PARIS — The front-runner for the French presidency, the
Socialist candidate François Hollande, criticized European policy on Greece on
Monday, saying that mandatory austerity measures were too severe and would
never produce the desired results because “everyone knows” that “there is no
rebound in growth in Europe and in Greece.”
Mr. Hollande’s remarks, one day after the Greek Parliament
adopted austerity measures demanded by the European Union and the International
Monetary Fund, while violent protests left many buildings in Athens in flames,
offered a critical assessment of European and Greek leaders’ handling of the
crisis. The Greek government, he said, would “have a short life,” while the
austerity plan forced on Greece amounted to a “purge.”
The French presidential race is heating up with
PresidentNicolas Sarkozy expected to make his candidacy for re-election
official this week. Mr. Sarkozy is still running behind Mr. Hollande in the
opinion polls for both the first round of voting on April 22 and in a runoff on
May 6. In a luncheon interview with a group of foreign journalists here, Mr.
Hollande was pleasant and expansive, but remained vague on the details of his
programs.
But predictably, he was sharper about what he saw as the
failures of Mr. Sarkozy and other European leaders. While there had certainly
been a failure of Greek governance, Mr. Hollande said, there was also “a
failure of European governance.”
Greece should have been tackled sooner, with a larger
bailout fund to substitute for a part of public debt and to bring it down to 60
percent of gross domestic product, he said, with both public and private
creditors sharing the burden. Or the European Central Bank could have lent
directly to Greece, he said, although that is banned by its charter.
The point is not to allow Greece to escape belt-tightening
and reform, Mr. Hollande said. But without growth there was no way out for
Greece, he said. He predicted that after private investors discounted their
holdings by about 70 percent, public debt would also have to be restructured.
“Everyone wanted to treat Greece with ordinary measures,”
Mr. Hollande said. “It was necessary to treat Greece with extraordinary measures,”
and now the situation in Greece is almost intolerable, with the government
blocked. “Who is paying taxes today in Greece? It’s a real question,” he said.
“The wealthiest people — there are plenty in Greece — have gotten on their
escape boats, they’ve left. And the poorest people are in the underground
economy.”
Mr. Hollande also said that he would work with all of
France’s allies, and that it was vital that Britain remain actively engaged in
the European Union.
Mr. Sarkozy and his aides had no direct comment. But he has
worked closely with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to try to manage the
Greek crisis, urging stronger measures than either the German leader or the
European Central Bank was willing to accept. European leaders have said that the
Greek government has been unwilling or unable to follow through on its promises
— to collect unpaid taxes, for example, or to sell off state assets.
Mr. Hollande was more ambivalent about NATO and Mr.
Sarkozy’s decision to reintegrate France fully in the alliance’s military
command, a decision Mr. Sarkozy said was vital for the successful military
mission to defeat the Libyan government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
On Syria, he, like Mr. Sarkozy, opposed a military
intervention to drive out President Bashar al-Assad, saying that Syria was much
more complicated than Libya. Mr. Hollande praised the recommendation of the
Arab League to have joint peacekeepers with the United Nations, a plan that is
largely unworkable because of the intense fighting and because Syria has
already rejected it. “What’s required is not an intervention to chase out
Assad,” he said, “but at least to allow the blue helmets to arrive so that the
massacres stop.”
Mr. Hollande said he would, as promised, move to accelerate
the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, but would do so “in
consultation with our allies” and not in response to particular tragedies
there. If elected in May, one of his first major international obligations will
be the next NATO summit in Chicago a little more than a week later.
Asked if NATO is still useful, he said, “NATO, we’re there,
we’re in the alliance and we are not going to leave.” But he said that Mr.
Sarkozy had not achieved a “European defense” that was a condition of
re-entering NATO, and that France must “keep our independence and our
singularity” in certain military matters. That could require a discussion of
leaving the integrated military command once more, Mr. Hollande said, but he
did not make a strong point of it.
source:http://www.nytimes.com
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