Greece's lesson will accelerate the division of the European Union

Yesterday's and today's European leaders, the same in their nature, just like yesterday's communists became today's "democrats", have succeeded an amazing performance: they've turned the most ardent supporters of the European dream into Eurosceptics.

Wolfgang Munchau, a fervent supporter of everything that the program for the "unification" of Europe meant, recently wrote in Financial Times about how Greece's brutal creditors ruined the Eurozone project. "They have destroyed the Eurozone as we know it and they have demolished the idea of the monetary union as a step towards a political democratic union", is Munchau's verdict, because "they have threatened with extreme poverty those who have questioned the status quo".

What kind of status quo would that be? One in which "too many political positions have been created in Brussels", as financial consultant Martin Armstrong writes on his blog, and the goal of the current political structures is not "the good of Europe ", but "to keep power at all cost". Extremely worrisome is Armstrong's conclusion, who thinks "the people in power are only guided by their own interest and they will risk war and the deepening of social tensions merely to maintain their failed dreams of power".

To Wolfgang Munchau, the "solution" imposed to Greece has caused the return to "the nationalistic fight for power of the 19th century and the beginning of last century", as the "benefits" of being in the Eurozone are becoming increasingly obvious to every country from Italy to Finland.

In Italy's case, Munchau writes that "the Euro has been a total economic disaster", amid the stagnation of productivity since the passing of the single currency, and Finland, even though considered a world champion of structural reforms, seems to be facing with a never-ending recession, beyond anything the authorities can do.

As Austria's public debt significantly exceeds the limit set by the criteria for joining the Eurozone, Franz Schellhorn, the president of the Agenda Austria NGo, recently wrote that "one of the main lessons that Greece taught us is that the years of over-indebtedness are the most certain way to lose independence". Schellhorn urges the federal government to learn from those mistakes and to take urgent measures to break up monopolies and to cut government spending, as well as to reform the pension system.

The problems mentioned by Franz Schellhorn are shared by all the European countries and it is hard to believe that after Greece's new bailout, there will be sufficient political will for reforms that go beyond cosmetic changes.

Naturally, the new financial aid program comes with new budget austerity demands. But has there been austerity in Greece so far? Chris Hunter, from Bonner & Partners, presents a comparison between the size of the government segment in Greece and the average of the European Union. In the case of Greece, data from 2013 shows per capita government spending of approximately 8,000 Euros, whereas the average of the European Union is 6,754 Euros, and the average for countries that entered the EU after 1993 is 5,122 Euros. Hunter's conclusion is that the government sector in Greece is oversized even according to European standards.

Publicist and writer Bill Bonner calls Greek austerity a myth, because "austerity is what would have happened in Greece without the 220 billion Euros bailout programs and two restructurings of the debt".

It is now too late to save the history of Greece "rescue" of the last few years, but the European authorities could have learned something and dare to make new mistakes, instead of endlessly repeating the old ones.

In an interview granted to New Statesman magazine after his resignation, but prior to the new bailout program being approved, Yanis Varoufakis talked about "the complete lack of democratic qualms of the alleged defenders of the European democracy" in the negotiations with Greece. The former minister of Finance in Athens has also said that he was faced with "absolute rejection of the proposals to discuss the economic arguments". So then, what was the focus of the debates and negotiations? The autumn fashion in Paris?

This is the explanation for the fact that the Tsipras government has been forced to accept new loans of tens of billions, even as reputed economists and the IMF have spoken out in favor of a drastic cut of Greece's public debt, as a first step towards the stabilization of the country.

The latest voice to say that was that of Mario Draghi. Amid the publication of the report of the IMF which shows the need for the massive reduction of Greece's public debt, the ECB chairman said that "the need to cut the debt is indisputable".

Of course, the "forgiveness" of a part of the debt is exclusively the decision of the European authorities, without the involvement of the ECB, just like the IMF said as well. Why? Because wiping the almost 7 billion Euros that Greece owes the ECB directly would mean using up over half of the institution's capital base and even its insolvency, even according to the most lax capital adequacy requirements.

Draghi's statement was greeted by the firm opposition of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who reminded the prohibition to cut the nominal value of the sovereign debt in the European treaties before the Budget Commission of the Bundestag.

It is a shame that the German minister wasn't as vehement, perhaps in tandem with the chairman of the Bundesbank, against the money printing program of the ECB as well, which was declared legal according to the same treaties using every trick and justification.

As the interpretation of the fundamental laws of the EU is contradictory and at the discretion of the major powers, it won't be long before we see greater between the European nations and perhaps even the first open "revolts" against the Brussels treaty.

And what was the point of all this? There wasn't one, because the opinions are almost unanimous when it comes to the "effectiveness" of the new financial "assistance" program for Greece. In an interview granted to the BBC, Yanis Varoufakis said that "the program would go down in history as the biggest macroeconomic management disaster ever recorded".

In The Telegraph daily, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a reporter in Brussels between 1999 and 2004 and an Eurosceptic since the beginning, compares the agreement imposed to Greece, with the Versailles treaty that followed the First World War, but thinks that "its depravity is not clearly described by such a comparison", because "Greece is being asked to do something completely impossible from a scientific point of view" and "there is not the slightest chance of the country stabilizing its debt and becoming viable once again".

According to Evans-Pritchard, the way the Greek issue was "resolved" has revealed "a German diplomacy that is in ruins", as "the world has come to the conclusion that Berlin did not respect the opinions of the other European powers and has threatened a EU member state with the exclusion from the Eurozone".

Even though the publicly expressed opinion of the European leaders did not even contradict in a veiled manner Germany's position on Greece, it is more than certain that things are far different behind the governments' closed doors.

Is that how his history is supposed to come full circle in Europe?