Eleni Papadimitriou has a powerful FSB piece on the unresolved debacle that is Greek membership of the EU and the eurozone.
The Ugly Truth About Greece — By A Greek
Betrayed by Europe: How the EU and Germany Reduced Greece to a Colony — and Left Us to Rot
Once, I believed in the European dream. I was proud when Greece joined the European Union. I believed the EU was about solidarity, shared prosperity, and mutual respect. I believed we were equals in a family of nations.
But after everything we've endured these past 17 years, the lies, the humiliation, the exploitation, I can no longer cling to those illusions. The European dream? For Greeks, it has become a living nightmare.
The whole piece is well worth reading as an example of EU failure to live up to its own inclusive rhetoric.
Last month, I listened carefully to an economic presentation by Dr. Kosmas Marinakis and Achilleas Mantes. I wasn't surprised by what they said. Every average Greek citizen already feels it in their bones, but hearing the hard, cold numbers only confirmed what we all know: Greece is a country in decline, gutted by so-called "European solidarity" and stripped bare by the ruthless economic machine led by Germany.
Marinakis and Mantes laid it out with brutal honesty: while even the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, are catching up to European standards, Greece is drifting further away. Our debt remains monstrous. Our so-called "economic growth" is nothing but inflated numbers, driven by rising prices, not real progress.
I don't need economists to tell me that. I see it every time I go to the supermarket. I feel it when I fill my car with fuel. My neighbours know it when they open their electricity bills or try to pay rent. Our wages are frozen in time, but the cost of living is exploding.
We were promised prosperity under the euro. Instead, we got poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. And the young? They flee. There are no real jobs here. Engineers serve coffee. Architects drive taxis. Graduates emigrate. The "lost generation" isn't a phrase from a research paper, it's our reality.
Once, I believed in the European dream. I was proud when Greece joined the European Union. I believed the EU was about solidarity, shared prosperity, and mutual respect. I believed we were equals in a family of nations.
But after everything we've endured these past 17 years, the lies, the humiliation, the exploitation, I can no longer cling to those illusions. The European dream? For Greeks, it has become a living nightmare.
The whole piece is well worth reading as an example of EU failure to live up to its own inclusive rhetoric.
Last month, I listened carefully to an economic presentation by Dr. Kosmas Marinakis and Achilleas Mantes. I wasn't surprised by what they said. Every average Greek citizen already feels it in their bones, but hearing the hard, cold numbers only confirmed what we all know: Greece is a country in decline, gutted by so-called "European solidarity" and stripped bare by the ruthless economic machine led by Germany.
Marinakis and Mantes laid it out with brutal honesty: while even the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, are catching up to European standards, Greece is drifting further away. Our debt remains monstrous. Our so-called "economic growth" is nothing but inflated numbers, driven by rising prices, not real progress.
I don't need economists to tell me that. I see it every time I go to the supermarket. I feel it when I fill my car with fuel. My neighbours know it when they open their electricity bills or try to pay rent. Our wages are frozen in time, but the cost of living is exploding.
We were promised prosperity under the euro. Instead, we got poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. And the young? They flee. There are no real jobs here. Engineers serve coffee. Architects drive taxis. Graduates emigrate. The "lost generation" isn't a phrase from a research paper, it's our reality.
3 comments:
The EU may be malignant, but the Greeks have only themselves to blame. They didn't have to have all those German capital infrastructure goodies, whilst the population tax dodged on a massive scale. They made a bargain with the Devil, instead of using all those trained, educated Greeks to build something
less grand but more sustainable. And now they're wailing about the results, whilst suffering from the Western disease of
being dismayed that other peoples don't have our well being at heart, EU or no EU.
No wonder there are so many lovely Greek in Melbourne (Australia).
As in this country, those who dodge tax payments are not those with no / very little spare cash. Which will be the majority. But they are left to carry the can when the shysters cash out and move on.
Tammly - they made a bargain with the Devil, but this one spends enormous amounts on propaganda. The Greek population was sold an impossible future and is now paying for it.
Doonhamer - and here in the UK we have some very strong hints as to who pays for the mess left by loons and shysters while they just move on to other opportunities.
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