CALL it the cussedness of an island nation. Beneath the cheeriness of Aphrodite’s sun-kissed island lies the intransigence of the Balkans and the Middle East. On the eve of its accession to the European Union in 2004, the Greek-Cypriot republic rejected a UN plan to reunite with the Turkish-Cypriot north, where the plan was supported. Within the club the Greek-Cypriot government has used and abused EU institutions to wage its feud with Turkey and to lend support to Russia.This week’s 36-0 vote in the Cypriot parliament to reject a euro-zone bail-out, in protest at a large proposed tax on bank deposits, may be the most momentous act of bloody-mindedness yet, raising new questions about the stability, and even the survival, of the euro. Outside parliament, a demonstrator’s poster summed up the mood: “Fuck Europe”. Such defiance from the island will be admired by some, yet it does not alter Cyprus’s predicament. It is bust, and cannot afford to salvage its oversized and insolvent banks (see
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