While the EU was quick to symbolically pay tributes, its role in the privatisation of the Greek railway played a big part in the tragedy  

The death toll continues to rise in Greece after the horrific head-on-collision crash between two trains on Wednesday in the village of Tempi, which has further brought the negligence and corruption of the Greek government under scrutiny, and rightly so.

However, the role of the European Union in the tragedy cannot go unmentioned either, as it was the EU and its institutions who forced Greece to sell off public utilities for a pittance to private – and in the case of the railways, bankrupt and incompetent – companies.

Erik Edman, MeRA25’s spokesman, laid out the hypocrisy of the EU after it symbolically lowered its flags to half-mast to pay tribute to the victims of the train crash.

“The architects of the permanent impoverishment of the Greek state and the disastrous privatisation of its public property, are lowering their flags today,” Erik wrote.

“The EC [European Commission] were the brains behind the haphazard privatisation that forced the Greek state to sell the entirety of its national railways to the bankrupt (!) Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane for – I kid you not – a measly 45 million euros.

“They view demonstrations, such as those by Greek rail workers, as backward unionists opposing the efficiency of privatisation. People who had been warning of an INEVITABLE accident as a result of underinvestment. Their colleagues had been injured in past years, and now.

“The breaking up of the services responsible for the maintenance of the railways, with the most costly role being given to the impoverished Greek state, while the only profitable elements of the operation being given to the private sector.

“They constantly praise the corrupt government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a “success story”. So, they should either stand by the policies they’ve been supporting and keep the flags up, or take them down and put them away in shame. Anything else is hypocrisy of the worst kind.”

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