. War. Refugee columns.  Ethnic cleansing. War crimes. ICTY. NATO bombing. In today’s Europe! Dayton. Rambouillet. More NATO bombing. Kosovo run by the UN. Milosevic sent to ICTY and dies in prison. Kosovo declares independence in 2008, but is still not recognised by the majority either of countries or of the world’s population.

... Diplomacy. Building on what exists (ie racial, ethnic, religious tensions going back centuries) and accept that Good Fences make Good Neighbours? As we (HMG/West) did in accepting the break-up of what remained of Yugoslavia into Serbia + Kosovo + Montenegro?

Or building towards what we insist has to exist, hoping to compel people to cooperate nicely within single state frameworks which they dislike and distrust, as we (HMG/West) have done in Bosnia?

Two utterly different philosophies and policies, applied to places a few miles apart, which for eighty years were in one country.

Foolish Consistency? Or Foolish Inconsistency?

From Westphalia to West failure?

Now a new book by Norman Davies is coming out: Vanished Kingdoms. It looks at how the ebb and flow of history builds, removes and sometimes (Poland; Montenegro) restores polities.

Here at Browser is a super interview with Professor Davies, who as usual is on lively, challenging form:

People who have their eye on short-term, contemporary events and the world around us tend to forget this. I sometimes think they imagine the world politic to be a chessboard, where you play games, have a crisis, and then you put all the pieces back and have another game. Well it’s not like that. You can have a chessboard, you have players who are either pawns or kings or whatever, but the players themselves are always changing...

At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. There’s a final siege and the Turks go over the wall. The last emperor – number 156 or whatever – disappears in the fray, is killed, and that’s the end of the empire. This is, if you like, the guidebook to this story, to exactly what Rousseau is saying. No matter how powerful they may look, the time will come, as in the lives of men and women, when they die. It’s not a topic that people are eagerly looking at...

And the indigenous population of the region where Glasgow is – Strathclyde, as it’s called now – was Welsh. The chief hero of medieval Scotland was William Wallace. Wallace means Welsh. The Scots don’t tell you that. They had this theory that William Wallace’s family came from Shropshire, which is how they try to explain how a Welshman could be in what they thought of as Scotland. They didn’t know that these Welsh of the north were not intruders from Wales, they were there long before the Scots...

Part of the afterlife of the Soviet Union is, of course, in Putin’s brain. Putin is ex-KGB, an organisation founded to preserve the Soviet state which failed completely. Putin must have a terrible sense of failure. In fact, he has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern times. So sure, Putin, in the back of his mind, would like to reassemble if not the Soviet Union, then some sort of empire, a broader Russian-dominated grouping which would be a modern version of the Soviet Union. I don’t think he’s got a cat’s chance in hell...

And finally:

Is there a European identity strong enough to overcome the national identities of its member states? It’s touch and go. But I’m an optimist. I think there will be one hell of a crisis. I doubt if the EU will disappear, but it will be severely chastened. And it will have to put its house in order. Otherwise it will become one of the vanished kingdoms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.

Read the whole thing. It's crackling with wisdom and interest.

Then order the book (on Kindle too):

A reader steers me towards this energetic and well informed stream of consciousness account of the Eurozone deal, over at Midwest Musings:

And speaking of insurance, one has to wonder what this does to the very active CDS market of very unhappy memory--AIG--as this supposed deal with the banks is being catogorized as a "non-credit event," it being "voluntary" in nature, and not a default which would trigger payment under the CDSs.  

I suppose if a gun is held to your head and you give all your money to the guy with the gun that could be considered a "voluntary" act:  I kinda look at it as theft but that's just me...

If anyone believes this 103 Billion Euro crap they aught to have their head examined, but there was language that the liquidity of the system would be protected in some undisclosed manner (read, ECB prints as much money as needed) so that isn't a bad thing.  Mind you, there isn't a lot out there, IMHO, to be raised for any Euro bank so all of this may be moot.  Look for partial nationalizations, mergers and issuance of funny money from the governments if they are to fulfill this nonsensical requirement...

...Anyone know how one says, "Waddayou nuts?" in Portugese?

Remember the wail of rage against greedy bankers who had put the whole of the world's finances at risk because they set up ingenious schemes based upon layer after layer of ill-understood risks?

Aren't EU leaders doing the same now on an even vaster scale - but with public money?

