NOTHING could better illustrate the straitjacket that  EU membership imposes on European countries than the escalating row between Greece’s new government and Germany.

Syriza was elected on pledges to write off much of Greece’s national debt and put an end to an austerity package which has seen wages and pensions collapse, unemployment soar and public assets sold off.

The Morning Star warned that the party’s parallel insistence on remaining in the European Union, the single currency and Nato would undermine these commitments — and so it is proving.

“Elections change nothing,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says bluntly. “There are rules.”

Ever since the bankers’ crisis hit the continent in 2008 the anti-democratic free market fundamentalism of the EU project has been on public display.

The contempt Mr Schaeuble expresses for a people’s democratic right to choose their countries’ economic direction is nothing new for an alliance which was quite happy to impose unelected “technocrat” governments on Italy and Greece to push through drastic spending cuts their own politicians could not sell to their electorates.

We saw it even before the crisis. When the French rejected a European constitution that would entrench permanent privatisation and rejection of public ownership in law, the EU simply renamed the constitution “the Lisbon Treaty” and forced it through anyway — this time with the precaution that the French were not offered a referendum.

The Irish then rejected the treaty as well, and were simply told to vote again until they got what Brussels had determined was the “right” answer.

The left should thank Mr Schaeuble for his honesty. Where the EU is concerned, elections change nothing — there are rules.

These rules place draconian restrictions on public borrowing — preventing investment for growth — dictate “competition” in services which makes it all but impossible for governments to carry out progressive nationalisation programmes and allow unelected bureaucrats to negotiate secretive deregulation deals such as TTIP behind the public’s back.

All this puts Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in a bind. Hence the contradictory statements he has been forced to make over the weekend.

First he vowed angrily that he will “not co-operate” with the “troika” — the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank alliance which has inflicted such misery on Greece.

Then he assured the EU that he “never intended to act unilaterally” and promised that Greece will indeed pay off its debts and honour privatisation deals signed with contractors.

One message is for his people, the other for corporate Europe. But he will soon discover that he cannot serve both masters.

His finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is doing his best to increase Greece’s wriggle-room by visiting counterparts in Paris and Rome, governments that are also struggling with Berlin’s aggressive austerity timetable and may be sympathetic to slowing the pace.

Whether they will help him is unclear — European ruling classes are worried that any sign of weakness will encourage anti-Establishment parties in their own countries.

But even if they do, this will not mean a serious change in direction. Writing off some debt, paying it off more slowly and limiting the immediate effect of cuts on public services is not an “anti-austerity” stance. It is Ed Balls’s “too far, too fast” — austerity-lite.

Since the 1970s working classes across Europe havebeen under attack. Rights won by decades of workers’ struggle have been swept away by the neoliberal tide.

We need a decisive break with neoliberalism and an ambitious programme to advance workers’ rights and give us democratic control of our economy.

The structures of the EU make that impossible. Until that is realised — in Britain as much as in Greece — our class is fighting with its hands tied behind its back.