Insults Fly in the Greek and German Media

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Why has Greece only now included defence cuts in its Brussels proposals? | World news | The Guardian

Why has Greece only now included defence cuts in its Brussels proposals?
Athens has been in no hurry to put military spending on the table, but then neither have its creditors, including its main European arms supplier - Germany



A Greek tank takes part in an independence day military parade in Athens in March. Photograph: Corbis
John Hooper in Athens

Tuesday 23 June 2015 19.39 BST Last modified on Tuesday 23 June 2015 19.57 BST
Among the measures Alexis Tsipras’s government has used to swell the package it tabled in Brussels on Monday is a €200m (£142m) cut in next year’s defence budget.

Estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) for 2014 suggest that would equate to a reduction of around 5% in Greece’s military spending.

The proposal raises an intriguing question. Why did Tsipras’s Syriza party not offer more swingeing cuts in defence spending at an earlier stage in its tortuous negotiations with Greece’s creditors?

It would seem the obvious course of action for a leftwing – arguably far left – movement. It might also have obviated the need to inflict yet more pain on Greece’s long-suffering consumers and workers in the form of the higher VAT and increased social security contributions that also form part of the package.

Until now, however, the Tsipras government’s only move in the direction of more modest defence spending has been to put the brakes on a €500m programme for the modernisation of naval support jets.

The case for deeper cuts in the defence budget would seem to be all the more persuasive given that Greece’s military expenditure is high. Ironically, the EU’s most leftwing government spends proportionately more on defence than any other.

Greece’s military spending amounted to 2.2% of GDP last year, according to Sipri. Among Nato countries, only the US spent more in proportion to the size of its economy.

Thanos Dokos, a defence analyst and director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, noted that the latest figures nevertheless reflected a sharp drop since the start of the Greek crisis. “The defence budget has come down by around 40% in the last four years,” he said.

If it is still high, that is because of “a consensus in the country that there is a threat from Turkey and that we need to be able to defend ourselves against it. This is not Belgium or Portugal,” Dokos said.

Deeper cuts than those outlined in the Tsipras plan might also be difficult to implement for both political and practical reasons.

Tsipras’s government is a left-right coalition. Its parliamentary majority depends on support from the rightwing ANEL nationalist party whose leader, Panos Kammenos, holds the defence portfolio.

With no new procurement initiative on the horizon, future defence budgets will consist largely of the cost of earlier arms purchases, military pay and pensions and the armed forces’ operating expenses. Only the last can be reduced.

Which is where a rich irony enters the picture, because Greece’s biggest European arms supplier over the years has been Germany. According to Sipri, more than a quarter of Greece’s weapons imports between 2000 and 2011 were from the country that has become its main creditor.

There is also strong evidence to indicate that some of the contracts under which the arms were supplied were obtained by bribery, a practice for which Greece has been widely criticised in creditor nations.

The Tsipras government may not have been in a hurry to put military spending cuts onto the table in its talks with its creditors, but then nor has the other side. Greece’s plentiful defence budget has proved a nice little earner for its eurozone partners over the years.

“No one put a gun to our head and made us buy those weapons,” said Dokos. “But, although I cannot prove it, I don’t think [other European countries] were too keen to make it an issue. I don’t think they were too displeased with Greece buying their weapons.”

 

[As is - where is]

"We don't put safety under negotiation"

P. Kammenos: We never discussed cuts in defense spending

"We never discussed it", was the answer of the National Defense minister Panos Kammenos in a reporter's question about the demands of the institutions for further cuts on defense spending.

"We aren't going to put the safety of the country under negotiation because of some wet dreams our lenders may have", he said from Paris where he visited the 51st Paris air show "Le Bourget 2015".

He repeated that "the cost that the Greek people have paid for military procurements is disproportionate compared to the actual cost. Billions of euros were paid to Germany, France and other countries and a big part of that money was bribes".

"If the lenders want to save money from Defense, they must turn Mr. Christoforakos to the Greek authorities, tell us about Rheinmetal, since they convicted their own company for a 62 million euros bribe given to Greece, to whom did the bribe go to." Return a big part of the two billion euros paid by Greece to Rheinmetall, do the same with HDW, do the same with all those companies which cooperated with Greek politicians to became rich at the expense of the Greek people. Not just 200, we'll give them 400 millions if the want from that money, which was stolen by them. But they should not think, it shouldn't even cross their mind, that the budget of the armed forces will be reduced by even a single euro", he further commented.

"The budget of the armed forces has being reduced by 58%", he reminded us. The members of the armed forces, both those in service and those retired have become impoverished. We will restore the injustices made against the members of the Armed Forces ", he assured.

"As for the defensive power of Greece, with our first weapon being the defense industry, state-owned but also private, we will proceed in the future. We will proceed ensuring the sovereignty of the country. Because sometime, when some politicians negotiate the national sovereignty of the country, others are falling in the Aegean or are being thrown in the Aegean, because they are defending exactly that national sovereignty of the country ", he noted.

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It seems like Kammenos isn't willing to make any cuts. Instead he's willing to negotiate with the companies that are suspect or that we are certain that have paid bribes to Greeks so that they will give us some money back and if they don't they will be driven to court.