In 1969, in her seminal work On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross eloquently detailed the five stages of dying - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. It remains one of the most important contributions to our understanding of the final phase of life and will do much to explain the otherwise baffling lack of self-awareness characterizing European elites' approach to the entire EU project...

Back in 2005 after the French and Dutch referendum debacles, William Schirano and John Hulsman wrote a doom-laden piece for the US-based The National Interest about the fact that the European Union and its ideals were, in fact, dying.

Watching the latest fevered summitry it is hard not to see Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression aplenty. Just quite not enough Acceptance yet?

Perhaps this is understandable. How to accept that something so vast and magnificent is failing, and perhaps giving way to uncertainty and disarray which risk lurching Europe back towards its ghastly past?

Read a version of their famous article here. It's only some 300 weeks old, but the names of the key players (Blair, Chirac, Schroder) seem to come from a prehistoric age.

Six years on things are, of course, much worse. But their core idea still makes sense:

Simply put, a one-size-fits-all approach does not conform to the modern political realities of the Continent - European countries have politically diverse opinions on all aspects of international life: free trade issues, attitudes toward NATO, relations with the United States and how to organize their own economies.

For example, the Netherlands is a strongly free-trading country, traditionally pro-NATO and proAmerican. France, by contrast, is more protectionist, more skeptical of NATO, more statist in organizing its economy and more competitive in its attitude toward America. Thus the two European renegades actually have very different political cultures  - there simply is no common "European national interest."

The EU should function as a political clubhouse - coordinating an intra-European consensus where one exists...

Update  it is sobering to see a long line of comments after such an article in a national newspaper, many of them buzzing away about issues far from the immediate points I made. Lots of not altogether focused Euro-scepticism out there. But this one from damage124 caught my amused eye: 

Unless I am very much mistaken, was it not the foreign office that were the big proponents not only of our entry to the EEC but also the euro?
I am sure your description is accurate but perhaps the "blue sky" was actually a very thick fog.
I appreciate that you have now retired but perhaps you should have taken this opportunity to apologise?

 * * * * *

I have been invited to join the lively sophisticated team of Daily Telegraph bloggers. Fame. At last. 

Here is the first result, a gallop over exhausted EU processes which has ideas familiar to attentive readers here but maybe not (yet) to a much wider audience:

Basically, there is the bloke in the bar anywhere in the world, railing against the iniquity of what foreigners get up to: “Can you believe what those Germans/Frenchies/Americans/Arabs/Brits/Jews are doing now?! They’re trying to cheat us! Do they think we’re thick, or wot? Innit!” 

Then above him (sorry, ladies, it’s usually a him) is a vast, unpleasant fog created by supercilious on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand people like me. Officials, technocrats, state-funded busybodies and experts droning on in high acronymic about Targets, Priorities, Road-maps, Objectives, Strategies, Policies and the rest of it.

When you break through that impenetrable, noxious layer of process, you suddenly get to clear blue sky where meetings of world leaders take place. And the impressive thing is that these leaders resemble the bloke in the pub. The language is (usually) not quite as blunt. But the thoughts and messages are...

EU Solidarity of course requires certain minimal levels of discipline and commitment by all sides, lest it become an unacceptable redistributive one-way street, money flowing from those who accept the rules to those who might (or might not) do so.

If richer Europeans ‘should’ help poorer Europeans – as they have massively done through EU Cohesion Funds and other redistributive mechanisms – what ‘should’ the poorer Europeans do in return? Work harder? Agree to refuse assistance when they have improved their lot? Stick to the rules meticulously? Be grateful?

No one has ever wanted to talk about this. Even to broach the subject is a howwid breach of Euro-etiquette, suggesting a narrow, penny-pinching, Thatcherite mistrust of European processes themselves. We're all Europeans, right? So by definition we are all equally worthy. We can – and must – be trusted!

Should Europeans trust each other? Mais oui. Do they? Not so much...

... For how much longer will Angela Merkel sit there glaring at her fellow leaders and glumly accept that, in effect, Germany is to be blackmailed by smaller, less scrupulous EU partners (“If you don’t give us your nation’s hard-won credibility – and its money – we’ll drag you down too!”)?

Is this acceptable as the basis for running a creditable and credit-worthy society in Germany, and for Germany as part of a wider European community? Is this what all those decades of Germany’s heroic post-WW2 rebuilding effort led to – a Europe of looters and moochers? How to sell that to the honest toiler in the Berlin bierkeller?

