Once upon a time there was Magna Graecia, the cradle of culture, democracy and science. In the third millennium, the Hellenic country lives more and more on the rubble of that glorious and distant past, gripped by a crisis that mortifies workers, makes young people flee and, in many cases, even leads people to take their own lives.
For Greece, the time of the violent riots that in recent months have set fire to the social life of the country, now leaving room for resignation, seems to be over. Last November the government fell, replaced, somewhat in Monti-style, by a technical executive led by Lucas Papademos, former deputy director of the ECB. Authoritative and reliable figure, as well as the aforementioned Italian colleague, but he can't do miracles either. So much so that the premier himself declared a few weeks ago: "If we don't convince the Troika inspectors to give us aid, it will be default by March".
Here they are, the famous inspectors. Landed yesterday in Athens to put further pressure on a nation already on its last legs. The Papademos recipe is clear: reduce labor costs and lower the minimum wage threshold, as suggested in December by the IMF in exchange for aid.
The salaries of civil servants have already been reduced, now the private sector is in the crosshairs. Since 2000, wage costs for Greek companies have grown by 35%, well over 19% of the eurozone average and almost ten times that of thrifty and shrewd Germany (4%). Fat cows badly managed, and which now will necessarily have to undergo a strict and immediate diet: wage cuts, or, as preferred by the unions, rather a reduction in taxes paid by the employer. In any case, as in the public sector, the abolition of 13th and 14th is on the way. The project is: pay less and make work more flexible, thus avoiding all the suppression of jobs they have led unemployment to reach 2011% in September 19, four points higher than the previous year.
But young people don't believe in it – the youth unemployment is in fact over 30% – and prefer to flee abroad. Official statistics do not show this phenomenon (according to OECD data, emigration has not increased), but there are many indications. Over the past year, the Goethe Institute in Athens has seen a 70% increase in enrollment, while the Athens News in October reported that a Northern Irish employment agency has even offered Greek boys "professions" such as mushroom picking. Or again, the number of CVs sent from Greece to Eures, the European job portal, doubled in 2011 compared to 1993, exceeding 15.
Youth flight also means brain drain: already in 2007, at the dawn of the crisis, 12,2% of Greek graduates lived and worked abroad, i.e. almost one million people. To make a comparison, the figure is double that of Spanish graduates (another country with very high youth unemployment), while the French who emigrate abroad in search of a job are only 1,3%.
This data, as well as sad, could also prove particularly harmful for the country's future strategies: the elite of skilled young people are in fact the future upper class, i.e. those who by accessing a high salary will pay (or would have paid) the most substantial taxes, thus contributing significantly to the coffers of Athens. But that's not all: also to growth, research and innovation, without which the future of a country cannot be exactly rosy.
And maybe it ends up that someone, out of desperation, loses their life. The data, also taken from the Wall Street Journal, is terrifying: since 2009, suicides have doubled in Greece, in a country historically reluctant to such solutions (we are not in Japan) and which from 1990 to 2009 was the one with the lowest rate of self-harm in Europe.
Klimaka, a charitable association, has even set up an emergency telephone number to prevent suicides: again according to the WSJ, calls have increased tenfold since the beginning of the crisis (100 per day against 10). The most affected age group? Men between 35 and 60 years old.
Greece is not a country for young people, nor for those who are no longer young.
Read also Le Figaro
