Necessity makes us better
Every cloud has a silver lining, as the saying goes, or every crisis brings opportunity. The truth is that the fastest way to implement painful but essential change is through adversity. It’s the only way for a country to do what needs to be done and to move with the times.
It is similar to how we were forced to implement reforms in areas like pensions and labor laws under pressure from creditors and austerity agreements after going bankrupt.
The same was the case with the pandemic and the lockdowns. It forced a country that was way behind in its digital transformation to progress in leaps and bounds within just two years – in no small part thanks to the inspired leadership of Kyriakos Pierrakakis at the Ministry of Digital Governance.
Who would have thought Greece capable of delivering public education via computer, of having so many public documents and services available online, without lines and hassle, of providing the ability for so many thousands of employees to work from home entirely or partly?
The pandemic also spurred the slow-moving European bureaucracy into action, giving it flexibility and determination. It was able to order enough vaccines to cover the bloc’s citizens in record time and to set up a distribution and vaccination system to respond to the unprecedented challenge. Necessity forced the cumbersome vessel that is the European Union to move at an incredible pace.
The same is about to be the case with the war in Ukraine. Just think of Germany. It has the highest gross domestic product in Europe at nearly 3 trillion euros, yet it chose ease over investing in its energy independence or seeking common ground with its European peers.
As a result, it became grossly reliant – to a degree of 65%, in fact – on authoritarian Russia’s natural gas, and now finds itself scrambling for a solution without giving in to President Vladimir Putin’s blackmail. And it is looking to the European Commission for that solution, seeking a common strategy to keep all 27 member-states supplied and to push for a cap on energy prices on the strength of the bloc’s population of 450 million people.
This, however, is the only positive thing that appears to be emerging from this crisis: that necessity may make us better.
