The only winner will be Euroscepticism

Eight emergency meetings of finance ministers, three crisis summits, and a country on its knees. This is the sum total of four weeks of European diplomacy that has shaken the European Union to its core.

The Greek crisis is likely to linger as a stain on the European Union for many years to come, regardless of how this crisis plays out.

What began as a battle to stave off a Greek exit from the euro zone over recent weeks has turned into a battle to save the reputation of the European Union.

Much of the blame lies at Syriza's door. Since its election in January, the government's misguided and incoherent strategy made things infinitely worse for Greece. Greece was beginning to turn a corner economically late last year; now it faces a bailout of more than €80 billion over the next three years.

The nightmarish irony facing Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras is that rather than securing a debt write-down, he is now asking his country to back a programme that will dramatically increase Greece's debt burden for the next three years.

The referendum on July 5th has proven to be a farce, with voters now being asked to accept much tougher austerity measures than they voted to reject. Meanwhile, former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis sped off in a private boat to an island off Athens on Friday night, leaving his colleagues in the Greek parliament to vote on a package that he was responsible for negotiating.

But the handling of the crisis has also done untold damage to the European Union.

Germany in particular has seen its reputation plummet, sparking inflammatory headlines in Greece and further afield. Though Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble's idea of a temporary Greek exit from the euro zone was never going to make it into the final agreement thrashed out over the weekend, it was seized upon as proof that Germany wanted Greece out.

The rift between France and Germany has also been exaggerated. While France has undoubtedly led efforts to secure an agreement for Greece, sending its own advisers to Athens last week, ultimately French President François Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel were on the same side of the table when they negotiated the agreement with Alexis Tsipras during three "mini-summits" in the office of European Council President Donald Tusk in the early hours of Monday morning.

For all Hollande’s rhetoric about Greece being a “friend of Europe” yesterday, ultimately France, as well as the other euro zone countries, signed off on what was essentially a punishing agreement for Greece.

The behaviour of euro zone member states is not simply down to national intransigence or lack of European solidarity, but rather an inevitable outcome of monetary union. The last few months have seen the 19 members of the euro zone battle with the strictures and rules of a currency union that was flawed from its very inception.

The creditor-debtor dynamic that has underpinned the euro since the onset of the financial crisis when richer countries had to bail out their weaker members in order to keep the euro afloat has proven to be severely destructive to European solidarity.

The democratic contradictions of the entire EU project have also been exposed by the Greek crisis. The question of how to balance the competing democratic rights of each member state with the collective federalism needed to make the EU work has been highlighted by the Greek crisis.

This became especially clear with the Greek referendum – as many member-states rightly argued, there are 19 different democracies in the euro area, not one, and member-states have every right to ask if they should commit further billions to Greece.

Since its establishment the European Union has worked through consensus and compromise, as member-states have gradually worked towards common positions on policy, making concessions along the way.

With the Greek crisis, this system of compromise and collectivism has broken down. Worryingly, the “agreement” announced on Monday morning, is really only the beginning of a process – several hurdles must be overcome this week before negotiations can begin on a third bailout.

The past few months have been detrimental for the image of the European Union, as the bewildering system of eurogroups, summits and backroom negotiations have been laid bare for the world to see.

Most worryingly, the Greek crisis is likely to solidify support for a British exit from the European Union. The last few months have given EU critics plenty of fodder – interestingly, the coverage of the Greek crisis in Britain, both from right and left, has taken the side of Syriza, strongly criticising the European Union . This portrayal of the EU is likely to linger in the memory of British voters in the lead-up to their own referendum.

The other fall -out of the Greek crisis will be its implications for left-wing parties. The election of Syriza and its links with other radical left parties in countries such as Spain and Ireland, raised the prospect of a real international movement of the working class, as envisaged by Marx more than 150 years ago.

But the confused and chaotic policies of Syriza has struck a blow at left-wing movements, with Sinn Fein and other left-wing politicians in Ireland now struggling to defend their links with Syriza.

Nonetheless, despite Syriza’s failures in the short-term, the outcome of the chaotic handling of the Greek crisis is likely to push voters across Europe further towards the political fringes, both of left and right. In the long run, anti-Europeanism is likely to be the only winner of the Greek crisis.