INTERVIEW- Le premier ministre grec paraît en mauvaise position en vue des élections législatives du 7 juillet, tandis que Nouvelle Démocratie, menée par Kyriakos Mitsotakis, fait la course en tête des sondages. En cause, notamment, quatre années difficiles au pouvoir et des engagements non-tenus. Propos recueillis à Athènes,Georges Pagoulatos est professeur de politique européenne et d’économie à l’Université d’Athènes. La…
“Greece was the first country that experienced the peak of populism. And then it was deflated,” said George Pagoulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business. The result is an unusual reversion to a center-right party that doesn’t plan to throw any bombs. Leaders say they want to slash taxes and make their country of 11 million…
“The important thing is for productivity to rise so that wages can increase,” Pagoulatos says. “During most of the crisis period, many of the gains in competitiveness from wage compression were canceled by other factors, such as the higher tax burden and social security costs, energy costs and cost of credit.” This caused thousands of companies to either close up…
Greece brain drain hampers recovery from economic crisis Angeliki Tziaka moved to the UK soon after the Greek government began cutting pensions and public sector wages in the first bailout programme agreed with international creditors in 2010. She felt the choice was clear: work abroad or risk a long spell of unemployment at home. “I’d recently graduated in medicine and…
George Pagoulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, says that in the end the country’s creditors may have to lower their expectations for how much Greece can save. He thinks lower surpluses plus better economic growth from the pro-business reforms could be the key to make debt sustainable. “It doesn’t mean that tax evasion has been…