When the first referendum results started trickling in on the evening of 5 July 2015, the many thousands of citizens gathered in front of parliament for a spontaneous rally on Syntagma Square in Athens cheered, united by the feeling that they were making history. When the final result flickered across the screens around midnight, many could not believe their eyes: 61.31 percent had voted “Oxi” (no). The overwhelming majority of Greeks had defied the threats from Brussels and the mass media’s fearmongering. Instead, voters backed the left-wing Syriza government under the leadership of charismatic Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, only elected in January of that year.
Boris Kanzleiter directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Athens Office.
The Oxi vote made it clear that the vast majority of people, far and above the left-wing camp, wanted an end to spending cuts and privatizations. It also showed that Syriza represented more than just its voters — it had the support of the overwhelming majority of Greek society. Indeed, the referendum marked a historic turning point, even if it ended very differently than the cheering crowds on Syntagma Square had hoped. The no vote was a powerful signal of resistance against the so-called Troika consisting of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and European Central Bank (ECB), which had been imposing round after round of social spending cuts and privatizations on Greece for years.
Nevertheless, the jubilation was short-lived. Despite the vote, the Troika enforced its dictates just a few days later. The no vote thus marked the climax, but also the endpoint of a years-long protest wave, the significance of which extended far beyond Greece. Just as the protests had served as an important impetus for the international Left, the Troika now laid the groundwork for the implementation of a neoliberal restructuring that in turn paved the way for today’s right-wing surge across Europe.
Troika Austerity
To understand the significance of protest and defeat in Greece, it is necessary to look far beyond the country of almost 11 million inhabitants. For the confrontation in July 2015 marked the culmination of an escalation that took place in the context of the global economic and financial crisis beginning in 2007.
The turmoil on the financial markets hit Greece particularly hard. The economic boom, financed by cheap loans willingly provided by the banks, collapsed. As interest rates soared on the unsettled capital markets and Greece’s credit rating continued to fall, the national debt exploded and the country found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. As other countries in the Eurozone also struggled with similar problems, the financial crisis became a “Eurocrisis”.
The Troika appeared on the scene and began demanding sweeping neoliberal reforms and an iron-fisted austerity programme in return for debt restructuring and loans as early as 2010. It established a system of debt limitation and budgetary discipline, culminating in the EU Fiscal Pact in 2013. Since then, European governments’ flexibility in terms of public investment and social spending has been severely limited. The Fiscal Pact institutionalized neoliberal economic policy and continues to exert downward pressure on social standards throughout the EU to this day.
The European Left projected great hopes onto the small Mediterranean country with its proud and tragic history of revolutionary movements.
The Troika’s austerity policy was first implemented in Greece by Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou (2009–2011) of the social democratic party PASOK. After his government failed, the policy was continued by the conservative Antonis Samaras in coalition with PASOK. Yet this “grand coalition” also failed. Rather than stimulate an economic recovery, the Troika’s austerity deepened the crisis. The neoliberal shock doctrine did the kind of damage one would normally associate with a war: Greece’s GDP shrank by almost half between 2008 and 2015, while salaries, wages, and pensions plummeted by a third. Unemployment soared to almost 30 percent, with more than half of the population living at or below the poverty line.
This economic and social upheaval fostered feelings of insecurity across society. Given the lack of employment prospects, but also due to the arrogance of power and the corruption of the elites, the popular mood shifted to one of anger and despair, especially among young people. When Athens police shot and killed 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the countercultural neighbourhood of Exarchia following a trivial verbal altercation on 6 December 2008, a revolt exploded that lasted several days and changed the country. Thousands of young people gathered in angry demonstrations in all major cities, attacking police stations, setting cars on fire, and occupying universities.
Police responded with tear gas cannons, batons, and arrests. The police force had never really been democratized after the end of the military dictatorship in 1974, and viewed rebellious youth as a sworn enemy ever since the Athens Polytechnic uprising in November 1973. The rulers’ fear of another rebellion like in 2008 would shape the conflicts to come.
From 2010 onwards, workers and citizens increasingly mobilized, with hundreds of thousands of protesters gathering in the centre of Athens again and again. In addition to many smaller strikes, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) called 20 one-day and four two-day general strikes between 2010 and 2015.
Regular plenary meetings were held in neighbourhoods and many other places to organize protests and mutual aid for the suffering population. The creative movement developed self-governance structures. Social movements established solidarity clinics to offer free healthcare to destitute patients — at the time, 30 percent of the Greek population no longer had health insurance after being unemployed for over a year. Refugees and illegalized people, no longer provided healthcare by the state, were also treated. Cultural workers occupied theatres and turned them into incubators of direct democracy, a process in which the country’s anarchist movement also played an important role.
Waves of Resistance
Greece became the laboratory of a pluralistic left-wing resistance that received growing support from solidarity groups, including from abroad. The European Left projected great hopes onto the small Mediterranean country with its proud and tragic history of revolutionary movements, from the independence movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the anti-fascist resistance against the German occupation during World War II and the revolts against the military dictatorship in the early 1970s.
