Mr. Alexis Papachelas is a guest editorial writer to The Business Thinker. He is currently the Executive Editor of the long standing and highly respected daily Greek newspaper “Kathimerini”.

The Cyprus crisis is deepening the cultural gap between the north and south of Europe abruptly and dangerously.

Here in the south, we feel a confirmation of the stereotype of Germans and Finns as being rigid and obsessive and playing the game according to the toughest of terms.

Up there in the north, the stereotype of southerners as being incapable of facing up to reality and clinging in vain to their lifestyles and a generous state funded by foreign money is taking deeper root.

The European project has been derailed by the first big crisis, obviously because it was designed with only the good days in mind. The chasm between south and north is hard to bridge because, thankfully, we are all democracies.

As impending German elections push Chancellor Angela Merkel to take a more extreme position, the vote in Italy and public opinion polls elsewhere show that anti-systemic forces are gaining ground.

It will take a lot of hard work and some visionary leadership – which as yet is nowhere to be seen – to salvage the ambitious European project, whose main objective was to refute the lessons of history that see the continent either at war or in the grips of a major crisis every 40 years or so.

Greece, however, is a particular case, a country that since its birth has been torn by the dilemma of whether historically, culturally and politically it belongs to the East or West.

Mr. Alexis Papachelas is a guest editorial writer to The Business Thinker. He is currently the Executive Editor of the long standing and highly respected daily Greek newspaper “Kathimerini”.

Can Prime Minister Antonis Samaras save Greece by ensuring its place in the eurozone without causing a social explosion? So far his style of governance has come as something of a pleasant surprise to those disappointed by his two years of counterproductive opposition.
Samaras has shown that he is in touch with reality and that he has determination. He has chosen as his closest economic aides people who he would not have been associated with two years ago. He is cautious in gauging the mood of the country’s partners. And, most importantly, he appears prepared to take on the risk of strict fiscal adjustment rather than wasting time on half-measures and compromises.
Will his strategy work? It depends on various factors, many of which are out of his hands.
What he can do is stop political appointments across the breadth of the civil service. He can also be wary of any scandal, big or small, coming to the fore and threatening to blow the entire effort out of the water.

Mr. Alexis Papachelas is a guest editorial writer to The Business Thinker. He is currently the Executive Editor of the long standing and highly respected daily Greek newspaper “Kathimerini”.

This editorial is also appearing in Kathimerini.

It’s good to know that when your country is in danger, there are still responsible people who care about it, who are willing to risk their reputation for it, and who can handle extremely delicate issues using skill and common sense.
These days I often hear state officials and ordinary people saying:

Mr. Alexis Papachelas is a guest editorial writer to The Business Thinker. He is currently the Executive Editor of the long standing and highly respected daily Greek newspaper “Kathimerini”.

This editorial is also appearing in Kathimerini.

Greek society will not find peace unless it takes a different path. Rightly or wrongly, many have come to believe we signed on to the memorandum because certain traitors wished to bring the International Monetary Fund into Europe and the country was the victim of a