Making Change in the New Europe: Euro Competence in Greece

The last of the fireworks over the main city square had just brightened the sky in a final flourish when we rushed to form lines at the ATMs, eager to hold euro notes for the first time. Others rushed to the nearest open kiosk to buy a pack of cigarettes with the euro coinage from their "starter kits," made available a few weeks before the change. Just after the stroke of midnight on the first of January in Chania, a city in Greece, there was a thrill in the air as participation in the new currency became possible. But, as throughout much of the country, most ATMs did not work as promised—no euros were forthcoming (many finally distributed euros between 18 and 36 hours later). Only one of the nearby kiosks had a supply of euros from which to give change after the New Year turned, and this quickly ran out. Over the next few days, however, the enthusiasm for the new currency had scarcely abated, and shop owners and customers reveled in displaying their competence in the new currency. A bookstore-owner pulled out two large drawers in the center of his long table full of newspapers, one filled with dull drachmas, the other gleaming like a treasure-chest, filled with newly-minted euros. An onlooker to a confused transaction at a kiosk flipped open his hand to display a selection of euro coins, which he used to demonstrate to the proprietor which combination would serve as change for the purchase of a can of Coca-Cola. Crisp bills were held up to the light, the better to be examined for discovery and confirmation of the extensive security features of the notes. Over coffee, friends proudly pointed out and fingered the distinctive edges of each of the coins, indicating and experiencing a feature designed to assist the blind. And everywhere in those first days were the computerakia, special calculators hard-wired for the instant conversion of drachmas to euros, or the reverse, and available in a surprising variety (often from street vendors from elsewhere in the Balkans). Particular models quickly became the subject of much admiration and inquiry ("That's a nice one; where did you get it? How much?").

I had expected that the state-sponsored (at least in proximate terms) introduction of the euro in Greece would be precisely the kind of endeavor to have provided grounds for stinging criticism of the state at its first noticeable failure—yet another moment where it could be shown how the Greek government "played games with us" (see also Sutton 1997:431n), where it revealed its true colors as a malevolent yet often incompetent player in the ongoing contests between locals, locales, the state, and now, the E.U. Instead, the Greek government's performance in introducing the euro was not the issue of the day (despite the failures of execution which occurred). And while during those same weeks a snowstorm of unprecedented scope predictably, if paradoxically, did provoke the usual scathing criticism of the government's lack of preparation and poor execution, the key issue for the euro and its success was, by contrast, the demonstration of personal competence with it by Greeks, the ability to recognize it, use it, and even to know it intimately, in all its features. In Greece, at least, the euro appeared to have succeeded in occupying the role of a test of European-ness, a kind of international performative challenge the scrutiny of which bypassed the state apparatus and came to reside comfortably at the intimate level of small-scale transactions. The euro provided an opportunity for Greeks to demonstrate (finally) their ability to live up to a standard of competence they identified with being European.

A recurring preoccupation over such projects of European unification, both popularly and in academia, has been the issue of the grounds for establishing a common sense of belonging...