The parliamentary landscape also underwent dramatic changes. While the traditional parties, PASOK and New Democracy, collapsed, the emerging left-wing alliance Syriza, formed in 2004, was able to boost its share of the parliamentary vote from 4.6 to 36.3 percent between October 2009 and January 2015. Initiated by the Eurocommunist party Synaspismos and soon joined by other Communist and socialist organizations, the “Coalition of the Radical Left”, as it was formally known, became a pole of hope.
The young, vibrant party under Alexis Tsipras, a former leader of the Communist Party’s youth organization, stood for radical change. It represented not only the rejection of the austerity diktats from Brussels and Berlin, but also the corrupt and clientelistic style of government of Greece’s two major parties, who had rotated in and out of power since the fall of the dictatorship. Syriza represented a counter-model to Greece’s state and administrative apparatus characterized by dysfunctionality and abuse of power, and closely linked to the country’s economic oligarchy.
The protest movement and the revival of the Left in Greece also gained strength through international developments. As the journalist Vincent Bevins recently showed in his book If We Burn, more people took part in mass protests around the world in the decade between 2010 and 2020 than ever before. The social revolts in North Africa and West Asia in particular, which started the Arab Spring in December 2010, were points of reference. Many Greeks sympathized with the struggles against authoritarian regimes and growing poverty in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. The occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo was echoed in the protests on Syntagma Square. Traditionally, the various strands of the Greek Left identified with the anti-colonial struggles of Arab movements against Washington’s hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean due to the role the US played in suppressing Greek Communist partisans in December 1944 and in the civil war (1946–1949), as well as its support for the military dictatorship (1967–1974). At the same time, many also saw the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US in 2011 as a role model.
Alexis Tsipras and his supporters defend the decisions as unavoidable. Breaking with the European Union would not only have plunged Greece into a deepening economic crisis, but also into a dangerous political crisis.
That said, the links to the strikes and mass demonstrations in Spain and Portugal were even more direct. Like Greece, the two Southern European countries were particularly affected by the debt crisis, and the Troika also imposed tough austerity programmes on them. With Bloco de Esquerda and Podemos, two parties emerged in Portugal and Spain that resembled Syriza in many respects: all three emerged from pluralistic alliances, acting not only in parliament but also relying on alliances with social movement actors. “Syriza — Podemos — Venceremos” was chanted at demonstrations. The buzzword “movement party” as a left-wing organization of a new type made the rounds and was discussed throughout Europe.
Under the motto “Another Europe Is Possible”, the parties of the European Left, the Attac network, and activists, academics and intellectuals debated the need for a fundamental reform of the existing EU or a reboot of European cooperation on the basis of new treaties. The euro system was fundamentally questioned for the way it deprived economically weaker Eurozone members in particular of the fiscal flexibility they enjoyed under the exchange rate system. Mass movements on the fringes of society also fuelled these discussions in the countries of the European core. Bernd Riexinger, then leader of the German socialist party Die Linke, participated in several rallies in Athens to show solidarity together with Pablo Iglesias from Podemos. The Left in Europe networked and gathered strength.
The referendum on 5 July 2015 therefore became a test of strength not only in Greece. It was a referendum on which Europe would win out: the neoliberal Europe of the Troika, in which budgetary discipline, market conformity, and economic interests dominated — that is to say, Wolfgang Schäuble’s Europe — or the Europe of solidarity, social justice, and democracy, as dreamed of by the social movements and the Left.
Showdown on the Mediterranean
Immediately after the referendum, the European Commission, IMF, and ECB made it clear that they would respond with a firm hand. As had already been the case with the constitutional referendums in France and Denmark in 2005, the EU demonstrated that the will of the majority was irrelevant when it failed to conform to expectations.
As during the marathon negotiations in the spring, the German finance minister headed up the Troika. In a brief memo dated 10 July 2015, Schäuble issued an ultimatum: either the Tsipras government agreed to a new memorandum with further neoliberal measures and the transfer of 50 billion euro worth of assets to an external fund that would privatize them to pay off the debt, or Greece would have to leave the Eurozone. A so-called “Grexit”, already widely discussed in the spring, was now officially on the table.
A great deal of conjecture and speculation about what exactly transpired back then persists to this day. Just a few days ago, Greek president Konstantinos Tasoulas rejected Tsipras’s request to publish the minutes of a meeting of party leaders the day after the referendum, claiming they contained highly sensitive information of “national interest”.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Tsipras did not use the referendum result as an opportunity to initiate a radical break with the Troika, as demanded by the left wing of his own party and voted for by the majority of the population. In internal meetings on the night of the referendum itself, the prime minister made it clear that he would not risk a complete breakdown in negotiations with the Troika. He feared that a Grexit — which a large majority of the population opposed anyway — would spark a devaluation spiral that would devalue salaries and pensions even further and deepen the recession. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, whose had grown popular beyond Greece as an antagonist of Schäuble, refused to follow Tsipras’s decision and tendered his resignation. He was replaced the next day by the more pliant Euclid Tsakalotos, a respected Marxist professor of economics.
