George Soros' New Book Offers Advice for Greece

An individual who possesses an abundance of European experience, Soros reveals caustic words and offers terse prescribed advice on the current confused stated of the European Union. As one of the most successful financiers of all time, Soros' beliefs are vastly supported.

Soros' theory supports that the crisis of the euro was not an unavoidable consequence of integration, but rather the result of needless mistakes in economic, political and financial sectors; and enormous hope regarding self-regulating financial markets which Soros coins market fundamentalism inspired institutional structures gone amiss, that scream for reform. Regardless of the challenges ahead, he still believes in the European Model as an open society paradigm. His publishing is a tribute to his insight on what is needed for a productive and harmonious Europe.

Soros offers revealing commentary concerning Greece's current state, in an excerpt of his book, which was published yesterday in The New York Review of Books:

Schmitz: It seems the pro-Europeans are often silent on important issues because they are afraid that speaking up might increase support for the extremists—for example, in the case of the many refugees from the Middle East and Africa who hoped to reach Europe and were detained on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Soros: Like it or not, migration policy will be a central issue in the elections. We must find some alternative to xenophobia.

Schmitz: What do you propose to do about it?

Soros: I have established an Open Society Initiative for Europe—OSIFE for short. One of its first initiatives is Solidarity Now, in Greece. The original idea was to generate European solidarity with the plight of the Greek population that is suffering from the euro crisis and Greek solidarity with the plight of the migrants, who experience inhuman conditions and are persecuted by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party. It took us some time to get the project off the ground, and by the time we did, it was too late to generate European solidarity with the Greeks because other heavily indebted countries were also in need of support. So we missed that boat, but our initiative has had the useful by product of giving us a better insight into the migration problem.

Schmitz: What have you learned?

Soros: That there is an unbridgeable conflict between North and South on the political asylum issue. The countries in the North, basically the creditors, have been generous in their treatment of asylum seekers. So all the asylum seekers want to go there, particularly to Germany. But that is more than they can absorb, so they have put in place a European agreement called Dublin III, which requires asylum seekers to register in the country where they first enter the EU. That tends to be the South, namely, Italy, Spain, and Greece. All three are heavily indebted and subject to fiscal austerity. They don't have proper facilities for asylum seekers, and they have developed xenophobic, anti-immigrant, populist political movements.
Asylum seekers are caught in a trap. If they register in the country where they arrive, they can never ask for asylum in Germany. So, many prefer to remain illegal, hoping to make their way to Germany. They are condemned to illegality for an indefinite period. The miserable conditions in which they live feed into the anti-immigrant sentiment.

Born in Budapest, George Soros is the founder of the Open Society Foundation and Chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC. He has been a prominent international advocate of democratic causes and ideals for more than 30 years. "The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?" was released this month.