L’accordo preliminare del 13 luglio tra la Grecia e i suoi creditori non contiene nessun obiettivo numerico preciso per l’avanzo primario. Il target già fissato sembra ora difficile da raggiungere per il crollo delle entrate fiscali. E questo peserà sul negoziato per il terzo programma di aiuti.
I numeri di Atene
Il ministero delle Finanze greco pubblica ogni mese i dati sul bilancio consuntivo dello Stato, come già ricordato (quiequi). Si tratta di numeri compilati in base al principio di cassa, quindi particolarmente adatti a valutare la situazione delle finanze pubbliche dal punto di vista dell’esigenza di finanziamento di breve periodo. Inoltre, permettono di comparare i risultati effettivi con quelli attesi ex ante. Da gennaio a questa parte, la Grecia ha un avanzo primario, significativamente superiore alle aspettative. Nei primi sei mesi dell’anno, l’avanzo primario registrato è stato di 1,9 miliardi, contro un deficit di 1,2 miliardi atteso. In termini cumulativi, l’avanzo primario è stato di 3,1 miliardi superiore agli obiettivi (figura 1)
Grafico 1– Avanzo primario della Grecia
Il problema è che da marzo a oggi, l’avanzo primario è stato principalmente il frutto di una compressione della spesa, perché le entrate sono crollate subito dopo le elezioni politiche. Nonostante un modesto aumento a giugno, le entrate cumulate per i primi sei mesi dell’anno restano di 906 milioni in difetto rispetto a quanto previsto. Le spese cumulate tra gennaio e giugno 2015 sono invece di circa 4 miliardi inferiori al previsto (nel solo mese di giugno, i tagli rispetto al target sono stati di 1 miliardo e mezzo). Il contenimento della spesa è in gran parte il risultato di ritardi nei pagamenti da parte dello stato al settore privato, una circostanza che, in un paese nelle condizioni della Grecia, non fa che peggiorare la tendenza recessiva. Per mettere le cose in prospettiva, la Commissione europea ha recentemente rivisto le stime di crescita del Pil reale al ribasso. Per la Grecia quest’anno la crescita è stimata in territorio negativo, tra -2 e -4 per cento, mentre nelle proiezioni di autunno 2014 le attese erano per +2,9 per cento e ancora in quelle della primavera 2015 si attestavano sul +0,5 per cento.
Grafico 2– Entrate complessive, spesa e avanzo primario della Grecia – Dati reali e target (miliardi di euro)
I dati di giugno non includono ancora il pieno effetto delle restrizioni a prelievi bancari e movimenti di capitale, imposte a fine mese per contrastare la corsa agli sportelli pre e post-referendum. I numeri di luglio saranno perciò particolarmente interessanti perché mostreranno gli effetti di queste misure, ma anche perché luglio è il mese più importante dal punto di vista delle entrate, in Grecia (figura 3).
Grafico 3– Imposte per mese e avanzo primario complessivo in Grecia – 2014 (miliardi di euro)
Verso il terzo programma di aiuti
La Grecia e i suoi creditori europei hanno concluso lunedì 13 luglio 2015 un accordo temporaneo, che prevede un prestito di circa 7 miliardi e in contropartita l’approvazione da parte del parlamento greco di una serie di misure preliminari. Questi soldi sono effettivamente stati trasferiti e usati il 22 luglio per ripagare il bond greco in scadenza lunedì e detenuto dalla Banca centrale europea, nonché gli arretrati dovuti al Fondo monetario internazionale. Si tratta però di una situazione estremamente precaria. Secondo le stime incluse nel testo dell’accordo del 13 luglio, la Grecia ha bisogno di altri 5 miliardi soltanto in agosto, per ripagare un’ulteriore quota in scadenza del suo debito verso Bce e Fmi. Per far fronte a questi impegni, la negoziazione di un terzo programma di aiuto alla Grecia dovrebbe avvenire nella maniera più rapida possibile. Ma sul negoziato peserà probabilmente il tracollo nelle previsioni di crescita. La revisione al ribasso della crescita del Pil e il crollo delle entrate fiscali – dovuto probabilmente in parte all’incertezza post-elettorale e post-referendum – fanno sì che oggi il target di avanzo primario all’1 per cento del Pil nel 2015, concordato negli ultimi mesi tra Grecia e creditori, sia un obiettivo molto ottimista. Questo è probabilmente il motivo per cui l’accordo preliminare del 13 luglio non contiene nessun target numerico preciso per l’avanzo primario, una variabile che in questi mesi è stata al centro delle negoziazioni e che ora potrebbe rallentare anche il nuovo negoziato.
Ein Vorschlag zur Überwindung der (griechischen) Schuldenproblematik im Euro-Raum
Sowohl ein Grexit als auch ein Scheitern der griechischen Regierung wären eine große Belastung für Europa. Dabei gibt es eine Alternative: Die Umwandlung der Schulden in Investitionsscheine
Nach nun bald acht Krisenjahren müssen sich die Europäer eingestehen, dass es sich in Griechenland nicht um ein „klassisches“ Problem verschlechterter Wettbewerbsfähigkeit wegen zu hoher Produktions- und Lohnkosten handelt. Eine solche Problemanalyse (Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und Kostenstruktur) könnte für Frankreich zutreffen, sie kann zumindest teilweise die Situation in den anderen Krisenstaaten erklären, jedoch nicht in Griechenland.
Das grundsätzliche Problem Griechenlands liegt tiefer. Es handelt sich um den sehr starken Rückgang, teilweise sogar die völlige Abwesenheit industrieller und landwirtschaftlicher Produktion. Das griechische Schuldenproblem hat also mit der „Unterentwicklung“ Griechenlands zu tun und kann alleine über immer komplexere Finanzakrobatik nicht gelöst werden. Deshalb schlagen wir eine mittelfristige Lösung des griechischen Schuldenproblems vor, die über die Entwicklung und den Wideraufbau einer Produktionsstruktur in Griechenland erfolgt, oder genauer: über eine gemeinsame europäisch-griechische Entwicklungsstrategie.
Zu diesem Zweck schlagen wir die schrittweise Umwandlung der griechischen Staatsschulden in Investitionszertifikate vor. Diese sollen diejenigen Investitionen ergänzen, die der Juncker-Plan vorsieht. So würde bspw. ein deutsch-griechischer Gemeinschaftsfonds geschaffen, der in Griechenland mit dem Ziel industrieller Entwicklung investieren könnte. Den deutschen Unternehmen käme dies zugute, da sie die Produzenten der Exportgüter wären, in die dieser Fonds investiert. Die Ausweitung dieser Win-Win-Strategie auf andere Länder würde helfen, aus dem gefährlichen Schlamassel herauszufinden, in den das europäische Projekt durch die Schuldenlast geraten ist. Europa bekäme so wieder einen Sinn.