Negotiations with the Troika resumed in the following days, and a third memorandum was agreed on 12 July. In return for 86 billion euro in new loans, Tsipras committed to a further round of neoliberal measures including reforming the tax system and more cuts to pensions and public spending. Following a fierce debate in the Greek parliament, 40 Syriza MPs voted against the package on 14 August. Most of them subsequently left the party together with many members, and the project of a united Left in Syriza began to disintegrate. Tsipras was only able to cobble together a parliamentary majority with the votes of the opposition PASOK and New Democracy.
The events of that summer in 2015 remain traumatic for the Greek Left to this day. A debate about what happened only takes place as an exchange of blows. Suspicions and denunciations are rife. Two opposing narratives continue to paralyse the Left ten years later.
Debating the Memorandum
Now 50 years old, Alexis Tsipras and his supporters defend the decisions as unavoidable. Breaking with the European Union would not only have plunged Greece into a deepening economic crisis, but also into a dangerous political crisis. Neither Moscow nor Beijing responded favourably to requests for support in spring 2015. The Left in the countries of the European core was far removed from power and too weak to stop the Troika’s plans. The third memorandum, on the other hand, paved the way for debt restructuring and the restoration of Greek creditworthiness on the financial markets. A return to economic and political normality was thus realized. In the period of government until 2019, Syriza achieved the best possible results in a difficult context.
Tsipras can counter his critics with the fact that his decision was approved by voters in the snap parliamentary elections on 20 September 2015, when Syriza was able to reinforce its brilliant result from February of that year (36.3 percent) with 35.5 percent. It was not until the July 2019 elections that New Democracy was able to beat a still surprisingly stable Syriza with 31.5 percent. The party’s electoral collapse only began in opposition in the years to come. Today, following splits and internal crises, the former governing party is down to just 6 percent according to the latest opinion polls. Meanwhile, the various splits from Syriza, such as MeRA25 and New Left, have not been electorally successful and are fighting for survival. Tsipras, on the other hand, remains popular as an individual and even appears to be preparing a comeback.
What options and alternatives were actually available to the Greek Left in the summer of 2015 calls for a proper historicization. In any case, the Troika’s demonstration of power using Greece as an example cemented the balance of forces in Europe.
Left-wing critics such as former Syriza MP Costas Lapavitsas, now an economist in London, argue quite differently. He points out that the approval of the third memorandum led Syriza onto a neoliberal path. He shows that the economy was stabilized, but without significant growth and without improvements for the majority of the population. The losses of the crisis were never recovered. “The gross domestic product is very low, per capita income is one of the lowest in the monetary union. The prospects for rapid economic growth are bleak. In short: Greek capitalism is stagnating.” Moreover, the country faces corruption, the emigration of hundreds of thousands of well-educated workers, and rampant poverty.
From this perspective, the collapse of Syriza is the result of a “capitulation” to neoliberalism. Evidence for this thesis can be found in the current high approval ratings of 9 percent for the Communist Party (KKE) and 13 percent for the Course of Freedom party led by Syriza’s former parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou. The KKE and its popular General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumpas had always argued against Syriza’s pro-European policy; Konstantopoulou left Syriza in the summer of 2015 in protest against the signing of the third memorandum and initially joined the Syriza split Popular Unity led by former Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who had also resigned. Her new party adopts a more populist and patriotic approach. She grew popular in recent months primarily due to her advocacy work for the victims of the Tempi train accident, which she blames on the neoliberal reforms.
Austerity and its Discontents
What options and alternatives were actually available to the Greek Left in the summer of 2015 calls for a proper historicization. In any case, the Troika’s demonstration of power using Greece as an example cemented the balance of forces in Europe. The Troika’s austerity brutally halted the upsurge of protest movements and mercilessly enforced the logic of capital utilization and budgetary discipline, at least with regard to social issues — these days, the debt brake is being suspended to facilitate increased military spending.
As Clara Mattei, an economist at the Center for Heterodox Economics at the University of Tulsa, analyses using the rise of Italian fascism at the beginning of the 1920s, the implementation of austerity at the time served to demobilize the revolutionary upsurge of the workers’ movement in the wake of World War II and to restore the “natural order” of capitalism. In doing so, the conservatives deliberately entered into an alliance with the fascists.
One can almost see analogies with the present day. Ten years ago, the implementation of austerity enforced by the Troika not only fuelled the crisis of the Left, but also the rise of a libertarian right-wing extremism in the crisis-ridden countries in Southern Europe vilified as “PIGS” at the time, appearing today in the form of Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d'Italia, and the right wing of New Democracy in Greece. In other words: the forced failure of the Left paved the way for the Right. Now, under German conservative group leader Manfred Weber, the European People’s Party is even forming strategic alliances with neoliberal right-wing extremists and post-fascists in Brussels.
In any case, it is clear that the fight against the far right requires a break with neoliberal austerity policies — in Greece and throughout Europe.
Translated by Loren Balhorn.