#macropolis

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Podcast - The Greek economy: A macro view

The Greek economy is back in focus on this episode of The Agora as we take a peak at the 2022 budget and a closer look at broader trends and challenges.

MacroPolis co-founder Yiannis Mouzakis provides a whistlestop tour of the budget, explaining its key elements and what obstacles the Greek government's economic plan could encounter next year.

Two men with extensive knowledge of the Greek economy, Bob Traa and Jens Bastian, join us for a broad discussion about causes for optimism, but also reasons to be cautious as 2022 beckons, including low productivity, high unemployment and limited prospects at home for young Greeks.

Bob was the IMF’s senior representative in Greece at the outset of the economic crisis, between 2010 and 2013. He has also written a book about the country's economic challenges (more below).

Jens is a senior policy adviser at the ELIAMEP think-tank in Athens. He also works an independent economic analyst.

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Anger over wildfires grows as PM prepares lines of defence

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his government are coming under greater pressure by the day as the authorities struggle to contain and extinguish wildfires in Greece, particularly on the island of Evia, where more than 45,000 hectares of land has been burnt since the blaze began there last week.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his government are coming under greater pressure by the day as the authorities struggle to contain and extinguish wildfires in Greece, particularly on the island of Evia, where more than 45,000 hectares of land has been burnt since the blaze began there last week. New Democracy is facing criticism on multiple fronts. Apart from the opposition parties, which have raised questions about the operational response to the wildfires, social media has also been rife with attacks on the government, including the trending of the “Mitsotakis Fuck Off” hashtag on Twitter. Furthermore, in areas affected by the disasters, citizens and well as local officials – even some aligned to the ruling centre-right party - have increasingly being voicing to the Greek media their frustration with the apparent lack of support in limiting the spread of the fires. Also, some residents of fire-stricken areas have ignored evacuation notices to stay and protect their homes and livelihoods from the advancing blazes, with success in some cases. This has undermined to some extent the government’s main line of defence, which has pointed to the prompt evacuation messages sent by the 112 mechanism and the limited loss of life that this helped achieve (so far only one death, that of a volunteer firefighter, has been confirmed). The fact that some people have stayed to prevent the fires from reaching their homes has highlighted the shortcomings of the firefighting effort but also raised questions about the strategy of evacuating one community after another and, in the eyes of some residents, simply surrendering to the advancing fire. In his televised address last week, Mitsotakis argued that homes and businesses could be rebuilt, and that the priority must be safeguarding lives. At the time, critics suggested that this was an admission of failure and a defeatist approach but in the wake of the political damage the SYRIZA government suffered in 2018 as a result of the fire in Mati, New Democracy felt that keeping the number of deaths to a minimum had to be the number one goal. However, since Mitsotakis’s speech last Thursday, the extent of damage inflicted by the fire north of Athens to one of the few forested areas left around the city (including the former Royal Estate at Tatoi, as Kathimerini revealed) and the destruction still being wreaked by the massive fire in northern Evia has put a slightly different hue on things. The Evia blaze is now considered the largest ever single wildfire seen in Greece, leading to thousands of residents having to flee their villages and towns, some by ferries and other vessels. On top of this, it is estimated that the fire in Attica tore through 8,000 hectares of land, while more than 10,000 hectares burned in the Peloponnese over the last few days. ND criticised the previous government heavily when it was in opposition for the handling of much smaller fires, as well as the deadly Mati blaze. Mitsotakis made a point of promising both in the 2019 election campaign and since coming to power a much more competent approach to fire prevention and firefighting and the opposition is now using his own words against him. Another line of attack from SYRIZA and the other parties has been that since Thursday the government has been absent on the communications front, leaving Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Haradalis to hold two daily briefings regarding the state of the firefighting effort, where no questions from journalists are taken. Government spokeswoman Aristotelia Peloni was forced to deny on Sunday that she and other personnel are absent, but there was no indication of any regular briefings, with the media’s participation resuming this week. ND response Instead, the government is hoping to hit back with another televised address by PM Mitsotakis following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. There are also plans for the premier to hold a news conference later this week. ND’s aim will be to hit back at the accusations that the response from the fire service has been inadequate, including accusations that efforts were focussed on controlling the fire in Attica, a move that allowed the Evia blaze to grow and traverse most of the northern part of the island. The PM will also seek to heal the wounds by providing more detail on the compensation that the government will hand out to those affected by the fires, including farmers and producers in Evia and the Peloponnese. The details of the financial aid that will be on offer are not yet known but the Finance Ministry has been consulted regarding the fiscal space available. It is expected that the government will try to be as generous as possible in the hope of quelling some of the anger that seems to have built up over the past few days, threatening to completely overturn ND’s carefully constructed effort to present itself as a competent and efficient administration. (Article from macropolis.gr - register for access to more free articles)

