athens crisis
TRANSCRIPT
Daily MirrorTUESDAY 08.5.20126
DM1ST
EUROPE IN CRISIS
Starving, sick children.. menscavenging in bins for food .. thousands living on the streets.. and this is GREECE
redundant in the past two years. Some 68,000 Greek firms closed in 2010 and another 53,000 – out of a total of 300,000 – are considered close to bankruptcy.
George says: “I don’t think there will be any buyers. We’re left with this ship and no one has the money to pay for it to be finished. I only have 10 men left but I will probably have to get rid of some of them too or go under myself.”
The municipal soup kitchen in central Athens provides the most alarming indication of Greece’s dramatic slide. In
cans for sustenance.” The tree where Dimitris stood has now become a national memorial to shattered dreams.
QUEUES stretch outside the bank as elderly residents cash pension cheques that
have been cut back by a third from £350 a month to £220.
Shipyard owner George Frantzis has been left high and dry too. He is burdened with a luxury mega-yacht ordered by a now bankrupt Greek millionaire.
Fitted with a helipad, it would have been sailed round the Aegean and used for glitzy parties. Now, however, the yacht hull is slowly corroding.
Lack of trade has forced dad-of-four George, 53, to make 80 of his 90 workers
month-old baby Donna for donated nappies and milk.
She tells me: “I’ve a friend in Germany who says he’ll find me work there. That’s my only hope.”
Down the road from the clinic is a grey-haired man dressed smartly as though heading out for a round of golf, sifting through a rubbish bin. He takes his time moving between council dump-sters overflowing with waste.
This is the fate pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas was so desperate to avoid when he shot himself in Athens’ main Syntagma Square last month.
Before taking his life opposite the Greek parliament, the 77-year-old pensioner wrote: “I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage
I’d get nothing if I didn’t come here.” Greece’s financial crisis has resulted in a drop in its health spending by 36% last year. Half the country’s prescribed medicines are in short supply.
Brandishing an overdue electricity bill of 1,500 euros as proof of her desperation, Panayota Mostropavlou says: “How am I supposed to pay this?
“We are six months in arrears in our rent, my husband and I. I expect we will be evicted soon.
“We will be out on the streets. We have no insurance, no social security, no health coverage and no jobs. To be in this mess is so humiliating and I completely blame the politicians for letting the situation get out of hand.”
Kostas Komas, 35, arrives with wife Anastasia, 40, and their squealing two-
TOM PARRY IN ATHENS
BORN into a nation brought to its knees by crushing debt, 21-month-old toddler Nicoletta Kanisou knows
nothing but hardship.She is gaunt and stares vacantly into
space – classic symptoms of malnutrition more common in Africa than Europe.
Here at a charity clinic in Athens, the plight of those hit hardest by Greece’s financial collapse is shown by the queue for food handouts and free medicine.
In this shabby suburb where unem-ployment runs at 60%, people need a helping hand just to get by.
Benefits, pensions and pay have been stripped to the bone and taxes have been hiked under drastic austerity measures imposed by eurozone finance leaders.
The human cost of a £366billion national debt and two bailout packages worth a combined £184billion is etched across troubled faces.
Ahead of this weekend’s election, socialist party leader Evangelos Venizelos said it was either this or mass poverty.
Yet the hordes in this makeshift back street clinic in Perema are already poor. It’s hard to imagine such a Third World scene in London or Manchester.
But speak to anyone on the breadline in Athens and they can’t believe it’s happened to them either.
A decade ago, after joining the euro, they enjoyed an economic boom.
Now they are angry, voting against the main political parties and potentially triggering a ripple of protest that will spread to Europe’s at-risk economies such as Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Britain too would be dragged further into recession if Greece defaults on its loans and a new government refuses to bow to budget rules imposed by the European Central Bank.
Today Greece is in its fifth consecutive year of recession, its economy shrunk by 6.9% last year and over a third of its people are officially at risk of poverty.
Paediatrician Anna Malilli, 56, who is checking Nicoletta for tell-tale blotches that indicate poor diet, used to volunteer in famine-hit Tanzania and the Congo. Last year she was asked by charity Doc-tors of the World to work in Athens.
Anna says: “In the last year things have got very bad, worse than I could ever have imagined. Children like Nicoletta are from families with no health insur-ance who cannot go to hospital. They would have to pay. We have had many Greek children in here with tuberculosis. These are diseases we thought had van-ished in Europe. I am very shocked by what I am seeing in my own country.”
FORMER builder Dimitris Kambouris, 54, has been unemployed for two years and
looks edgy as he queues for handouts and food.
He cannot claim social security benefits, saying: “I am here for medicine, for my wife and I, and for some food as well. We are in abso-lute despair. I have thought about suicide several times because I can’t see a way out. We don’t want to be beggars. We want to work.”
A door opens and a woman holds out food boxes stamped with the Doctors of the World logo, something I last saw at a refugee camp on the Somalian border.
Proud fathers who hate being dependent on aid collect the parcels and rush out with their heads bowed.
Styliani Koulouka, 59, clutches a bag of donated clothing for her grandchil-dren. “Neither me nor my husband have worked in four years,” she cries angrily.