Zur Umsetzung dieser allgemeinen Orientierung schlagen wir die Schaffung von „Investitionsscheinen“ vor, die an Stelle der Schuldforderungen einzelner Staaten gegenüber anderen Staaten treten. Wir wollen unseren Vorschlag am Beispiel Deutschlands und Griechenlands illustrieren, genauer Deutschlands als Gläubiger Griechenlands. Unser Vorschlag setzt sich aus drei untrennbaren Teilen zusammen:
die Schaffung öffentlicher, bilateraler Investitionsfonds, die Schaffung von Investitionsscheinen, Solidarität und Vorverkaufsrecht
1. Die Schaffung öffentlicher, bilateraler Investitionsfonds
Über die Fonds würden verschiedene öffentliche Einrichtungen gleichberechtigt verfügen. In unserem Beispiel wären dies eine deutsche Einrichtung, etwa die Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), und die ihr entsprechende, griechische Institution, deren Schaffung soeben angekündigt worden ist. Die Schaffung solch eines Fonds wäre eine mit den besonderen Umständen begründete Ausnahme von den europäischen Beihilfe-Vorgaben. Er könnte mit der Aufgabe betraut werden, sich an produktiven Investitionen zu beteiligen, die darauf zielen, die griechische Industrie zu modernisieren, ihre Effizienz zu erhöhen, sie an einem Modell nachhaltiger Entwicklung für Mensch und Natur auszurichten und ihre Produktionskapazitäten in den im Außenhandel mit Deutschland besonders defizitären Sektoren zu erhöhen. Dieser Fonds würde von einer Expertengruppe geleitet, die Analysen vornimmt, Auswahlentscheidungen trifft und deren Umsetzung überwacht. Er könnte in bestehende griechische Unternehmen oder griechische Niederlassungen ausländischer Unternehmen investieren: in neue Joint Ventures, in Kreditvergaben oder Kapitalbeteiligungen (oder in eine Mischung aus beiden, das heißt in Beteiligungskredite, die als Eigenkapital verbucht werden könnten). Eine entscheidende, festzuschreibende Klausel sähe die Kontrollhoheit des griechischen Staates über diese Investitionen vor. Der Fonds würde, um in unserem Beispiel zu bleiben, solidarische Investitionen Deutschlands in Griechenland ermöglichen. Er würde sich in die Perspektive des Juncker-Plans zur Investitionsbelebung – der großen Maßnahme der EU-Kommission zur Ankurbelung des europäischen Wachstums – einfügen. Da solch ein Fonds dem Ziel des Juncker-Plans entspricht, könnte er die Zustimmung von EU-Kommission und europäischem Parlament erlangen. Diese Gemeinschaftsinvestitionen entsprächen dem Ziel, das Wirtschaftswachstum wiederanzukurbeln. Es ginge nämlich nicht einfach darum, Deutschland die Zahlung griechischer Schulden aufzubürden, sondern vielmehr darum, zu den Anstrengungen zum griechischen Wiederaufbau beizutragen, zugleich Deutschland schrittweise von seinen eingegangenen Verpflichtungen zu befreien und dabei seinen Unternehmen einen Vorteil zu verschaffen. Was die Finanzierung angeht, besteht unsere grundsätzliche Vorstellung darin, dass die Einlagen in den Investitionsfonds sich auf die Summe der von den Gläubigerländern abgeschriebenen Kredite belaufen. Die Beteiligung an dem Investitionsfonds soll dabei zur Hälfte vom Schuldnerstaat (in unserem Beispiel Griechenland) und zur Hälfte vom Gläubigerstaat (hier Deutschland) getragen werden. Deutschland hält derzeit 72,7 Milliarden Euro an griechischen Schulden. Davon 41,3 Milliarden unmittelbar und 31,4 Milliarden indirekt, v.a. über die Verpflichtungen gegenüber der Europäischen Zentralbank. Wenn Deutschland sich bereit erklären würde, die Hälfte seiner direkten Kredite, d.h. 20,65 Milliarden Euro, in Investitionsscheine mit einer Laufzeit von fünf Jahren umzuwandeln, wäre Griechenland in dieser Zeit pro Jahr von mehr als vier Milliarden Euro seiner Schuldenlast befreit. Dieses Geld stünde dann für produktive Investitionen zur Verfügung. Die vier Milliarden Euro, d.h. etwa zwei Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts, würden jedes Jahr mit Hilfe des gemeinsamen Fonds investiert.
2. Die Schaffung von Investitionszertifikaten
Die Kapitalausstattung des Investitionsfonds, die sich aus den so umgewandelten Krediten speiste, würde gleichmäßig zwischen Griechenland und Deutschland aufgeteilt werden. Der realisierte Gewinn würde vordringlich die deutschen Verbindlichkeiten in dem Fonds ausgleichen und bestenfalls ihren Gesamtumfang tilgen. Dieses Vorgehen stellt nichts anderes als den Rückgriff auf einen klassischen Umstrukturierungsmechanismus dar: Die Verwandlung von Schulden in Eigenkapital (equity) ist eine Routineoperation. Wenn es sich um private Schulden handelt, besteht die Schwierigkeit darin, einen oder mehrere Gläubiger zu finden, die zur Fortentwicklung ihres Risikos bereit sind, vom Risiko ausbleibender Kapitalrückzahlung zum Risiko eines Verlustes des gesamten oder eines Teils des Kapitals. Im vorliegenden Fall sind die Gläubiger Staaten, die ihrer Forderungen verlustig gehen könnten, wenn Griechenland zusammenbräche. Nach unserem Vorschlag würden sich diese Staaten nun nicht mehr dem Risiko des Totalverlusts aussetzen, sondern ihre Schuldforderungen in Investitionsscheine umwandeln, d.h. in eine Form des Kapitals, die gemäß einer Logik solidarischer Entwicklung Griechenland, aber auch den heimischen Industrien zu gute käme.
3. Solidarität und Vorverkaufsrecht
Eine unmittelbare Gegenleistung für die Staaten, die an dem System teilnähmen, wäre ein Vorverkaufsrecht für Exporte nach Griechenland. Dieses Vorverkaufsrecht würde den Unternehmen zugute kommen, die mehrheitlich in den teilnehmenden Ländern angesiedelt sind. Wenn die Investitionen einmal getätigt sind, würden sie automatisch zu Käufen von Ausstattungsgütern und Anlagen, die kurz- oder mittelfristig nicht in Griechenland hergestellt werden können, bei Unternehmen der Länder führen, die im Besitz der Investitionsscheine sind. Das ist die Technik des Marshallplans: Ein Dollar „Hilfszahlung“ fungiert doppelt – als Geldbeschaffung und Subvention des Kaufs von Ausstattung und Anlagen. Eine so organisierte europäische Solidarität ist nicht selbstlos: Für jeden Euro, um den die Schuldenlast erleichtert, bzw. der in produktive Investitionen in Griechenland umgewandelt wird, entstünde ein entsprechendes Vorverkaufsrecht in Höhe von einem Euro für die Unternehmen, deren Länder an dem System beteiligt sind. Hier würden Solidarität und ökonomisches Eigeninteresse nahtlos zusammengehen.
4. Offene Fragen
Man wird uns vorhalten, dass das vorgeschlagene System den derzeitigen europäischen Regeln (Wettbewerbsfreiheit und Beihilfeverbot) zuwider läuft und dass es schwer werden dürfte, teilnahmebereite Unternehmen zu finden. Wir stellen demgegenüber die Frage, ob das Wettbewerbsrecht nicht weiterentwickelt werden sollte, damit es nicht zu einem Hemmnis für ein zugleich stärkeres und solidarischeres Europa wird. Und was die Unternehmen anbelangt, die an dem System teilnehmen könnten, liegt es in ihrem Interesse, von den Möglichkeiten dieser Ausnahmeregelung zu profitieren und dafür unter Beweis zu stellen, dass sie die Teilnahmebedingungen erfüllen. Die exportstarken mittelständischen Maschinen- und Anlagenbauer aus Baden-Württemberg, Bayern oder Sachsen mit ihren hochspezialisierten Produkten, die bereits jetzt häufig auf die Sicherheiten der KfW zurückgreifen, hätten an diesem System bestimmt Interesse. Das Gleiche gilt für die französischen Unternehmen, die heute bereits weltweit erfolgreich große Infrastrukturprojekte planen und umsetzen. Wir wetten darauf, dass der Kontakt zwischen der Regierung, den griechischen Unternehmen und diesen Industriellen äußerst fruchtbar wäre. Schließlich wird man uns entgegenhalten, dass solch ein System nur den europäischen Regeln entspräche, wenn alle EU-Mitglieder entsprechend ihres Bruttoinlandsprodukts beteiligt wären. Allerdings zeigt die Erfahrung, dass es in einem Europa der 28 nahezu unmöglich geworden ist, substantielle Entscheidungen zu treffen – erst recht, wenn es sich um substantielle Fortschritte handeln soll. Einstimmigkeit ist der sicherste Weg in die Ohnmacht, und es handelt sich jetzt darum, die Möglichkeiten der verstärkten Zusammenarbeit und weiterer Verfahren, die für Ausnahmesituationen bereits im EU-Vertrag vorgesehen sind, zu nutzen. Natürlich hat jedes Land die Freiheit zu entscheiden, ob es an einem derartigen System teilnehmen möchte. Die von uns vorgeschlagene Regelung muss außerdem derart allgemein sein, dass sie auch auf Spanien, Portugal oder Italien Anwendung finden kann. Unser Vorschlag lautet entsprechend, einen Rahmen und Mittel zu schaffen, die nicht nur helfen sollen, die griechische Krise zu überwinden. Es geht vielmehr darum, eine konkrete Perspektive auf ein solidarischeres Europa zu schaffen, die durch wirtschaftliche Eigendynamik verwirklicht wird. Damit befinden wir uns in der Tradition großer europäischer Projekte, wie in der Vergangenheit dem Schumanplan oder dem Delors-Paket und der Einheitlichen Europäischen Akte.
