On Greece, the Troika and North Dakota

In its policies toward Greece, the "Troika" — a new shorthand for the combined will of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — has enthusiastically embraced former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher's social and political philosophy, memorably captured in her chilling assertion, "There is no such thing as society."

That philosophy has found its fullest and most concrete exposition in a 2014 "competition assessment" of Greece by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD analyzed 555 Greek regulatory restrictions and made 329 specific recommendations that the Troika expects Greece to enact with dispatch.

Again and again, the report views as virtually criminal the Greek regulations that favor small business, local ownership, and a reliance on local and domestic suppliers.

The OECD, for example, points an accusing finger at a regulation requiring milk labeled "fresh" to have a maximum shelf life of five days. The regulation makes Greek "fresh" milk, on average, more expensive than in other European Union (E.U.) countries. Why? "The high retail price of milk in Greece is a direct consequence of the high prices paid to Greek producers, since the five-day regulation makes imports next to impossible."

To the economists at the OECD and the Troika, price is all. But the majority of Greeks, and I daresay many of the rest of us, might well support an agriculture policy that asks us to pay a few more cents for a bottle of milk to sustain and nurture an ecosystem of small, domestic dairy farmers.

The OECD demands that Greece abolish any laws restricting the days or hours a business can operate (e.g., Sunday closing laws) — despite the fact that several European countries have enacted such policies to protect workers and small businesses.

The OECD insists that "the current retail price regulation of books should be abolished … ." Why? "(N)ew retail channels such as the Internet will be developed." The market demands that small publishers and bookstores make way for Amazon.

Let's examine this bid to overturn Greece's pharmacy laws more closely. The current laws require that pharmacies be owned and operated by a licensed pharmacist, prohibit a pharmacist from owning more than one store, require that over-the-counter drugs be sold only in pharmacies and cap the price of these medicines.

The OECD report oddly leaves out the fact that about half of the countries in the E.U. have pharmacy ownership laws. For more than a decade, these laws have been opposed by the European Commission, which increasingly views its primary mission as reducing any sense of national identity and cohesion. The commission has challenged these popular laws in Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

In 2009, the European Court of Justice agreed with the commission that prohibiting giant corporations from operating pharmacies does restrict the free movement of capital. But it ruled pharmacy ownership laws an acceptable exercise of national authority.

The court observed: "It is undeniable that an operator having the status of pharmacist pursues, like other persons, the objective of making a profit. However, as a pharmacist by profession, he is presumed to operate the pharmacy not with a purely economic objective, but also from a professional viewpoint. His private interest connected with the making of a profit is thus tempered by his training, by his professional experience and by the responsibility which he owes …"

Most Americans may be unaware that we, too, have a law protecting independent pharmacies. The same year the European Court of Justice affirmed the right of nations to protect independent pharmacies, a Wal-Mart- and Walgreens-backed bill was submitted to the North Dakota House of Representatives. It would have overturned a unique state law requiring pharmacies to be owned and operated by a pharmacist.

North Dakotans obtain their medications from 171 independent and locally owned pharmacies throughout the state. They clearly like the system, and according to a report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, they have every reason to. North Dakota pharmacy care outperforms care in other states on every key measure — from cost to access. Its prescription drug prices are more affordable than in two-thirds of all states. Its rural areas are 51 percent more likely to contain a pharmacy than similarly populated areas of South Dakota, which is dominated by large pharmacy chains.

North Dakota is the only U.S. state with a pharmacy ownership law, but Greece is not the only European state that has one. Nor is it alone in having Sunday closing or book pricing laws.

Greece continues to have the legal right to enact such regulations. But its almost-prostrate government may no longer have the capacity, nor the will, to defend rules that have shaped the culture its citizens have cherished for so long.