ABSTRACT
Shotgun politics There is no alternative: the brutal imposition upon Greece of a socially unsustainable regime of economic conditionality in July 2015 has been presented as an economic imperative by the governments and technocrats of the Eurozone. The effort made by the Syriza-led Greek government to win for itself a space for a politics of choices, or for the pursuit of solvency through state-stimulated growth has been decisively foreclosed. Economic conditionality and the dissolution of state-funded welfare is an immutable and unforgiving feature of the modern world. Significantly, economic conditionality has also been given added constitutional force by courts, such as the European Court of Justice:
When granting assistance, the ESM ‘Board of Governors shall entrust the European Commission – in liaison with the ECB and, wherever possible, together with the IMF – with the task of negotiating, with the ESM Member concerned, a memorandum of understanding (‘MoU’) detailing the conditionality attached to the financial assistance facility. The content of the MoU shall reflect the severity of the weaknesses to be addressed and the financial assistance instrument chosen. In parallel, the Managing Director of the ESM shall prepare a proposal for a financial assistance facility agreement, including the financial terms and conditions and the choice of instruments, to be adopted by the Board of Governors.1