Gabriel Colletis, Jean-Philippe Robé und Robert Salais
Gabriel Colletis Professor für Volkswirtschaft an der Universität Toulouse-Capitole
Jean-Philippe Robé Rechtsanwalt der Kammern von Paris und New York und Spezialist für internationale Umstrukturierungsprogramme
Robert Salais Fellow 2005-2006 am Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (WIKO) und wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Forschungsdirektor am französischen Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Aus dem Französischen von Kolja Lindner
(Eine frühere Version dieses Textes erschien im deutschen Magazin "Capital" unter dem Titel "Ein Marshallplan für Griechenland")
Comment
Your paper "Die Schuldenfrage lösen und die Investitionsschwäche bekämpfen -- Ein Vorschlag zur Überwindung der (griechischen) Schuldenproblematik im Euro-Raum" constitutes a bold and very interesting proposal. Please allow me to comment on some of the main arguments of your paper:
Did the unbalanced Greek economy create the debt or did the debt derail the economy?
Frankly, I am not very concerned about the current level of the Greek sovereign debt. I think the creditors will delay repayment of the principal ad calendas graecas and the interest rates will be minimal; in the end it will be a semantic rather than an economic issue whether the debts remain on the books or be erased. This fact has not been fully understood in Athens and Washington. The generous conditions offered by the creditors have practically relieved Greece of its debt. I tend to agree with German finance minister Schaeuble that debts are not among Greece's main problems. After the next round of political elections, some Eurozone countries might be more prepared to consider a restructuring of Greece's nominal debt.
I am more concerned with the present growth of the debts, especially the internal ones caused by delays of the Tsipras government in honoring its financial obligations. I think it will, even under favourable conditions, take considerable time to undo the economic contraction caused by the policies and actions of the Tsipras government. Given the current distortion of the primary surplus by the rising level of domestic indebtedness. the institutions wisely refrained from setting a numeric target for the surplus.
Ein schwaches Produktionspotential - Die Produktion ist geringer als der Konsum (P<K) - Die Importe sind größer als die Exporte (M<X) Eine extreme Abhängigkeit von externer Finanzierung - Die Verschuldung ist nicht die Ursache der Probleme Griechenlands, sie ist das Ergebnis dieser Probleme
I am afraid, here I disagree. I believe Greece's current problems result from years of lavish deficit spending, resulting in a mountain of debts, public and private. Let us look at history:
Before WWII, Greece was a poor but self-sufficient agricultural community with 40 percent illiteracy (women 63% illiterate; 1939 statistics). Low level self-sufficiency (poverty) continued until the collapse of the military regime in 1974. From then on, Greece's economy and its modernization took off, unfortunately accompanied by increasing levels of corruption and clientelism or patronage. Even the supposedly "clean" Syriza administration soon showed the old vices. (I would not be surprised if future governments discovered that during Syriza's weeks of hectic efforts to stave off default, some millions went missing.)
In 1981, Greece joined the European Community and began being showered with funding from Brussels, inviting all kinds of skulduggery. Propped up by the EU, Greece's status in credit rating improved, offering successive governments the potential to sell bonds at favorable conditions. In 2001 Greece adopted the Euro currency, obtained access to the European and global financial markets and their low interest levels, thereby opening the floodgates for more debts to be contracted.
It was the availability of easy and cheap credit which derailed the Greek economy, not vice versa. The following years of plenty, of economic miracle, elevated Greece to a level of public and private consumption equal to that of advanced European countries, and sometimes even beyond. Imported foodstuffs, school buses, air conditioning, domestic servants, swimming pools, studying fancy subjects abroad, collecting modern art, pensions for unwed daughters, vacation homes at the beach -- everything was possible. Greeks refused to perform menial work which was passed to scores of legal and illegal immigrants. During these years Greece seemed like a Gulf emirate with sudden affluence based not on revenue but on easy credit.
When in 2008 and 2009 the crunch came, the Greek banks discovered themselves saddled with toxic loans, and the state faced a sovereign debt well beyond 100 percent of GDP. When the banks faced default they gambled like the Italian banks: they bought billions of government bonds which offered high interest rates, trusting that the Eurozone would prevent a Grexit and someone (the Greek state?) would eventually repay them.
Die griechische Wirtschaft ist todkrank, sie ist nicht mehr in der Lage, genügend Einkommen zu generieren, um die menschliche Not zu lindern, die Produktionsfaktoren zu entlohnen und den Schuldendienst zu leisten
Well, this is a question of perspective. True, Greece's economy is currently generating a positive primary surplus because government expenditure shrank even faster than tax revenue. An awful situation: citizens dodge taxes, the state shirks its obligations (see Silvia Merler's excellent piece). Greek payments due to creditors had to be funded by the creditors themselves by shifting funds from one account to another.
Still, I don't consider the Greek economy moribund. It is only out of tune with the new post-crunch reality. Once the dust settles, Greece will shift from a luxury-oriented, import-centered economy to a frugal, import substituting, export- and tourism-oriented economy. It will take time, investments and technical advice. But I am sure, the keen and well connected Greek business people will meet the challenge it they are offered a modern and efficient institutional framework.
Das Schuldenproblem kann nicht durch einen im wesentlichen finanzpolitischen Ansatz gelöst werden. Denn die Schulden sind im Wesentlichen ein Problem der Wirtschaftsstruktur Griechenlands. Die größte Herausforderung für Griechenland -- Unverzüglich ein Modell zur Entwicklung seiner Produktion auf den Weg bringen -- Was aber ohne eine tragfähige Lösung für die Schuldenlast nicht möglich ist.
As stated above, I think the debt problem has largely been solved through extremely long time horizons, generous debt servicing holidays and micro-level interest rates. If more action is needed to reduce the weight of the debts, even more favorable terms could be offered by the creditors, the German chancellor, Ms. Merkel, announced. Although, in my view, the debts were neither caused by Greece's economic structure, nor should they be seen as a problem in itself, I do agree that a model to develop domestic production is urgently needed and constitutes a major challenge for the country.
It does not really matter who draws up the blueprint for Greece's industrial and agricultural revival: the Greeks themselves or the troika, or both together. No doubt, Greece has excellent economists and planners at its disposal and could very well draw up a plan. The issue is not the plan: it's the implementation.
This is the point where the troika needs to get active again. I am afraid, the Greeks of Hellas, the patriate Greeks as it were, cannot be trusted to correctly implement a development plan. Too weak is their understanding of the state as a common venture. Too engrained is the urge to pursue clientele and even personal interests at the expense of the common good. Any plan would be fragmented and possibly loaded with pork in parliament. Even if it passed parliament in recognizable shape, it could be manipulated by the administration, and some of its funding would evaporate before reaching its destination.
I am sorry for sounding so negative. I believe the patriate Hellenes are not yet up to such an exercise. Fortunately, there are an estimated 10 million expatriate Greeks plus 840,000 Cypriot Greeks who could help. The Cypriots, as a heritage from their days as a British crown colony, have a much better developed concept of the state and could advise their brethren. Many diaspora Greeks would even consider it a duty and an honor to be called to help Hellas at a crucial time.
And then, there are the creditors. In their own best interest they are willing to provide Athens with qualified advisers. These advisers on the payroll of the troika are a major gift to the Greek government. However, these advisers should also have executive powers to ensure that the plan is not sabotaged or misused in the jungle of the Greek bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy
Without slashing and re-qualifying the administration at all levels, Greece will not be able to enter the 21st century and develop its economy. In addition to the existing unemployment among those who studied fancy subjects for which domestic demand has vanished; in addition to those who practiced rich-country professions which disappeared with the riches, there will be hundreds of thousands of state employees slated to lose their jobs. In recent years, many if not most of those who lost their government jobs used the emergency exit of early retirement: this way of substituting pension for payroll (and continuing to live at state expense) is now being abolished due to troika pressure.
