In some improbable future, when I will be really old, I would like to think that one day I will be telling my (inexistent) grandchildren about the night Greece was saved.
Or if I wanted to put a heroic sheen to it, I will be telling them about the night we saved Greece.
Of course I, and my fellow journalists, did nothing of the sort. We sat around, dozed, and the press centre at the Council's Justus Lipsius was packed with recumbent journalists or camera persons sleeping on the floor, on chairs, wherever they could find, as upstairs the heads of government probably were doing much the same in the many long intervals of their meeting as Alexis Tsipras negotiated with the Opposition parties in Greece to see who would support him even though the Syriza core had dropped out.
As a new day dawned, we downstairs never imagined what kind of high stakes were being played upstairs.
Later we found out that the crux was reached at around 6am when, after a night of battling the issue, both Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras gave up, stood up and headed for the door.
That was when Donald Tusk, President of the Council, stepped in and forbade them from exiting the room. Only one issue remained - the €50 billion fund the lenders wanted to set up from Greek assets to serve as a guarantee. Tsipras was adamant he did not want a foreign base for this fund, more so when it was discovered that this Luxembourg-based fund had German Finance Minister Schauble as its chairman.
More discussion ensued and agreement was reached that the fund is domiciled in Greece but managed by representatives of the lenders and that the €50 billion is a target, i.e. may not be reached.
Tusk thus saved the summit and Greece was saved from a disastrous Grexit.
Tony Barber, the respected opinion writer of the Financial Times, is right: "Whenever a European summit erupts in angry disputes and concludes with questionable compromises, as did last weekend's talks in Brussels over the Greek crisis, it is invariably English-language observers who put events in the most pessimistic light. If this is not the end of the post-1945 ideal of European integration, it is surely the beginning of the end, they say with scarcely-disguised Schadenfreude.
"Seen from a continental perspective, such moments of drama assume a different hue. French, German and Italian policymakers and commentators seldom view the disputes as so bad-tempered, and the horse-trading as so unedifying, as to constitute a mortal threat to the underlying spirit and purpose of European unity. In the end, the show goes on because it must go on, they say wearily but with relief."
The airwaves, the newspaper commentaries and the like were full of talk about Greece's 'humiliation', about German supremacy and arrogance coupled with intransigence, about Greece becoming a protectorate run by a European cabal. Even our prime minister, fresh from the summit, spoke about Greek humiliation.
It is true that the Greeks had, just days before, voted to turn down a deal with the EU lenders that, by the time the referendum day came about, was no longer valid. It is also true that the results of the No vote immediately caused a banking collapse and the Greeks woke up to the fact that they faced immediate Grexit with the unmanaged introduction of a new Drachma, the collapse of this new currency and a slide in living standards that would make the past terrible five years seem as heaven in comparison.
Thus when Tsipras took the new bailout deal to Parliament, he did face opposition and rebellion from his own ranks but enough support from the rest of the Parliament to approve the deal.
The French Parliament approved the bailout even before the Greek Parliament's vote and the German Parliament's positive vote was never in doubt.
The ECB came through with bridge financing and the banks will reopen tomorrow.
Is the crisis over? By no means. The bill passed in the Greek parliament with a Wednesday midnight deadline contains huge reforms of the Greek economy. This is how we reported the position of the Eurogroup yesterday week - http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-07-12/local-news/The-draft-final-document-being-discussed-by-the-Eurogroup-heads-of-government-details-6736138743.
In particular, the Eurogroup document states that by 15 July the Greek government must undertake six actions in a clear and unambiguous manner. These are:
1. Streamlining VAT. VAT to be 23 per cent, applicable on the islands as well and broad-based.
2. Sustainability of pension system. Pension reform must be agreed to in principle including the details.
3. Adopt a code of civil procedure. Justice and governance in administration
4. Safeguarding of legal independence for ELSTAT, the statistics office.
5. Governance in general. Broadening tax base.
6. Full implementation of automatic spending cuts. BRRD must be accepted by the Greek government.
Is this humiliation? Is this the subjugation of a sovereign nation? It would have been sheer madness for the lenders to keep pouring money without some sort of guarantee that Greece will take steps to cut down on tax evasion, corruption, lax procedures et al which pushed the Greek debt sky high.
Even on Wednesday, with petrol bombs launched against policemen and the riots on the streets, the Greek Parliament was always free to jettison everything and strike out on its own. It did not for it knew that such a step would plunge Greece into an abyss that would hurt the country far more than any 'German-inspired' austerity.
Some are saying this deal will not work. If so Greek nation would have failed to do what it has committed itself to do, the inability of the State to make itself respected, to ensure order on the streets, and to remove the daily threat of a rent-a-crowd around Parliament.
As for the EU, it was one of the EU's founding fathers, Jean Monnet, who said: "Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises."
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