Europe’s Plan to Colonize Greece

By David Dayen, FDL

In a previously-secret document, European countries demand Greece to institute 38 specific changes to their government structure as a condition of the bailout.

The reforms, spelt out in three separate memoranda of a combined 90 pages, are the price that Greece has agreed to pay to obtain a 130 billion euros second bail-out and avoid a sovereign default that the government feared would throw Greek society into turmoil.

They range from the sweeping – overhauling judicial procedures, centralising health insurance, completing an accurate land registry – to the mundane – buying a new computer system for tax collectors, changing the way drugs are prescribed and setting minimum crude oil stocks.

“The program is much, much more ambitious than economic reform,” said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe analyst at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy. “This is state building, as typically understood in traditional low-income contexts.”

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