The problem is not only that redundant bureaucrats -- many of them political appointees without qualification and interest in their job -- will be fired. Many more must leave to create vacancies for the new, better qualified staff needed to render the administration and its public utilities efficient. Some of the old staff might be willing learn new skills (for instance use of computers) through training; others will refuse to change their old ways. In any case, the unions, the old parties and the political Left will put up stiff resistance and the troika will have to exert utmost pressure to see the reforms implemented.
Investment
It is a good idea to convert sovereign debt into investment certificates, provided the primary surplus is positive and will not be syphoned off for other purposes (for instance military expenditure). At present, no investment is taking place. Once the current crisis is overcome and the outlines of a new, stable and more efficient Greece appear on the horizon, potential investors will surface. Small scale, very small scale ventures would line up for investment certificate funding. Import substitution will become profitable for a wide range of goods ranging from feta cheese to mechanical spare parts. Since the government cannot protect fledgling industries by introducing customs duties, the new import substituting industries will have to be extremely competitive, which means low wages for Greeks, legal and illegal migrants. Once they have established themselves in Greece they could probably also be competitive in neighboring Italy and elsewhere.
Conclusions
To sum up: I suppose the Greek GDP has already shrunk to the level it had attained before the euro was adopted. The bubble is gone. Wages are low enough not to pose a cost problem for future investments. The big hurdle for any investor remains the bureaucracy. Here, a revolution is needed, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Contrary to an opinion shared by Finance Minister Schaeuble, German economist Hans-Werner Sinn and many others, I don't think a Grexit would help Greece. All impetus to reform the country would instantly be lost. Greece would simply continue practicing its oriental ways of life with no prospect of returning to the Eurozone any time soon. Agriculture would by necessity be revived and import substitution would become the main objective of new industries, but at an overall income level not much different from that of neighboring Turkey or Romania. The Tsipras government has recognized these dire prospects and therefore decided to fight for continued membership in the Eurozone.
Heinrich von Loesch
P.S.
Some thoughts about the economic revival needed in Greece
As is well known, Greece suffers from very high unemployment, especially among the youngest and the oldest. If the troika succeeds in enforcing the current set of reforms, hundreds of thousands more will lose their jobs, especially half or two thirds of all employees of the government, government owned utilities and government-dominated banks. The extent of the new poverty will enormously increase if the reforms are implemented as planned.
Some unemployment of the elderly will be absorbed by the pension system; some unemployment among the young and the highly skilled will be exported through emigration. But for the large rest the only hope is in a rapid economic revival which absorbs large number of workers and clerical staff, as it happened in Portugal and Spain. What are the chances for an economic revival in Greece?
Greece has a few natural and historic advantages which could be exploited.
First, there is the sea, Η θάλασσα.
Greek aquaculture is very successful in exporting to Italy where it is firmly established as the second source of fresh farmed fish after domestic suppliers. Greece produces about half of all sea bass and bream consumed worldwide. However, Turkish aquaculture is catching up and dominates in Germany thanks to the many Turkish supermarkets. In principle, with reduced labor costs, Greek fish farming should be able to expand its exports. But like other industries in Greece, aquaculture companies are now stumbling under the weight of easy credit they piled up during two decades of fast expansion the 1980s and 90s. The collapse of the banking system renders refinancing almost impossible.
Another gift of the sea are the refugees. With currently more refugees arriving in Greece than in Italy, the Dodekanese islands are overwhelmed. Hellas is already overpopulated with foreigners. While many seasonal and menial labor from abroad left after the crunch and returned to their countries, the rapid increase in refugee influx creates an intolerable burden on the country already struggling with new poverty and shortages of all kinds.
In the coming negotiations between the government and the troika, Athens could make a strong case for being compensated for hosting the refugees. In practical terms: the European Union (not the Eurozone) should pay Greece an indemnity for every refugee-month registered. This indemnity should be generous enough to recoup not only the cost to accommodate, clothe, feed and train (language, vocational skills) the refugees but include an overhead element to cover the cost of administrative work, policing etc. In other words: for Greece, the refugees should be converted from a liability to an asset.
The traditional shipping sectoris endangered. The turmoil in Greece, a left-wing government with anti-capitalistic reflexes, the threat of new taxes and the fear of an imminent Grexit are driving shipping companies owning the world's second largest commercial fleet away from Greece. Since most of the hardware is already registered abroad, all it takes is relocating the head office to a safer and friendly country such as Cyprus.
But it's not only an issue of shipping: the ship building industry is also involved. As Loretta Napoleoni, an Italian economist, explained, the Greek shipbuilders were driven out of Greece shortly after year 2000 because of an ill-conceived regulation from Brussels. After a troubled Greek tanker in 2002 was not permitted to enter Spanish ports for fear that its hull could break and cause a disastrous oil spill, Brussels ordered that all tankers should be double hulled. Greek shipping companies operating 19 percent of the world commercial fleet could not face the enormous investment required. The Greek government refused to help; the Greek banks were too small to lend the funds.
Instead, the shipping companies were offered credit by Asian banks with low interest rates subsidized by their governments, under the condition that the work be conducted in Asian shipyards. That's how the Greek ship building industry lifted its anchors and moved to Japan, China and Korea, Napoleoni says. The story of Greek de-industrialization is long and sad. The ports of Piraeus and Salonica are for sale to be snapped up by the Chinese and, likely, the Russians.
In agriculture, another important sector, the situation is not much better. Although Greece with its long, dry summers is able to produce excellent quality fruit and vegetables, very little produce is exported. Apart from asparagus and olive oil, hardly any Greek product makes it to European supermarkets. Greek olives were traditionally exported to Italy to be processed there but many small Greek oil mills have in recent years started exporting under their own brands. Sadly, the quality of the oil leaves much to be desired; usually, Greek oil cannot compete with Italian market leaders on price, quality and brand recognition. With help from Brussels, the government should be able to improve and standardize the quality.
Regarding fruit and vegetables, Greek exports to Europe are hampered by the long and dangerous routes through the Balkan countries. However, Turkish companies succeed in being competitive with Italians and Spaniards by overcoming transport problems thanks to the large volume of their exports.
Generally speaking, Greek agricultural exports should specialize in high quality niche products such as asparagus. At the bulk level, Greece will not be able to compete with Turkey, Egypt or Morocco. Government-sponsored marketing boards for farm products in importing EU countries could advise their Greek opposite numbers on niches to be explored and possibly filled. Fresh farmed fish and seafood would be products to start with. Whatever happened to the famous Greek honey which once could claim to be Europe's best? What about the red Naoussa wines? Usually, economists say that Greek products are too expensive because of the euro currency and only a Grexit would solve the problem. That is hard to believe because Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands are powerful exporters of farm products despite the euro.
-- ed
Written on .
Die französische Wirtschaftszeitung La Tribune ist überzeugt, dass der Grexit unvermeidlich kommt. Gabriel Colletis schreibt, dass der persönliche Einsatz von Präsident François Hollande für den Verbleib Griechenlands in der Eurozone sich als "sehr kostspielig" erweisen werde. Er meint, dass Hollande in ein übermässiges Risiko gegangen sei und ihn das die in weniger als zwei Jahren anstehenden Wahlen kosten kann.
In einer detaillierten Analyse kommt La Tribune zu dem Schluss, dass für Griechenlands Wirtschaft eine sehr schnelle Rezession zu erwarten sei. Nicht nur die Kürzung der Renten und die Anhebung der Steuern wirken kontraktierend auf die Wirtschaft, sondern auch der zu erwartende weitere Rückgang der Staatsausgaben. Man müsse erwarten, dass die Griechen sich dem steigenden Steuerdruck durch Flucht in die "graue Wirtschaft" widersetzen werden -- eine Vermutung, die schon ex-Finanzminister Yannis Varoufakis äusserte.
Da angesichts der Schrumpfung der Produktion nicht mit einem raschen Anstieg der Ausfuhren zu rechnen sei, bedeutet die Lage, dass alle Motoren des Wachstums im Rückwärtsgang laufen und die Zielsetzung für den Primärüberschuss unerreichbar machen.
Ausserdem erwartet La Tribune parallel zur Schrumpfung des Sozialprodukts einen weiteren Anstieg der griechischen Verschuldung. Bisherige Ideen zur Minderung der Schulden seien vage.
