Hollande’s victory

By Nicholas Vinocur

The French president never stopped hammering home the message that Greece must remain in the Eurozone.

There were moments during the Greek crisis when French calls to keep the country in the eurozone sounded out of tune with the rest of the bloc, and others when they sounded like desperate howling from a mountaintop.
While German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble circulated a one-page document detailing plans to place Greece on a five-year “time-out” from the eurozone, French President François Hollande tweeted: “The Greek program is serious, credible, and shows a determination to remain in the eurozone.”

Paris and Berlin were selling alternate visions of Europe’s future: one with Greece, one without.
Now that the Eurogroup has decided to extend further aid and even debt restructuring to Athens in exchange for economic reforms, it looks like the version with Greece included is prevailing, and that means France has also achieved a victory, however short-lived it may be.
“A deal has been found. France sought this deal and wanted it. It will allow Greece to remain in the eurozone,” Hollande, looking cheerful after all-night negotiations, told reporters in Brussels.
The crisis is far from over. Greece’s parliament must vote in the next 48 hours to approve a package of reforms more stringent than the one that voters massively rejected in a referendum on a previous set of bailout terms, just eight days ago.
Germany’s Bundestag must sign off on a further €86 billion in bailout loans to a Greek government that Chancellor Angela Merkel said had betrayed its partners’ trust over the past two weeks. Parliaments in central and northern eurozone states that are virulently opposed to leniency for Greece must also pass the bailout terms — no easy task for countries that endured the very austerity policies Greece has resisted.
But a “Grexit,” which looked possible a few days ago, now appears less so. And nobody is better positioned to hail the outcome and celebrate a disaster averted than Hollande, who worked behind the scenes to help Greece draft its latest bailout proposals and in public to champion a united eurozone.
If Greece remains in the euro, the struggle to keep it in while avoiding an open clash with Germany may well be remembered as a high point of Hollande’s presidency.
“This comes at a good time, right before the July 14 (Bastille Day) celebration,” said Jerome Fourquet of the IFOP polling institute. “Just about everyone understood that Merkel didn’t want this deal, and that Hollande fought for it, and that he deserves at least part of the credit for making it happen.”
It’s also likely to quiet leftist critics in his socialist party, who have been sniping at Hollande for weeks for allegedly failing to stand up to Germany with regard to Greece. In a rare about-face for one of Hollande’s toughest critics, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon last Wednesday praised the French president for his “moderate” stance on Greece.
“If François Hollande, for once, was able to seize a chance on the European stage, well then I applaud that, because it means France is great,” Melenchon told iTele.
What changed for the critics was that Hollande shouted louder for Greece to stay, and that he set his teams at the Elysee and in the French treasury working to help Athens draft fresh proposals that creditors were likely to accept.
Publicly acknowledging such help was risky: if talks failed and Greece crashed out of the euro, then Hollande would have looked powerless, even blundering. France would have appeared to lack any real hold over events in the European Union. Critics, from conservative ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy to far-right leader Marine Le Pen, would have had a field day.
As it turned out, they have nothing to say, so far. The Twitter accounts of both politicians have been silent since Saturday. Sarkozy, who said last week that Hollande needed to “get ahold of himself” on Greece, later toned down his critiques and supported Athens’ continued membership in the eurozone.
But while Hollande has scored a diplomatic victory that quiets his opponents at home, the coup may have little impact on his approval ratings, which remain dismally low two years from a presidential election. Unemployment remains stubbornly high in France, and not all voters shared the government’s view that Greece should stay at any cost.
“I’m not convinced there is going to be a huge domestic gain for Hollande,” added Fourquet. “First because French public opinion, while less heated than Germany’s, was divided on the Greek question. And secondly, because experience shows us that diplomatic victories don’t translate into very large poll gains.”
In the meantime, a sleep-deprived Hollande is smiling.