Greece could set a new course for itself and for Europe in this Sunday’s elections, empowering the party that opposes the disastrous cuts to public spending that have characterized the country’s last several years.
Syriza, the popular leftist party, widened its lead Thursday to 6 points over New Democracy, the center-right party. Syriza has made its name as the key opponent of austerity, the painful cuts to the minimum wage, pensions, and public spending that the European Union has required in exchange for bailing out Greece’s government debt.
Many of the austerity bills have been met by street protests and riots, but that hasn’t stopped seven rounds of cuts from passing the Greek Parliament. It’s no surprise then that Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras’ promise to “cancel austerity” has been popular with voters. In an email to ThinkProgress, Aliki Kosyfologou, a press representative for Syriza, echoed that position. “The people of Greece have been demonstrating their disagreement with the austerity policies for a long time, even since 2010, when the first loan agreement was signed,” Kosyfologou wrote. “We are reaching this point that the disappointment has turned into a hope for something new, the hope that Syriza represents.”
That would be a major shift.
A Syriza victory would make Greece the first European country to reject the policies that have brought lasting sky-high unemployment, a declining economy, and a public health crisis.
The 40 percent cut in public health spending and lasting unemployment brought some of the most visible impacts of austerity, including a 20 percent spike in stillbirths, the return of malaria after mosquito spraying programs were cut, and an increase in HIV as needle exchanges ran out of clean needles.
Greek voters have switched en masse from PASOK, the center-left socialist party that has governed the country in coalition with New Democracy since the 2012 elections and helped push through austerity measures. In 2012 PASOK received 29.7 percent of the vote. They are now polling around 5 percent, while Syriza’s vote totals have grown sharply.
While the European Union, led by Germany, has enforced austerity in the name of promoting economic stability, evidence shows cutting spending in the midst of economic crisis has made the slump longer and more painful. The Greek economy has only barely begun growing again, largely due to the easing of austerity over time. Even similarly economically troubled nations like Spain and Italy stopped their GDP decline after the 2008 crisis, but Greece, hit hardest by austerity, continued to fall.
The U.S. was hampered by a misguided focus on austerity as well, but to a much lesser degree than Europe, which Paul Krugman argues has served as a natural experiment showing austerity to be failed economic policy.
Meanwhile, Greece’s unemployment rate remains at a staggering 26.8 percent, and its youth unemployment rate is at about 50 percent.
Greece’s poverty rate of 21 percent is also one of the highest in the Eurozone.
Syriza has campaigned on renegotiating Greece’s debt and stopping or reversing austerity. A new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) makes the case that the Greek government could use moderate stimulus to get its economy moving again. “A fiscal stimulus to restore full employment is most important,” CEPR co-Director Mark Weisbrot wrote in an email. “The government might also want to reverse some of the regressive policy changes of recent years, including the minimum wage cuts and many of the cuts in public spending on health care”.
But even if Syriza gets the most votes in the election, as expected, it will have to enter into a coalition with other, smaller parties to govern the country, meaning it’s still unclear exactly what policies they would be able to pursue.
And because that is still unclear, so are the potential consequences for the European Union. While Syriza is not threatening to leave the euro, Germany appears to be stoking that fear to discourage voters from supporting Syriza.
Kosyfologou, the Syriza press representative, set out clear goals for Greece. “After four years of severe austerity measures and economic recession,” Kosyfologou wrote, “Greek voters’ hopes are turned to reclaim their dreams for a better life and reset the injustice that has be done.”