Illustration by Manos Symeonakis
There isn’t much to laugh about in Greece at the moment. So, it was with great pleasure that I read an e-mail last week from one of our readers in the USA in which he suggested how Greece could overcome its economic problems. One of his ideas was that Greeks should stop taking lunchtime siestas because they lose valuable working time. It was the first time I laughed out loud for weeks. I don’t know any Greeks under the age of 65 that take a nap at lunchtime, apart perhaps from my son. But he’s only 20 months old, so perhaps he can be forgiven for not using these hours to contribute to the country’s gross domestic product.
Although the e-mail from America provided a moment of light relief, it left a bittersweet taste because it also underlined how the crisis has created a negative stereotype of Greeks. It is patently obvious that many Europeans, especially Germans, are convinced Greece is full of freeloading slackers. The reality, though, is different. For instance, Eurostat’s figures for the average working hours in Europe for 2009 indicate that Greeks work an average of 42 hours a week. The EU average was 40.3 hours and in Germany it was 40.8. In fact, the Greek figure is the highest in all of the 27 EU countries.
So, if the Greeks work so hard why is their country in such a mess? Well, one answer is that working long hours does not necessarily mean you are productive. In fact, in Greece you often end up working longer because of the inefficiencies of the system. The time you could be using productively may be spent queuing at a public service to get paperwork stamped or writing out invoices by hand because there is no computerized accounting system.
Of course, there are very clear economic and financial reasons for Greece’s collapse but the causes of the illness go much deeper. One of the most serious underlying problems is a bloated and decaying public sector which neglects to punish inefficiency and indifference. Until 2007, according to World Bank data, it took 38 days to set up a business in Greece. In Djibouti it was 37 days. Of course, what statistics cannot measure is the frustration that causes so many people to lose the will to fight the system and eventually play by its warped rules, even if this involves corrupt practices. And what sustains this vicious circle? Political expediency. Governments created this monster and were afraid to tackle it because their support base, and therefore their destinies, were tied not just to the public sector but to the array of professions that are interlinked with it, such as doctors, civil engineers, lawyers, notaries and farmers.
Whatever you do in Greece, you cannot avoid dealing with the state and coming up against its inertia. According to Eurostat, roughly one in 10 Greek adults is a civil servant, which is the highest proportion anywhere in the EU. This is a legacy of the 1980s, when the governments of Andreas Papandreou’s socialist PASOK sought to balance years of right-wing rule and dictatorship by finding jobs for the party faithful. Since then, each government has treated the civil service as just another party apparatus, hiring more people even when the country couldn’t afford it.
But, again, the story of the Greek public sector is a symptom of the problem rather than the root cause, which lies in the country’s political system. Since the 1970s, Greece has been ruled by two parties that helped themselves rather than the country. They awarded their friends jobs or state contracts and as soon as any social group or sections of the media resisted an attempt to change the status quo, they would cave in and abandon the offending policy. So, it’s no surprise that an opinion poll by GPO for Mega TV this week indicated that 54.3 percent of Greeks believe all the recent governments, rather than a specific one, are responsible for the current crisis.
The previous New Democracy government of Costas Karamanlis is blamed by 20 percent of those questioned. Karamanlis and his ministers have a lot to answer for. At a crucial time for the global economy and despite having a comfortable majority in his first term, Karamanlis dodged any attempt at structural reform. Instead, he handed over questionable statistics, a spiraling deficit and no new ideas.
But the current PASOK government is not without blame. As assured as Prime Minister George Papandreou may look on the international stage now, he had no idea how to be a constructive opposition leader for the previous five years. In fact, the period from 2004 to 2009 will go down as a barren time in Greek politics, when no party could come up with a vision for Greece. The leftist parties — the Communists (KKE) and the SYRIZA coalition — were content to simply battle for control of the unions. This fight is continuing and, as the crisis puts the unions in the spotlight, it is clear they have failed to overcome their esoteric attitude. Even now, they have not been able to refine their tactics beyond that of blackmail — if the government does something they don’t like, they block ministry entrances or central Athens.
So, when people ask “Why did Greece end up in this mess?” perhaps the best answer is that it would have been a miracle if it hadn’t done so. It’s only now that Greeks are beginning to realize the damage that has been done to the country over the last decades and that, as voters, they actively encouraged it. They were happy to turn a blind eye as PASOK exploited the public sector in the 1980s; they were equally oblivious to the failures of socialist and conservative governments in the 1990s, when money from the EU began to flow into Greece; and during the last decade, when entry into the euro secured cheap loans and a comfortable way of life, nobody wanted to ask any difficult questions.
The realization is a painful one for Greeks — it’s like thinking you have entertained a friend by taking him out for a few drinks only to find out that you actually fed his alcoholism.
The recovery from this crisis will not just depend on the emergency loans from the IMF, Germany and the other eurozone countries. It will not depend just on growth rates and bond spreads. It will, to a great extent, depend on whether Greeks are now prepared to take the extra step to demand better of their public sector, push for the private sector to be allowed to flourish and, above all, be ruthless with incompetent and cowardly politicians. To do all this when your salary is shrinking, your taxes are increasing and your livelihood is at risk is not an easy task. For all these reasons, Americans, Germans and everybody else should know that Greeks will not be sleeping well at night for many years to come, let alone taking lunchtime siestas.
This commentary was written by Nick Malkoutzis and appeared in Athens Plus on May 7.
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