“None of my children have got a job. The situation is so bad that one of my sons goes around with a trolley looking for scrap metal, anything he can sell to get a tiny bit of money.
“I’m here today to get some medication for my osteoporosis and back problems.
Daily MirrorTUESDAY 08.5.2012 7
DM1ST
FINANCIAL MELTDOWN
heading off to find a spot to sleep. Armed police are present throughout the city in case of violent clashes, but they ignore a heroin addict slumped in a doorway with a syringe in his hand.
Charities in Athens have also seen a 25% surge in homelessness. Giorgos Apostolopoulos, head of the main shelter, says: “We are very close to becoming a
full-blown humanitarian crisis.”It explains the backlash against the two
main parties who have dominated Athens politics since the 70s.
Even the far-right Golden Dawn Party has seen a surge in popularity. It opposes austerity measures and is prepared for Greece to default on its debt repayments.
For many voters leaving the euro and returning to the instability of the drachma is a chance worth taking.
But for little Nicoletta, whatever happens after these elections will not help for at least a decade to come.
this city, one in 11 people regularly use them. Those in public sector jobs take home 30% less than before the crisis, but the price of groceries keeps rising.
This means the average disposable income is 50% less than five years ago. The Orthodox Church recently revealed it was feeding 250,000 people a day.
At this soup kitchen, people get a bowl of rice and spinach, a pear and bottle of water – for many the only meal of the day. Most people devour their food before
EURO WAR
We’re very close to having
a full-blown humanitarian
crisisHOMELESS SHELTER
GAUNT n Nicoletta is checked out by doctor Anna Malilli at a free walk-in centre in Athens
HOPELESS J Drug addict with needle
SAD J Man looks for scraps in bins
president will now give Alexis Tsipras, the head of the Radical Left Coalition party, the chance to form a government. Mr Tsipras will have three days to seek a coalition and is vehemently anti-austerity. No agreement could force new elections and the country could leave the single currency.
The chaos in Greece and change of French president sparked huge move-ment on the foreign markets.
The Athens stock market plunged 6.6% while Paris also slumped, before recovering later in the day.
The euro fell against the pound and dollar as investors dumped the risky currency.
Interest on Mediterranean countries’ debt jumped with Greek 10-year loans reaching 23% – compared to the 1.56% Germany pays.
The head of the International Mone-tary Fund last night weighed into Europe’s austerity debate – urging governments to slow down budget cutbacks to avoid further damaging their economies.
Christine Lagarde said: “Some coun-tries under severe market pressure have no choice but to move faster.
“On the whole, however, adjustment should be gradual and steady.”
Her remarks will be leapt upon by Labour leader Ed Miliband as proof that David Cameron is pushing cuts too far and too fast.
new President said: “The British have been particularly shy about the issues of financial regulation, and attentive only to the interests of the City. I will meet David Cameron soon.”
Mrs Merkel hinted that the austerity programme was “not up for grabs”.
The remarks will infuriate voters in Greece who rejected austerity in elec-tions over the weekend.
But Antonis Samaras, the leader of the Greek conservative party that gained the most votes in parliamentary elections, yesterday admitted his efforts to form a coalition government with other parties had failed. The country’s
Angela Merkel and wants to boost government spending as a means of solving the euro crisis.
In this, Hollande has numerous allies in Greece where elections saw a huge vote against the bailout package. It suggested growing support for Hollande’s pledge to rip up the current EU treaty.
“Austerity can no longer be the only option,” he has said.
worrying reasons for the UK to fear Hollande’s radical policies.
He has severely criticised the austerity programme of David Cameron and German Chancellor
‘Brits should fear his policies’A SHARP fall in financial markets worldwide was a natural reaction to the election of France’s first Socialist president in 17 years.
Not only has Francois Hollande styled himself an “enemy of the rich” but he effectively wants to tax the wealthy out of his country by introducing a top rate of 75%.
Britain’s stock market was closed for the Bank Holiday but there are
Pictures: NORTH DOWNS PICTURE AGENCY
BY TOM McTAGUE POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
PANIC spread across Europe yesterday as Greece moved closer to abandoning the euro while the new French President hit out at Germany AND Britain.
Markets plunged amid chaotic attempts in Athens to form a govern-ment capable of pushing through swingeing cuts ordered by Germany.
David Cameron will today add to the sense of alarm – warning the continent is on the brink of meltdown. He is set to say: “The eurozone remains in extreme trouble and is in recession.”
The remarks come after France’s new Socialist leader Francois Hollande launched an attack on the UK after being elected in Sunday’s poll.
Mr Hollande – who Mr Cameron snubbed during the election campaign while backing his rival Nicolas Sarkozy to win – said Britain did not care about the eurozone and only wanted to protect big-money City financiers.
He signalled that he would push for a financial transaction tax on banks based in London.
He also demanded German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel re-open the EU “fiscal pact” which forces European governments to cut their spending. The
French president attacks leadersMarkets in turmoil over Greece
ANALYSISNABILA RAMDANIFrench political commentator
RADICAL J President Francois Hollande