Maybe one day soon Germany will look the other shifty countries in the eye round the conference table. And, like Atlas, shrug.

Has last night's Summit solved the core Eurozone problem?

Of course not. It simply represents a new dizzy height for High Euro-Micawberism:

'Accidents will occur in the best regulated families...

I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be more beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if -if, in short, anything turns up.’  

How many times do I need to argue that the 'basic' problem with the European Union is a failure to accept certain Realities?

If you're sick of hearing it from me, as well you might be, listen to John Kay over at the FT (Note: it's painful to pay (horror) for news and analysis, but if you want to follow the Eurozone calamity properly you must buy an online FT subscription):

The decisive action they all seek is not really a European solution at all. It is that the German government should write very large cheques – or underwrite very large borrowings.

Whenever you assert responsibility for issues you do not have authority to tackle, you risk a crisis of credibility that undermines the authority you do have. Europe’s leaders see themselves as mustering resources for a war with the markets: a war which they will lose, not just because they will never find sufficient resources to defeat the markets, but because they are really fighting reality

Which is why cross Leftist articles like this one miss the core point:

Reading the press, one gets the impression of a bunch of lazy Mediterranean scroungers, enjoying one of the highest standards of living in Europe while making the frugal Germans pick up the tab. This is a nonsensical propaganda...

Angela Merkel clearly has Italy in her sights. She, and the Troika are scapegoating the Greeks – in order to make sure that should Greece take the rumoured “hair cut” on its debt and restructure, the other peripheral countries – especially Italy – won’t get any ideas and be tempted down the same path of forced debt restructuring, but rather will redouble their efforts to achieve arbitrary fiscal targets on an equally arbitrary timeline (and how’s that worked out for Greece?), and learn to “live within their means”, as the Germans always piously lecture the world.

This is the strategy to prevent what is euphemistically called the “contagion impact”. In reality, it is also called the principle of collective guilt – destroying the livelihoods of thirteen million people for political or ideological or faith based reasons, which is frankly disgusting and unacceptable. Given their own history, German policy makers should understand this phenomenon...

It's not just about a crude cost/benefit analysis. It's about Morality.

The 'Reality' (as I see it) is that the much vaunted EU Solidarity requires certain minimal levels of discipline by all sides. No-one has ever wanted to talk about this too openly: it's all too pointed and embarrassing, since to talk about the mutual obligations of Solidarity is money-grubbing and lacking in trust. We're all Europeans, right? So what's the problem?

The problem is that the Germans see (not without some reason) many of the southern European belt of countries as being simply unable or unwilling to achieve the necessary level of collective national discipline to make Solidarity credible (running honest businesses and honest accounts, paying taxes, respecting rules - tough stuff like that), and that when these countries fall short (as they inevitably do) they expect Germany to pick up the bill.

Yes, it could cause unfathomable disaster including for Germany if the Eurozone crashes. But is Germany to sit there and be ripped off indefinitely? Is refusing to subsidise the hapless or feckless for ever really "disgusting and unacceptable"?  

Germany, like Atlas, is shrugging. 

The FT's distinguished columnists are fearing for the worst as they look at the Eurozone debacle unfold. And, of course, many of them had glowing words to say in favour of the whole idea when it was set up.

Wolfgang Münchau gives more doom-laden analysis today (tuck'd away behind the FT paywall if you've used up your free article quota for the month). But in it there is this truly startling, nay amazing passage (my emphasis added):

The way eurozone leaders have been handling the crisis ultimately vindicates the German constitutional court’s conservatism in its definition of what constitutes a functioning democracy. Policy co-ordination among heads of state is both undemocratic and ineffective. A monetary union may require more than just a eurobond and a small fiscal union. It may require a formal, if partial, transfer of sovereignty to the centre – that includes the rights to levy certain taxes, impose regulation in product, labour and financial markets, and to set fiscal rules for member states.

Under normal circumstances, European electorates would not accept such a massive transfer of sovereignty. I would not completely exclude the possibility that they might accept it if the alternative was a breakdown of the euro. Even then, I would not bet on such an outcome. Current policy is leading us straight towards this bifurcation point, which may only be a few weeks or months away.

