For all the dysfunctions of their public finances and state administration, Italy and Greece are proud nations that dislike, even in a crisis, taking orders from foreigners. This stance resonates with the general public as much as with the political classes.
But eurozone leaders are at the end of their tether. Decades of irritation at Italian indolence and Greek graft have persuaded them that virtually the only Italians and Greeks with credibility are those who have spent part of their careers in European Union institutions and who speak the same apolitical, technocratic language as that mouthed in Brussels. These sentiments have been reinforced as a result of the near-death experiences that Greece and other eurozone countries have suffered over the past 18 months on government bond markets, placing the euro itself in jeopardy.
In the name of saving their currency union, European policymakers prefer the suspension of politics as usual in Greece and Italy and its replacement with non-partisan, managerial expertise. Government policies will be supervised, not to say crafted in the first place, by Brussels and Frankfurt, the ECB’s headquarters, and will be implemented by Greek and Italian experts of identical pan-European outlook.
Arguably, Greece and Italy have only themselves to blame for this sorry outcome. But technocracy lies in the DNA of modern Europe. Jean Monnet, the brilliant French economist, diplomat and founding father of the EU, never held an elected post in his life. It remains to be seen whether technocracy can provide a satisfactory answer to the European emergency.
There is an alternative way forward. It is the path chosen by Ireland and Portugal, which fell into crisis, held elections and let the voters throw out one lot of politicians and put in a fresh lot. The governments in Dublin and Lisbon face formidable difficulties, but to defend their legitimacy in the public eye is not one of them.
The debt crisis appears gradually to be propelling Europe towards closer integration. But Europe may pay a heavy price if, on this journey, it increasingly treats democracy as an old-fashioned luxury.
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