‘Exemplary’ Greece and Greek resilience
A phrase by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during his visit to Athens on Wednesday got me thinking about the long and complicated relationship between Greeks and Germans – and about some Greek virtues and vices.
“Of course, we have to secure energy security,” Scholz said in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “I consider Greece exemplary, with what it has achieved with storage facilities for natural gas and liquefied gas. This is really what we have to do all over Europe.”
Even if this was a diplomatic nicety, the praise was well-deserved. It was not a reference to the “exemplary kingdom” of Greece’s first king, the young Bavarian prince Otto, but to a modern project completed through the efforts of several governments despite many obstacles and the usually unbeatable force of inertia. Today, the Revithoussa LNG Terminal secures the energy supply of Greece and other countries in Southeastern Europe.
How did Greece become an “exemplar” in the diversity of its energy supply when countries that are “exemplars” of rationalism, productivity and wealth were found wanting? Perhaps it is because we have learned to live with the difficulties provoked by our always turbulent politics, by the need for powerful allies, and by the understanding that, in the end, we have to rely on our own resources. The lack of cooperation between us, our small population and meager funds, our unpredictable neighbors, make us resilient and wary. We cannot afford complacency. We must comply with allies’ directives but we must also seek alternative solutions. Perhaps Revithoussa would not have been built if the United States had not disapproved of the initial efforts to procure gas from the then Soviet Union. But the Russian gas came, and Revithoussa was built as an alternative. The decision (by a PASOK government) in both instances was supported by successive governments. The current one has doubled the islet’s storage capacity (to 365,000 cubic meters).
Cross-party cooperation turned out to be crucial. Now that the country is stumbling towards the supreme, self-inflicted stress test (elections under a simple proportional system), we shall see if we learned anything from Revithoussa’s success: if we can work together or if we are quite prepared to blow up the country’s future.