Die Tribune kommt zu dem Schluss, dass sich Griechenland in einer Abwärtsspirale befindet, die im Ausscheiden aus der Eurozone enden wird. Das Nicht-Erreichen der Zielsetzungen der Gläubiger werde den Druck auf die Regierung verstärken, und die griechische Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft werde in diesem Räderwerk "zermahlen" werden. "Das Ausscheiden Griechenlands aus der Eurozone wird daher unausweichlich sein", meint La Tribune.
-- ed
Update
At this point, for the benefit of our non-germanophone audience, we prefer to switch to English. After publishing the above article, we sent a mail to Professor Colletis saying that we at germanpages.de share his views. He answered:
... La question à présent, très vaste mais essentielle, est : que pouvons-nous faire ?
(At present, the very large but essential question is: what can we do?)
Wow! germanpages.de feels asked to come up with ideas to help Greece in this dreadful situation and possibly show ways to avoid the looming Grexit. That is a tough challenge. Some of the world's top economists have expressed themselves on this subject without presenting a really satisfactory solution.
Nevertheless, let us try. Knowing and loving Greece since the days of the king might help.
Back in 2010, german.pages.de estimated that about 40 percent of Greek GDP consisted of a bubble caused by years and decades of reckless deficit spending. Years when Greece seemed awash in money, permitting itself imports of everything from milk to luxury cars, economically unsustainable investments in prestige and convenience projects,,,corruption,,,tax dodging...money laundering, you name it, Greece had it.
As we know, some 25 percent of this GDP has already been shaved off after years of reforms and recession. Another 15 percent may already have been lost due to the consequences of the disastrous policies pursued by the Syriza government.
Hence it is quite possible that by now, Greece's GDP is back to the level it had attained before the euro was introduced in 2001 and the really big bubble started. Only after the dust of the current turmoil has settled, fresh data will reveal where Greece now stands in terms of GDP.
Although GDP may have shrunk to sustainable looking levels, the structure of the Greek economy has not adjusted. The shortage of cash and the extended bank holiday have damaged industries and commerce across the board, productive and unproductive enterprises alike, driving some into bankruptcy. For months, sometimes even years, neither the state nor the private sector have paid bills, causing hardship and more bankruptcies among creditors, suppliers and services. To sum up: the economy is in a mess.
Two trends are needed to put the economy back on its feet: prices and tariffs (by public and private entities) must come down to levels which correspond to the lowered GDP, and imports must be substituted. The Greeks' lower purchasing power is reducing the demand for expensive imported goods. Import substitution must be the first goal of future industrial and agricultural development. The huge Greek import sector will respond to this challenge by fighting for lower cif prices of traditional goods. If these reductions cannot be achieved, the importers will switch to low cost suppliers. Romanian and Indian instead of French and German cars, Chinese instead of Italian apparel, Russian fish preserves instead of Japanese tuna. Fortunately, Greek merchants are clever and globally linked; they will adapt quickly to the new market frugality.
Import substitution by Greek industries and farmers will take longer and may require assistance from Brussels, technical advice and preferential conditions for investment. A lower level of prices and tariffs will benefit both the export trade and tourism.
Only if the international creditors take charge to reboot the Greek state, its provincial and local entities, the private economy will again be able to breathe. The Greek state is a monster which needs to be attacked from all sides. It must be deflated, streamlined, modernized and freed from endemic corruption. It will require years of hard work, an army of foreign experts (Greek expatriates, Cypriots!) and merciless creditor pressure and supervision to tame the monster.
It consists, symbolically speaking, of three parts:
the head formed by Syriza, the trade unions, and the ruling families;
the belly consisting of close to 1 million employees (including state run companies) of the total Greek work force of 2.7 million (2014), largely unqualified and indolent bureaucracy;
the fearsome tail: the Greek pension system.
All parts need to be tackled immediately. Among the most difficult tasks are the creation from scratch of an effective tax collection system, as well as establishing a realistic and up to date land ownership register.
Tasks which call for a modern Heracles. He will need all the strength and experience gathered in cleaning the stables of King Augeas to prevent the seemingly unavoidable to happen, the Grexit.
-- ed
Answers by Gabriel Colletis
I see three three main points within it:
the need to reform the state and to establish new institutions
the price adjustment
the import substitution.
I shall not comment the responsibilities of the current situation. They are shared: ruling families, corporatist unions, old parties as Nea Democratia and Pasok, Syriza because of their lack of preparation, EEC which knew perfectly the situation since decades and has closed its eyes and ears…
The need to reform the state and establish new institutions
The Greek state is, for sure, a monster. Too big, even if it is hard to make international or intra-European size comparisons because of the huge heterogeneity of the public sector in the various countries. The main problem in the Greek state sector is the lack of professionalism and clientelism as a legacy of the past.
For sure, a tax collection system and a land ownership register are absolute necessities. As well as a fair and well balanced pension system. We should not forget too the education and vocational training sectors, the Universities, the Research sector, Health and care…
Brief, almost everything has to be thought and organized since nothing serious has been done since Othon. This has as a corollary the large diffused corruption.
The price adjustment (in very short)
Greek population has suffered very much since 2009 and austerity programs. Pensions as well as salaries have dramatically fallen. Despite this contraction, the prices are rather stable, with the exception of housing sector. The danger, if deflation occurs, is that this process usually slows the economic activity because of the price expectations: everyone is inclined to wait for lower prices before investing or even buying common goods.
The Import substitution by Greek industries and farmers
If I may, this third point seems to me to be the most original proposal you have done and I agree fully with it. The main problem for Greece is not the public debt itself but its reasons. The principal reason is that, since the 80’ the consumption has grown quite quick in Greece meanwhile the industrial and, a bit later, the agricultural activities declined dramatically. The gap between production and consumption is around 15% of GDP.
Without a strong productive sector, revenues cannot be earned by a proper way according to the inland activities but are dependent of foreign transfers. In summary, Greece has to face a double problem: import and external financing dependency.
Rather than merciless creditor pressure and supervision, Greece, in order to answer to this double problem needs a national recovery plan and appropriate financing coming from its own resources, European Investment Bank loans and….a conversion of its debt into investment certificates. We have proposed this option as well in Greece as in France or Germany.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Medicare Bill at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence,Missouri, with former President Harry S. Truman, July 30, 1965. (photo: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library)
House Republicans are still making Medicare vouchers and Medicaid block grants their official policy goals, and they are still wildly out of step with public opinion on these two programs. With this month's 50th anniversary of these two programs, Kaiser Family Foundation has released its most recent survey about American attitudes toward them. They find that the programs are as important to and popular with Americans as ever, and that congressional Republicans' policies are supported only by a narrow band of fellow Republicans.
Medicare is very important to 77 percent of people, with only Social Security ranked as more important (at 83 percent) and Medicaid is very important to 63 percent (tied roughly with student loans).
Republicans identify these programs as either very important or important: 96 percent for Medicare, 86 percent for Medicaid. (Those numbers for Democrats are 99 percent and 97 percent, respectively.)
Sixty percent say Medicare is an effective program (jumping to 75 percent for people actually Medicare) and 50 percent say Medicaid is effective (jumping to 65 percent of Medicaid recipients).
Medicare is personally important to 76 percent of all people (and 71 percent of Republicans) and Medicaid to 51 percent to all (though only 35 percent of Republicans).
The rhetoric of critics has taken a toll: more than half—54 percent—are concerned about Medicare's future.
This is where it gets interesting. "When asked about several specific proposals, this survey finds strong public support [upward of 88 percent] across age groups and party lines for allowing the federal government to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. About six in ten (58 percent) favor increasing Medicare premiums for wealthier seniors, but much fewer (31 percent) support increasing Medicare premiums for all seniors." What's really unpopular? A voucher system, which only gets 26 percent support. Only 31 percent of Republicans support vouchers! With Medicaid, only 32 percent of the general population supports the idea of block grants, though it rises to 50 percent with Republicans.
Meanwhile, just 44 percent of the population trusts Democrats more than Republicans on Medicare, and 46 percent on Medicaid. Which is pretty much insane and absolutely reiterates why Democrats need to be making these programs—including Social Security—key issues. They're among the most important issues for the whole country, including Republicans!
Democrats need to be not just holding the line on these programs, but talking about strengthening and expanding them. They need to be taking every opportunity to show just how destructive and extreme the Republican vision for these cherished programs is. Clearly, Democrats have a lot to gain by doing so since not even 50 percent of the population recognizes that contrast.