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Politicians have commissioned, and largely ignored, multiple reports on wildfires

Analysis by Georgia Nakou in macropolis.gr

In February 2019, the then leader of the opposition Kyriakos Mitsotakis welcomed the publication of an expert committee report on the management of forest fires in Greece, calling its recommendations “a blueprint for the steps we will follow”. The so-called Goldammer report was commissioned in the aftermath of the deadly Mati wildfire of the previous summer, for which Mitsotakis laid the blame squarely on the incumbent SYRIZA government. Mitsotakis was elected Prime Minister a week before the first anniversary of Mati, in no small measure thanks to the public anger stemming from SYRIZA’s mismanagement of the fire, which resulted in the loss of over 100 lives. Two years later, his New Democracy government is faced with its own wildfire crisis. According to an early estimate, wildfires burning on several fronts in Greece’s central and southern regions have destroyed close to 65,000 hectares of forest, cultivated land and homes over the past week – three-and-a-half times the size of the burnt area recorded over the entire 2018 fire season. At 46,000 hectares, the wildfire still burning in north of the island of Evia is already the most destructive since national records began. ...The 2021 fires are clearly not Mati. Several large fronts burning concurrently in widely separated parts of the country, including the outskirts of Athens, pose a much bigger challenge operationally. The response so far, however, suggests that the authorities - and particularly the political leadership - have been preparing to fight the last war, rather than the next one. The experience of Mati – the evacuation alert system put in place subsequently, no doubt combined with the freshness of the memory in peoples’ minds - has so far saved many lives. However, that should not absolve those in charge of responsibility for the overall handling of events. No-one would describe the authorities’ response so far as a fire management success, nor have confidence in the current system - or those in charge of it - to deal with the increase in extreme events expected under even the most conservative climate change scenarios. 

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Podcast - The heavy arm of the law: Police brutality in Greece

The behaviour of the Greek police has come under scrutiny, again, following a number of incidents over which officers have been accused of using unnecessary and excessive force.

The behaviour of the Greek police has come under scrutiny, again, following a number of incidents over which officers have been accused of using unnecessary and excessive force.

In this episode, we take a look at why police tactics have triggered public protests, what ails the force and how it can be fixed.

MacroPolis features editor Georgia Nakou speaks to co-host Phoebe Fronista about recent events and what kind of political reactions they have stirred.

Photojournalists Louisa Gouliamaki and Nikos Palaiologos describe their experiences with the police at street level while covering demonstrations.

Finally, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, a professor of Public Law at Oxford University who has also dabbled in Greek politics, explains why he thinks the police's problems mirror those in other parts of the public administration and how some, but not others, are being addressed by the government.

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Agora Podcast - The rise and fall of Golden Dawn

On a sunny October morning this year, thousands of people crowded outside an Athens courthouse to hear the landmark verdict in the trial of NeoNazi Golden Dawn.

It brought the party's rapid rise during the Greek economic crisis to a halt but did not necessarily signal the end of the far-right's presence in Greece.

Now that some of the dust from the lengthy court proceedings has settled, The Agora co-host Phoebe Fronista speaks to Ioanna Meitani, part of the Golden Dawn Watch team that covered the trial from inside the courtroom, about the historic process.

