Greece has been for many years now experiencing a severe debt crisis. Is it fair to blame it solely on the euro? Do the Greek inhabitants prefer to go back to the dragma currency? All these questions will be answered in this article linked to the BBC documentar
y ‘’The Great Euro Crisis” wherein the British presenter Michael Portillo portrays Greece’s current problems as a cause of joining the Euro.
The Maastricht Treaty was the beginning of a successful or valuable economic prospect especially for Greece. Twelve countries, including Greece, signed this treaty which led to the creation of the single European currency. Unfortunately, it took only 10 years after joining the Euro that Greece is faced with bankruptcy. There had to come an end to lending money at a low interest rate and spending money without limitations. Why did the European Union in the first place introduce the euro, single currency. Well, it was supposed to help weak economies like Greece in order to catch up with richer Eurozone partners. In the past when the dragma currency was still used Greece encountered dramatically high interest rates.
After joining the Euro, Greece became very wealthy it had a lot o
f money to spend but it was actually not owned by Greece so they had to pay it back over time. Greece became uncompetitive and could not live up to the European level of expectations, Germany as an economic wealthy and stable country is too dominant present. In the first few years people’s living standards increased enormously and they started to import luxury goods excessively like expensive cars, yachts, villas etc. However, not only the citizens of Greece increased their spending behaviour but also the government of Greece did. Whole Greece was impressed by the availability of cheap credit. The government purchased and build new tramlines, railways and trains. Many of the expended infrastructure materials had to be imported so Greece needed to borrow even more money to pay of course the German companies. The 2004, Olympic games construction was the biggest expenditure, 12 billion euros. Greece has weak institutions and a corrupt political system. It is hard for them to have a good working tax collecting system which means that it was possible for citizens to avoid paying taxes. Severe austerity measures are currently implied on Greece.
All the persons interviewed in the documentary believe and are convinced that the Euro has done good things for their country highlighting the sudden wealth and prosperity, they even won’t go back to the Dragma (original currency of Greece). The Dragma is the past and the Euro is the future. Despite the convictions and expressions of the British presenter and Eurosceptic, citizens maintain their positive point of view towards the Euro. The people blame the corrupt government and the weak institutions. Citizens of Greece don’t feel that it is the fault of the Euro but instead that the government made the wrong decisions. Even though they now need to trade their expensive Porsche cayenne for a small smart Mercedes car, remarkably, they stay with the same imported country of Germany for their choice of vehicles.
The Greek inhabitants do feel now the consequences of severe austerity measures and they keep protesting and demonstrate against these inhumane government actions. ‘’The doctors of the world’’ is an organisation which is normally active in Africa and nowadays it is settled and started a small local hospital in Greece in order to provide medical aid to citizens who can’t afford the hospital bills anymore. We need to keep in mind the seriousness of this problem and the European Union together with all participating countries needs to search for a possible solution. However, the majority of Germans is against the idea of giving them financial support because they feel unfairness towards the equal level of hard working for your own money concept.
In my own opinion, I don’t think the European Union will come up fast with an effective solution. It is such a difficult problem that they will be oriented on the long-term.
The remaining question is when will this euro crisis finally be over?
Below you can find a graph about the comparison between Greece and Eurozone average level of debt.
Below it is also possible to watch the whole documentary:
-Maxime Helgers
economicpolicystudentscriticism 
It was interesting to read something about Greece again, because it hasn’t been on the news much lately. What is the status with the Greek debt as of now? Where do they stand with loaning and repaying money? On a different side note: in some sentences I miss punctuation. I had to reread some sentences because of the fact that a comma was missing or some sentences were differently formulated for example.
Quentin
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