The Art and History Museum of Geneva once showed some 18th century chairs of the local "bonne femme" style which prevailed in Geneva and the Franche-Comté. Some time later the curators apparently considered these chairs too humble and replaced them by some elegant Parisian chairs of the same period. The local "bonne femme" furniture which is much more interesting than the ubiquitous Parisian models disappeared in storage.
Many museums are black holes which have swallowed incredible quantities of works of art, most of which disappear forever in storage, never to be seen by the public. Miles and miles of shelves full of often poorly identified artefacts constitute the invisible part of the iceberg, only the top of which is considered "the museum". Young and inexperienced art historians are often baffled and overwhelmed by the variety of treasures they find hidden in basements and storage sheds, and may even need the advice of an experienced private collector to identify objects. For the trade, selling to a museum may mean saying goodbye to an object probably never to surface again.
This is only one of the many problems afflicting museums. Museums were conceived and are still managed for the precious few cognoscenti, not for the masses of tourists following the lure of famous brand names. Francesco Antinucci explores the shortcomings of museums today.
The situation of the museums in Italy is very different from that in the rest of Europe, and this is due to historical reasons of various nature (many of which are mirrored by the improper expression “the country with the richest cultural heritage in the world”).
In the other countries the works of art are far fewer and gathered in a dozen or so of historic museums – not to mention the enormous difference existing between the number and richness of the archaeological sites in Italy compared to the rest of Europe.
People choose the museums according to their name, not to their content
The specific value of cultural assets lies in their being bearers of culture and vehicles for the building of the cultural identity
The exhibition structure of a museum is designed to allow the critical study of the works of art, not the understanding of their communicative message
Though to the majority of people the state of affairs of Italian museums (using the term in a broad sense, to include monuments, painting and sculpture galleries, archaeological sites, and so on) appears to be very prosperous, showing in the last fifteeen years an average increase in the number of visitors of 3.5% per year, when we take a closer look at it, we see that this success is only superficial, hiding a situation that is rather critical.
The telltale sign of this state of affairs is the distribution of the rising tide of visitors. Some figures will help us to clarify the point. Of the approximately 40 million people who in 2013 visited the 423 Italian state museums, a half crowded into only 11 of the museums.
This means that 50% of visitors were absorbed by 5% of the museums, while 412 museums had to share the other half of the public. And this is not all. Three quarters of all visitors – approximately 30 million people – were distributed among only 36 museums (that is, 8% of the total).
Finally, 90% of all the visitors were distributed among 99 museums, 23% of the total. This means that less than a quarter of the Italian state museums absorbed almost all the visitors, while 324 museums (423 – 99) had virtually no public.
Things look even more drastic if we consider all the Italian museums, and not only the state ones. Thus, the overall picture is of 4588 museums (more than ten times the number of the state ones) with 104 million visitors.
Here, 43.3% of the visitors were absorbed by the first 36 museums, which amounts to less than 1% of the total (to be exact, they are 0.8%). A 69% of the public visited 3.6% of the museums and 92% – once again, almost all of the public – visited 22% of the museums, which leaves 3579 museums virtually without visitors.
The dimension of this concentration is so vast that it appears immediately clear it cannot have any 'objective' cause. In other words, it cannot lie in the nature, the quality or the quantity of the artefacts of the different museums. To use the language of economics, it is a scenario of oligopoly: a few manufacturers/suppliers seize the majority of the demand and leave the several other manufacturers/suppliers only marginal shares of it.
There are many reasons why a market gives rise to an oligopolistic condition, one of which is particularly interesting for our discussion. I am referring to the phenomenon of 'branding', when the success of an item is determined not so much by its material constitution, but by its 'name'.
The markets characterised by 'designer' articles, like those of sport brands, from t-shirts to shoes and equipment (skis, bikes, etc.) are typical examples: the product differences existing between articles belonging to the same category are small (if not minimal) and definitely not proportional to the difference in their demands and resulting success, which, on the contrary, is huge.
In short, all this occurs because people choose the name, not the object (and this explains why the building of the name, the brand, absorbs nearly all the efforts of the companies, if compared to the productive aspect of the articles to be branded).
So, what I am suggesting here is that we can identify the phenomenon of branding behind the concentration in the distribution of visitors among Italian museums: people choose the museums according, not to their content, (or the 'product' they offer) but to their 'name'. The Uffizi, the Colosseum, or Pompeii are brand-names that act as powerful attractors, seizing for themselves the vast majority of 'consumers'/ visitors.
For example, Pompeii and Herculaneum differ minimally for a common visitor wanting to see a Roman city of the first century destroyed and frozen in time by a volcanic eruption. Nonetheless, the visitor aims at the name, and Pompeii is a well known trademark, while Herculaneum is not.
As a result, Pompeii has about ten times the visitors of Herculaneum, exactly as an Adidas or Nike shoe has dozens of times more 'wearers' than a shoe of an unknown brand, no matter if they have the same technical quality.
In the field of cultural heritage, though, this branding effect has very serious implications unknown to the other sectors, since cultural assets are not commodities to sell or to give away as a gift. Well, they are not commodities at all.
The specific value of cultural assets lies in their being bearers of culture and, as such, fundamental vehicles for the building of the cultural identity of individuals, nations and humanity as a whole. This is why we tend to be very happy when museums become popular: it is not because it means that we are selling many tickets – as is the case with football stadiums – but because we assume that the visit will lead to an improvement in the value of the human person who is experiencing it. And this is exactly the reason why we take school classes to museums and not to stadiums.
However, this reasoning is based on the assumption that the visit to the museum will generate that phenomenon of 'cultural transmission' which is at the core of this process of improvement. But the fact that the huge increase in visitors is driven by the name of the museum, by its brand, seriously puts into question this assumption, because it shows that these visits are not based on the museum content. And they are not based on the content because the visitor is not in a condition to understand or appreciate it.
The average visitor, in fact, cannot evaluate the content of a museum going beyond very general concepts (like 'antique', 'Renaissance', 'Roman', etc.) because he or she does not have the conceptual tools necessary to gain access to the cultural message.
The result we sadly witness is the one invariably reported by the 'museum visitors’ studies' that try to analyse the effects of the visit in terms of cultural transmission: whatever the measure small, very small, nearly of no importance. Often it is hard to find something that persists in the memory of the visitors even just after the experience (aside from curiosities).
Cultural objects speak to those who are able to understand their language, that is, to those who master their language and possess the knowledge understanding their messages presupposes. But these two conditions are very difficult to be found in the vast panorama of those who nowadays visit museums.
This code and this knowledge are no longer part of that background, that once, we could take for granted in the visitors. However, while visitors have changed – and especially the composition of the vast majority of them has changed – the museums have not. As a result, now there is now a huge gap between what the museum exhibition requires for the cultural communication to occur, and the actual skills possessed by those who represent the target of this communication.
If the museum has to carry out its tasks as a public cultural institution, it must fill this gap. Unfortunately, this is not a very easy task. The building of interpretative tools really capable of working is an endeavor far from being obvious. We just need to watch the attempts of some museums in this direction to understand how difficult this is.
In these cases, in fact, the tendency is often that of filling the museums with texts: wall panels, enormous captions and leaflets in every room. In short, a veritable verbal flood. After all, this is the most candid and simplest idea: providing the visitor with the knowledge and information needed to understand the exhibit in an explicit way, verbally, like in textbooks.
Yes, but just as we know well from school, it is very difficult to assimilate concepts offered in this way. At school, in fact, to achieve this goal we have to study, and studying is a strenuous activity which requires a high degree of attention and concentration, no distractions, and above all a strong motivation (internal or external) to do it. None of these conditions occurs in a museum, while standing in front of a work of art. We lack both the cognitive and the motivational premises.
This road precluded, which incidentally is the only one accessible to the qualification and training of the 'average' museum curator, it is easy to understand that the task is much more difficult. We must find other means, less verbal and more visual, avoid all those explicit formulations that require to be 'studied', and find some ways to arouse and foster attention and motivation.
It is difficult, yes, but not impossible: we have to put together different kinds of expertise, such as those of communication experts, storytellers, directors, multimedia graphic designers, to name a few – all figures that abound in the real world – and work closely with them. But this does not happen. Why?