Also, Nick Malkoutzis speaks to Professor Daphne Halikopoulou from the University of Reading, an expert in the far-right, looks at the bigger picture and explains how Golden Dawn gained such a following and what might happen now that the party is out of the picture.

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It's the hope that kills you

Yiannis Mouzakis in macropolis.gr goes into the figures and numbers in a thrilling analysis of how the Corona pandemic has evolved in Greece.

“All the factors that could work in Greece’s favour did, and the country seemed Covid-free. Greece took a massive gamble by throwing open its doors again, seeking maximum economic benefits.

Data from Bank of Greece show that up to August, 4.8 million tourists visited the country. Although the figure pales in comparison to the 21.8 million that had visited during the same period last year, it is close to 50 pct of the Greek population.

Arrivals from within the EU were 3.1 million and 1.7 million came from outside the EU. Although down by nearly 73 pct, more than 725,000 Germans still came to Greece, another 528,000 visitors came from the UK.

The signs of the risks involved in welcoming tourists started appearing in the tests carried out at the entry points, where the positivity rate in July averaged 4.15 pct. Although the method of averages does not capture the entire picture and testing methodology, on a like for like basis on positive rates, visitors were 10 more times likely to carry the virus.

The perfect viral storm started forming in Greece as the holiday season for Greeks also began. Locals left the cities for islands and coastal resorts where they would meet and mingle with travellers from abroad.

A good indication that Greece had the Covid-19 situation control before tourism began was the low daily number of untraced cases, i.e. those that could not be traced back to a specific positive case or were related to travelling.”

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Bound to lose

Analysis by Nick Malkoutzis in macropolis.gr on the occasion of the Golden Dawn verdict.

For an instant it was exhilarating. Some seven years after antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas and migrant worker Luqman Shahzad were murdered and numerous others attacked, the leadership and several members of Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn were convicted on October 7 of operating as a criminal organisation. As the news was relayed to the crowd of at least 20,000 people gathered outside the Athens court, a resounding cheer went up. It was a moment that will go down in Greek history and will be weaved into the country’s social fabric over the coming years.

But, it was the briefest of moments. A few seconds later, riot police were firing their water cannons and tear gas into the crowd. Some protestors complained that the police’s actions were unprovoked, officers argued that Molotov cocktails and other items were thrown by a small group in what was the largest crowd for a public rally in Athens for some time. Perhaps an investigation is needed to establish what led to this release of pent-up emotions being cut short. Hopefully, any probe will take less than the five interminable years needed to establish that Golden Dawn was a gaggle of criminals and racists.

...The rush by Greece’s political leaders to claim the fatherhood of the judicial victory over Golden Dawn demeans the occasion. It sucks the oxygen out of a moment that could have helped breath new life into Greece’s staid, selfish political scene. More importantly, it obscures the learnings we should draw from this hellish experience. In the attempt to paint the judge’s verdict as a victory for a specific political party, for Greek democracy as a whole or for the country’s institutions, we are missing the point. Greece’s political system did hold together, as did our liberal democracy and our institutions – just as they survived the gruelling test of the long economic crisis – but they did so in spite of themselves, of us and the constant attempt to undermine them by those claiming to be their representatives and defenders. We can take some comfort from the fact that there were politicians, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, activists, priests, journalists, victims and their relatives, such as the extraordinary Magda Fyssa, who had the courage to stand up to the Golden Dawn menace. But we cannot ignore that for each one of them, there were many more members of our political system, institutions, media, church and society that turned a blind eye or even molly coddled Neo-Nazis who made no secret of their intent to overthrow the system that provided these same people with protection and freedom, and to steamroller anybody who stood in their way.

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Video talk: How to make the most out of EU "Corona funds"

A video talk featuring Juan Pablo Riesgo, a partner of Ernst & Young and former Secretary of State for Employment in Spain, and Nick Malkoutzis, editor of MacroPolis, discussing how Spain and Greece should best use the Recovery Fund package proposed by the European Commission.

The discussion is hosted by Carlos Carnicero Urabayen the editor of the Future is Blue newsletter.

This is the latest episode of the video discussions organised by Agenda Public and MacroPolis.