Remember this analysis back in 2008 that the European Union is a 'post-democratic' phenomenon? Thus:

There is a serious question here as to where the EU stands on Democracy. The EU Project lumbers on, Liberal but not Democratic, knowing that if key aspects of the project were put to referenda they would be rejected and not just in the UK.

Mr Münchau is, of course, right. To have tired heads of government and states who themselves barely understand the issues horse-trading the rights and responsibilities of hundreds of millions of people is 'undemocratic and ineffective'. Worse. It's dangerous.

European leaders and their clever formalistic functionaries have created a structure which is now not able to work except by tottering along a policy tight-rope that gets higher and thinner as each day passes. It is hard to see how the radical centralisation of crude power needed to keep the show tottering on can be reconciled with any idea of popular democratic legitimacy as it has evolved in Europe since WW2. The rambling debate in the UK Parliament today is a sign that the mood is changing fast, whatever the result of the vote tonight. 

Loath as I usually am to agree with Paul Krugman, he lays it on the line here:

All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can’t achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area’s second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza...

The bitter truth is that it’s looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed. And the even more bitter truth is that given the way that system has been performing, Europe might be better off if it collapses sooner rather than later.

When the EU elite loses the confidence of powerful world-class experts like these, something quite extraordinary is happening. Fast.

In case you haven't seen it already, here is my latest DIPLOMAT article - this one on the flawed first principles underlying the EU's current problems.

It considers several basic principles of the way the EU works and notes that the current crisis is so painful because it is putting these 'deeper' principles under severe strain:

Carefully Calibrated Paternalism

All Europeans are equal. But some are a lot more equal than others...

Indeed, you must add together the populations of Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Estonia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, Finland, Slovakia, Denmark, Bulgaria, Austria, Sweden, Hungary, Czech Republic and Belgium to amass a population total exceeding Germany’s. These countries combined get 124 votes, compared to the puny 29 that Germany, UK, France and Italy each enjoy.

What this means is that the EU Bigs – and especially Germany – have gone far out of their way to make themselves non-threatening to the EU Smalls. They do this by denying themselves the full voting weight their population numbers would receive if voting were decided according to a straight headcount of each member state’s citizens. Without this far-reaching modesty by the Bigs, they could combine forces to win any vote. The Smalls would always lose. Which, if you’re a Small, isn’t fair.

However, the fact that the Bigs give such generous voting weight to Smalls (and Not-So-Smalls) is patronising or at least paternalistic. It tells the Smalls that they are, well, small – and living off the political munificence of the Bigs. As Prince Hal ruefully puts it in Henry IV, Part One when mixing with Falstaff and the other vagabonds, ‘I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyok’d humour of your idleness.’

Highly Qualified Trust

Should Europeans trust each other? Of course. Do they? Not so much. One strikingly positive example of European Trust lies in that very fact of voting at the EU level. Each EU member state, Big and Small alike, has surrendered goodly dollops of sovereignty to Brussels, to the point of accepting that it might get outvoted on all sorts of issues with direct implications for its own citizens. This concession is made by all in return for ‘getting things done’ by the Union as a whole, where the things which get done are, by definition, in the wider EU family interest.

Thus each state assumes a minimal level of reasonableness and good faith on the part of any voting majority, a remarkable and (as events now suggest) unwise innovation in international diplomatic practice. But this is not the whole story.

Any small community, much like a family, works through informal give-and-take understandings rather than rules: the ambient level of familiarity and trust is high. The larger the community, the greater the need for formal rules, and then even more rules: familiarity and mutual trust are that much lower.

This explains why despite all the lofty rhetoric about European unity and shared values, the Union rests on incredibly complicated and impenetrable treaties, given life by incredibly complicated and impenetrable ‘directives’. Cultural-political values and practices inevitably differ hugely across so many different countries. It is difficult to make the space work without spelling out each and every detail to avoid ambiguity and disagreement (and corruption).

Asymmetric Solidarity

No Europeans talk more about ‘solidarity’ than the Poles. Not surprisingly – the red Solidarnosc (Solidarity) logo designed by Jerzy Janiszewski helped mobilise the Polish nation against communism and became one of history’s finest political icons. Having joined the Union in 2004 the Poles now vigorously wave the ‘European solidarity’ banner. This mainly means that other EU member states should go along with whatever Poland wants, especially where the Union’s money is concerned.

A wider collectivist idea of solidarity underpins ‘social Europe’: we are all in the same European boat together, so ipso facto we must share similar beliefs and values, plus the richer areas of Europe should help the poorer areas.