The justification most frequently advanced is always the same. It would be nice, but how can we do it? There is no money. Well, it must be said very clearly that this is not true.
In general, yes, there is little money, but when money is found and beyond that needed for indispensable measures like restoration and maintenance, it is systematically used for new furniture, the remaking of showcases, expensive (and very often unnecessary) new lighting systems, often signed by some well-known architect, and so on.
In short, it is invariably used to embellish the museum and never to enhance cultural transmission. The truth is that as long as it comes to spending for things that do not affect the traditional structure and way of operating of the museum, even if only for accessories, the money is always raised. On the contrary, if the proposal involves some change in these fundamental aspects, then there is no money. At best, it is only possible to change the labels, and with big efforts.
We must be aware that all this is not related to money at all. It is only an excuse behind which one can entrench, glimpsing a potential danger. And this danger is precisely that change in the structure and operations of the museum that a communicative approach would require. Museum curators are fundamentally hostile to any change of this nature, and this is the essential reason why nothing ever happens, regardless all the evident problems and their equally evident solutions.
The point is that they consciously or unconsciously want to firmly preserve the actual function of the museum exhibition, a function that is not designed to ease or even allow the cultural transmission: a function that is not that of restoring the communication circuit between the works of art and the public who visit them.
Since their creation in the second half of the eighteenth century, in fact, museums have maintained an organisation reserved entirely for the insiders (or to those who, more or less amateurishly, can identify with them). The exhibition structure of a museum is designed to allow the critical study of the works of art, not the understanding of their communicative message. After all, curators themselves do admit it openly when they get a sense of the situation.
“The paintings had specific relations to the church or the palace for which they were created, and had the task of transmitting those specific messages that had been selected before their creation. In the museum, they were put close to and compared with other paintings, and prompted to express mainly the historical-artistic paths identified by those who studied them, art historians, connoisseurs, museum directors; and from that moment on, in their arrangement they have mirrored the state of affairs of the specialized studies.” (A. Mottola Molfino, Il libro dei musei, Torino, Allemandi 1992, p. 45)
The current organisation of the museum asks the visitor to become a small art historian or a critic, that is to say, to be an expert in history and art criticism, and, of course, it assumes that the visitor is able to decode and understand by him or herself the exhibits, without any help.
On the contrary, if we want a museum that fosters and facilitates the communicative functions of the single work of art, we must radically change this organisation, starting from the number of the exhibits. In fact, the overcrowding typical of museums is very useful to the comparison of many different works of art – a comparison which is the core of every critical or evolutionary discourse – but it is very bad for the understanding of the message conveyed by the single exhibit.
In fact, it generates confusion, loss of attention, difficulty of identification, and so on. Thus, it should be drastically reduced. Then, we must change the arrangement: the combinations of works of art should help people to understand their message rather than to allow a stylistic comparison between them; they should focus on the 'content' and not on the 'form'. Finally, the exhibits – every single exhibit we want to be understood – should be accompanied by 'dramatic' (and not 'didactic') reconstructive and explanatory devices.
In this way we would have an extremely different kind of museum, both conceptually and physically. Most of all, in this way we would ask those who preside over museums to stop using them as exclusive mirrors of their expertise, that is, mirrors of the historical-critical study of the exhibits: in other words, to stop using them as a means of confrontation within the clique of the insiders.
But this, as it is easy to see, is like asking them to commit career suicide: through the museum exhibition a curator can vie with his or her peers on the ground of critical studies. How could he or she lower him or herself to a confrontation based on the very different (and probably completely devoid of interest for him or her) ground of the successful communication with the general public?
Bear in mind that this contradiction is the real core of the problem. The matter isn’t not knowing what to do, or not having the money to do something; everybody knows that there are people able to do what is needed and that there would be the money to do it (it would be enough to spend a little less in furniture). The point is that this kind of change will never occur as long as the museums are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the current figures of curators.
And this happens not because they are not able to do so, but because they do not want to; if necessary, they will fight fiercely and die hard to maintain the status quo. We must stress this point: for what concerns curators, museums are not designed for the general public, but for them, their colleagues and those who can equate to them.
And so? So it is clear that the only possible solution must be a political and not a technical action. But this requires a strategic statement of our position regarding those aspects we consider to be the interest and the priority tasks of a public institution.
If we decide that museums’ role as cultural vehicles is the fundamental reason that justifies their opening to the public, and that this public – the real people that actually ask to go and visit museums, not the fake public suited to insiders’ private use – has the right to be and feel evaluated and respected in its fundamental rights, being the primary subsidizer of the museums, then we must have the courage to remove the main obstacle on our road: it is necessary to remove from the current museum curators the exclusive jurisdiction over what is related to the public exhibition.
Translated by Diana Mengo
The situation of the museums in Italy is very different from that in the rest of Europe, and this is due to historical reasons of various nature (many of which are mirrored by the improper expression “the country with the richest cultural heritage in the world”).
In the other countries the works of art are far fewer and gathered in a dozen or so of historic museums – not to mention the enormous difference existing between the number and richness of the archaeological sites in Italy compared to the rest of Europe.
IN BRIEF
People choose the museums according to their name, not to their content
The specific value of cultural assets lies in their being bearers of culture and vehicles for the building of the cultural identity
The exhibition structure of a museum is designed to allow the critical study of the works of art, not the understanding of their communicative message
Though to the majority of people the state of affairs of Italian museums (using the term in a broad sense, to include monuments, painting and sculpture galleries, archaeological sites, and so on) appears to be very prosperous, showing in the last fifteeen years an average increase in the number of visitors of 3.5% per year, when we take a closer look at it, we see that this success is only superficial, hiding a situation that is rather critical.
The telltale sign of this state of affairs is the distribution of the rising tide of visitors. Some figures will help us to clarify the point. Of the approximately 40 million people who in 2013 visited the 423 Italian state museums, a half crowded into only 11 of the museums.
This means that 50% of visitors were absorbed by 5% of the museums, while 412 museums had to share the other half of the public. And this is not all. Three quarters of all visitors – approximately 30 million people – were distributed among only 36 museums (that is, 8% of the total).
Finally, 90% of all the visitors were distributed among 99 museums, 23% of the total. This means that less than a quarter of the Italian state museums absorbed almost all the visitors, while 324 museums (423 – 99) had virtually no public.
Things look even more drastic if we consider all the Italian museums, and not only the state ones. Thus, the overall picture is of 4588 museums (more than ten times the number of the state ones) with 104 million visitors.
Here, 43.3% of the visitors were absorbed by the first 36 museums, which amounts to less than 1% of the total (to be exact, they are 0.8%). A 69% of the public visited 3.6% of the museums and 92% – once again, almost all of the public – visited 22% of the museums, which leaves 3579 museums virtually without visitors.
The dimension of this concentration is so vast that it appears immediately clear it cannot have any 'objective' cause. In other words, it cannot lie in the nature, the quality or the quantity of the artefacts of the different museums. To use the language of economics, it is a scenario of oligopoly: a few manufacturers/suppliers seize the majority of the demand and leave the several other manufacturers/suppliers only marginal shares of it.
There are many reasons why a market gives rise to an oligopolistic condition, one of which is particularly interesting for our discussion. I am referring to the phenomenon of 'branding', when the success of an item is determined not so much by its material constitution, but by its 'name'.
The markets characterised by 'designer' articles, like those of sport brands, from t-shirts to shoes and equipment (skis, bikes, etc.) are typical examples: the product differences existing between articles belonging to the same category are small (if not minimal) and definitely not proportional to the difference in their demands and resulting success, which, on the contrary, is huge.
In short, all this occurs because people choose the name, not the object (and this explains why the building of the name, the brand, absorbs nearly all the efforts of the companies, if compared to the productive aspect of the articles to be branded).
So, what I am suggesting here is that we can identify the phenomenon of branding behind the concentration in the distribution of visitors among Italian museums: people choose the museums according, not to their content, (or the 'product' they offer) but to their 'name'. The Uffizi, the Colosseum, or Pompeii are brand-names that act as powerful attractors, seizing for themselves the vast majority of 'consumers'/ visitors.
For example, Pompeii and Herculaneum differ minimally for a common visitor wanting to see a Roman city of the first century destroyed and frozen in time by a volcanic eruption. Nonetheless, the visitor aims at the name, and Pompeii is a well known trademark, while Herculaneum is not.
