Olli Rehn: "I love Greece but…"

Olli Rehn said yesterday: “I love Greece but I’m very much looking forward to a eurogroup press conference where Greece is not going to be discussed and a summer where we don’t have any Greek crisis.” Mr Rehn reminded me of my years in Britain, when I would say to friends living in warmer climes: “I love Britain but I would be so much happier if the weather were kinder and if we could have had the occasional rain-free summer.” Clearly, Mr Rehn imagines that Greece’s woes are natural phenomena independent of the dead-end policies that he is actively promoting and imposing upon Greece’s imploding social economy. He seems determined to highlight the hilarity caused  when he is, at once, (a) praising the Greek government for its commitment to the troika ‘programme’, and (b) acknowledging the programme’s never-ending failures. In decades to come Mr Rehn will no doubt offer an excellent case study of the European officials’ misanthropic handling of an inevitable crisis.