The problem with such solidarity is that it risks ending up being a one-way redistributive street. If the rich should help the poor (as they have massively done through EU Cohesion Funds and other redistributive mechanisms), what should the poor do in return? Work harder? Agree to refuse assistance when they have improved their lot? Stick to the rules meticulously? Be grateful?

No-one knows. Or even wants to put the question. In fact, even mentioning this question suggests a selfish, indecent, un-European lack of solidarity. Shame on me...

Undaunted by the fact that it is the current EU Presidency, Poland goes to the polls today to elect a new Parliament.

Given that Poland has had a stable government for four years and arguably the best economic record in Europe during our ghastly economic crisis, one might have expected the Citizens Platform (PO) party led by Donald Tusk to romp home.

Yet (wild generalisation advisory) Poles have a lugubrious tendency towards finding fault with themselves, even when things are going well, if not especially when things are going well. Plus the typical continental proportional representation system makes an overall majority for any one party almost impossible, while giving space to turbo-charged populists to break into Parliament. This adds an almost random element to possible post-election coalition-forming.

So in recent weeks the main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the brother of former President Lech Kaczynski who died in the Smolensk air crash) has closed the gap with astute populist positions, and might even be in the lead among 'likely voters'.

I am not close enough to the grainy detail of Polish politics any more to be able to offer you any sense of the underlying momentum in the campaign. Indeed, even when I was closely following the 2005 elections my crystal balls did not deliver and I got the result completely wrong. I had to grovel to London for forgiveness.

Here is a fine example of the Economist doing what it does best, giving a readable and pertinent analysis by someone who really understands a complicated subject:

Mr Tusk's short speech during his Tuskobus stop-off in the eastern town of Ryki illustrates the problem. "Choose who you can trust to steer Poland through this storm without people having to suffer, because elsewhere in Europe people really are starting to suffer", he declared. In other words, vote for me because it could have been worse.

This is a hard sell, and doesn't make up for the fact that PO failed to deliver its 2007 campaign promises, and that for all its "green island of growth" status, Poland still has an unemployment rate of over 10%, rising to 25% among the young...

... Still, although this campaign has shown what a wily political operator Mr Kaczyński can be, and put the fear into a perhaps complacent liberal establishment, the chances of a PiS government remain slim. The party has no obvious coalition partner, and PO's allies in the PSL party look set to retain their parliamentary status.

Ultimately, this election may be remembered not for the tenaciousness of Poland's conservative forces, but the emergence of their very opposite. Not all the young people disappointed with PO have drifted towards PiS. Some favour the party set up by Janusz Palikot, a rumbustious defector from PO who is running on a staunchly left-wing, anti-clerical platform.

A disciple of the "the more outrageous the better" school of publicity, Mr Palikot has blamed the Smolensk crash on the irresponsibility of the Kaczyńskis, and promises to legalise marijuana, gay marriage and abortion. Polls suggest these proposals could earn him as much as 8% of the vote on Sunday. Many outsiders accept the stereotype of Poland as a conservative Catholic country. The truth is a lot more complicated, and interesting.

One expert tells me that Law and Justice peaked a bit too soon and so are likely to come second behind Citizens Platform. But that might not matter if against all expectations Kaczynski can form a blocking majority in partnership with other smaller parties and, perhaps, set up some sort of ostensibly 'technocratic' government. Such a seemingly far-fetched scenario depends crucially on what smaller parties cross the line and make it into Parliament, and what price they demand for being cooperative.

The chances are that Donald Tusk will be better placed to form a new coalition. But don't bet too much on it.

If he does win, will he keep Radek Sikorski as Foreign Minister? Radek has been Poland's longest serving Foreign Minister and is doing a big and good job to modernise the Ministry. Plus he is one of Poland's most popular politicians. Maybe a bit too popular? But where to put him? Back to the Defence Ministry, now an unhappy place after the findings that Ministry pilots were in part to blame for the Smolensk crash? Would he accept that?

The one thing which is more or less certain is that unless Citizens Platform win by a storming margin, the ensuing coalition wranglings will drag on nicely, leaving the current government to see out most of the remaining weeks of the Polish Presidency.

All in all? Not much change.  

Articles pour out about the mounting problems in Greece. Homelessness, drugs, shops shutting, psychological despair, political alienation, emigration, suicide, and the rest.