As a result, Pompeii has about ten times the visitors of Herculaneum, exactly as an Adidas or Nike shoe has dozens of times more 'wearers' than a shoe of an unknown brand, no matter if they have the same technical quality.
In the field of cultural heritage, though, this branding effect has very serious implications unknown to the other sectors, since cultural assets are not commodities to sell or to give away as a gift. Well, they are not commodities at all.
The specific value of cultural assets lies in their being bearers of culture and, as such, fundamental vehicles for the building of the cultural identity of individuals, nations and humanity as a whole. This is why we tend to be very happy when museums become popular: it is not because it means that we are selling many tickets – as is the case with football stadiums – but because we assume that the visit will lead to an improvement in the value of the human person who is experiencing it. And this is exactly the reason why we take school classes to museums and not to stadiums.
However, this reasoning is based on the assumption that the visit to the museum will generate that phenomenon of 'cultural transmission' which is at the core of this process of improvement. But the fact that the huge increase in visitors is driven by the name of the museum, by its brand, seriously puts into question this assumption, because it shows that these visits are not based on the museum content. And they are not based on the content because the visitor is not in a condition to understand or appreciate it.
The average visitor, in fact, cannot evaluate the content of a museum going beyond very general concepts (like 'antique', 'Renaissance', 'Roman', etc.) because he or she does not have the conceptual tools necessary to gain access to the cultural message.
The result we sadly witness is the one invariably reported by the 'museum visitors’ studies' that try to analyse the effects of the visit in terms of cultural transmission: whatever the measure small, very small, nearly of no importance. Often it is hard to find something that persists in the memory of the visitors even just after the experience (aside from curiosities).
Cultural objects speak to those who are able to understand their language, that is, to those who master their language and possess the knowledge understanding their messages presupposes. But these two conditions are very difficult to be found in the vast panorama of those who nowadays visit museums.
This code and this knowledge are no longer part of that background, that once, we could take for granted in the visitors. However, while visitors have changed – and especially the composition of the vast majority of them has changed – the museums have not. As a result, now there is now a huge gap between what the museum exhibition requires for the cultural communication to occur, and the actual skills possessed by those who represent the target of this communication.
If the museum has to carry out its tasks as a public cultural institution, it must fill this gap. Unfortunately, this is not a very easy task. The building of interpretative tools really capable of working is an endeavor far from being obvious. We just need to watch the attempts of some museums in this direction to understand how difficult this is.
In these cases, in fact, the tendency is often that of filling the museums with texts: wall panels, enormous captions and leaflets in every room. In short, a veritable verbal flood. After all, this is the most candid and simplest idea: providing the visitor with the knowledge and information needed to understand the exhibit in an explicit way, verbally, like in textbooks.
Yes, but just as we know well from school, it is very difficult to assimilate concepts offered in this way. At school, in fact, to achieve this goal we have to study, and studying is a strenuous activity which requires a high degree of attention and concentration, no distractions, and above all a strong motivation (internal or external) to do it. None of these conditions occurs in a museum, while standing in front of a work of art. We lack both the cognitive and the motivational premises.
This road precluded, which incidentally is the only one accessible to the qualification and training of the 'average' museum curator, it is easy to understand that the task is much more difficult. We must find other means, less verbal and more visual, avoid all those explicit formulations that require to be 'studied', and find some ways to arouse and foster attention and motivation.
It is difficult, yes, but not impossible: we have to put together different kinds of expertise, such as those of communication experts, storytellers, directors, multimedia graphic designers, to name a few – all figures that abound in the real world – and work closely with them. But this does not happen. Why?
The justification most frequently advanced is always the same. It would be nice, but how can we do it? There is no money. Well, it must be said very clearly that this is not true.
In general, yes, there is little money, but when money is found and beyond that needed for indispensable measures like restoration and maintenance, it is systematically used for new furniture, the remaking of showcases, expensive (and very often unnecessary) new lighting systems, often signed by some well-known architect, and so on.
In short, it is invariably used to embellish the museum and never to enhance cultural transmission. The truth is that as long as it comes to spending for things that do not affect the traditional structure and way of operating of the museum, even if only for accessories, the money is always raised. On the contrary, if the proposal involves some change in these fundamental aspects, then there is no money. At best, it is only possible to change the labels, and with big efforts.
We must be aware that all this is not related to money at all. It is only an excuse behind which one can entrench, glimpsing a potential danger. And this danger is precisely that change in the structure and operations of the museum that a communicative approach would require. Museum curators are fundamentally hostile to any change of this nature, and this is the essential reason why nothing ever happens, regardless all the evident problems and their equally evident solutions.
The point is that they consciously or unconsciously want to firmly preserve the actual function of the museum exhibition, a function that is not designed to ease or even allow the cultural transmission: a function that is not that of restoring the communication circuit between the works of art and the public who visit them.
Since their creation in the second half of the eighteenth century, in fact, museums have maintained an organisation reserved entirely for the insiders (or to those who, more or less amateurishly, can identify with them). The exhibition structure of a museum is designed to allow the critical study of the works of art, not the understanding of their communicative message. After all, curators themselves do admit it openly when they get a sense of the situation.
“The paintings had specific relations to the church or the palace for which they were created, and had the task of transmitting those specific messages that had been selected before their creation. In the museum, they were put close to and compared with other paintings, and prompted to express mainly the historical-artistic paths identified by those who studied them, art historians, connoisseurs, museum directors; and from that moment on, in their arrangement they have mirrored the state of affairs of the specialized studies.” (A. Mottola Molfino, Il libro dei musei, Torino, Allemandi 1992, p. 45)
The current organisation of the museum asks the visitor to become a small art historian or a critic, that is to say, to be an expert in history and art criticism, and, of course, it assumes that the visitor is able to decode and understand by him or herself the exhibits, without any help.
On the contrary, if we want a museum that fosters and facilitates the communicative functions of the single work of art, we must radically change this organisation, starting from the number of the exhibits. In fact, the overcrowding typical of museums is very useful to the comparison of many different works of art – a comparison which is the core of every critical or evolutionary discourse – but it is very bad for the understanding of the message conveyed by the single exhibit.
In fact, it generates confusion, loss of attention, difficulty of identification, and so on. Thus, it should be drastically reduced. Then, we must change the arrangement: the combinations of works of art should help people to understand their message rather than to allow a stylistic comparison between them; they should focus on the 'content' and not on the 'form'. Finally, the exhibits – every single exhibit we want to be understood – should be accompanied by 'dramatic' (and not 'didactic') reconstructive and explanatory devices.
In this way we would have an extremely different kind of museum, both conceptually and physically. Most of all, in this way we would ask those who preside over museums to stop using them as exclusive mirrors of their expertise, that is, mirrors of the historical-critical study of the exhibits: in other words, to stop using them as a means of confrontation within the clique of the insiders.
But this, as it is easy to see, is like asking them to commit career suicide: through the museum exhibition a curator can vie with his or her peers on the ground of critical studies. How could he or she lower him or herself to a confrontation based on the very different (and probably completely devoid of interest for him or her) ground of the successful communication with the general public?
Bear in mind that this contradiction is the real core of the problem. The matter isn’t not knowing what to do, or not having the money to do something; everybody knows that there are people able to do what is needed and that there would be the money to do it (it would be enough to spend a little less in furniture). The point is that this kind of change will never occur as long as the museums are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the current figures of curators.
And this happens not because they are not able to do so, but because they do not want to; if necessary, they will fight fiercely and die hard to maintain the status quo. We must stress this point: for what concerns curators, museums are not designed for the general public, but for them, their colleagues and those who can equate to them.
And so? So it is clear that the only possible solution must be a political and not a technical action. But this requires a strategic statement of our position regarding those aspects we consider to be the interest and the priority tasks of a public institution.
If we decide that museums’ role as cultural vehicles is the fundamental reason that justifies their opening to the public, and that this public – the real people that actually ask to go and visit museums, not the fake public suited to insiders’ private use – has the right to be and feel evaluated and respected in its fundamental rights, being the primary subsidizer of the museums, then we must have the courage to remove the main obstacle on our road: it is necessary to remove from the current museum curators the exclusive jurisdiction over what is related to the public exhibition.