Such as this one in the Guardian:

A new underclass has appeared: in the homeless and hungry who roam the streets; in the spiralling number of drug addicts; in the psychiatric patients ejected from institutions that can no longer offer them a place; in the thousands of shop owners forced to close and board up businesses; in those who forage through municipal rubbish bins at night; and in the pensioners who make do with rejects at fruit and vegetable markets. Suicides have also risen, with help lines reporting a deluge of calls...

With desperation has come a collective sense of guilt and depression – more dangerous, say analysts, than even the social tensions that threaten to tear the country apart.

Recently hundreds of Greeks piled into a lecture hall to hear Fotini Tsalikoglou, a prominent psychology professor, speak on "the power of loss".

"Greeks feel like they are in a bad dream," she says. "You wake up not knowing what will be overturned today of what was overturned yesterday. A common thread that unites people is the experience of fear and desperation."

This is a fascinating insight into just how fragile our existence is. Homelessness and hunger are not some sort of indictment of 'capitalism' but the planet's default mode. Greeks are finding out how most people in human history have lived and indeed in much of Africa and Asia still live - a meagre, grinding, subsistence existence.

To get out of that dismal condition requires high, sustained inventiveness and collective discipline. Sure, in Greece's case Germany's export policies and other external factors have not helped. But the basic reason for that society's accelerating decline is that Greece for far too long has lived off other people's good will. Borrowing and not paying back - sometimes for good reasons, mainly for reasons of chronic mismanagement - has characterised Greece's attitude to borrowing for over 2000 years.

Latterly Greece has enjoyed a significant pseudo-boom as EU funds (grants and loans) have poured in. Yet the country's elite have gone to the amazing extent of telling lies to EU authorities and their benefactors about the state of public finances. This deception has helped make a difficult situation far worse.

While all that has gone on, Greece has enjoyed a smirking relationship with its own hard-core Leftists and terrorists. When I was in Thessaloníki in June 2000 for a Balkan Stability Pact gathering, the British Embassy Defence Attaché Brigadier Stephen Saunders was murdered in cold blood by Greek Marxist fanatics. Under severe British and wider international pressure as the 2004 Athens Olympics loomed, the Greek system finally started to make a proper effort to find the assassins and the whole vile network which had killed many other people was at last arrested and sent to prison.

Above all, the Greek masses have had a more than ambiguous relationship towards the state, enjoying the jobs and bribes and privileges coming from state jobs while studiously doing everything possible to avoid paying the taxes needed to fund them.

Things which can't last, don't. Greece is busy sliding back towards the sort of overall living standards associated with far poorer countries.

This wretched situation compels the EU and wider financial forces for reasons of crude self-interest to scramble round looking for ways to manage the mess. But France's President Sarkozy adds a moral argument:

“The failure of Greece would be a failure of the whole of Europe. There is no other credible alternative. Yes, there is a moral obligation of solidarity. But there is also an obligation for economic solidarity. It is not possible to leave Greece behind.”

What exactly is this 'moral obligation of solidarity', exactly? Why should we help Greece more than we help, say, much poorer countries which have not yet shown themselves to determined to scrounge for hundreds of years at a time?

Should not collective bad behaviour have collective bad consequences? Isn't that the most 'moral' position of all, or at least the only one that truly matters as it gives the purest impulse to making the Right Choices?

PS   Just to add that Stumbling and Mumbling also offered us last month some terse but pertinent thoughts on the deeper moral issues underlying the Eurozone debacle - see especially the fine last line :

All these options - except fiscal expansion which is only part of the solution anyway - impose costs upon northern European taxpayers. Which prompts the sort of questions posed by Clemens Wergin of Die Welt: why should German tax-payers support Greek tax-dodgers? Why should bankers who have made bad loans be bailed out?

In short, there’s moral resistance, founded in part upon natural justice and in part upon the protestant bourgeois belief that hard work and prudence should be rewarded and fecklessness punished.

... Herein, I think, lies the cause of the markets’ annoyance at Europe’s lack of leadership. If you regard the crisis as a merely technical one, you’ll see lots of possible fixes - or at least improvements on the status quo - and will therefore be frustrated that these aren’t being pursued.  What you miss is that moral aspect.

This, though, merely raises a more general point about politics - that there is not only often a clash between moralists and technocrats, but a mutual incomprehension between them.