Greece: pro-European rhetoric vs statistical information

In 1981 Greece joined the EEC (European Economic Community), on May 27th an event was organized to "celebrate" the 40th anniversary. Among the speakers there was also Charles Michel , the president of the European council, who came out with these delusional statements:

Since you, Greece, formally joined our common Europe, which had always been yours, you have known the best years in your history.

They have permanently put you on the path to peace and prosperity. #Greece #Athens # 40ΕλλαδαΕΕ @PresidencyGR @kmitsotakis pic.twitter.com/bEXCFaQXrh

– Charles Michel (@eucopresident) May 27, 2021

Since you, Greece, formally joined our common Europe, which had always been yours, you have known the best years in your history. They have permanently put you on the path to peace and prosperity.

According to Michel, Greece since it became a member of Europe would have known the best years of its history , and would have been put on the permanent path of peace and prosperity. So let's see this "miracle".

REAL GDP TWENTY YEARS BACK

Let's start with the gross domestic product : in 2019 it was 23.5% lower in real terms than in 2007, while last year with the covid crisis the gap rose to 29.8%.

In 2020, the Greek GDP contracted by -8.2% against -10.1% in 2011, the year in which Mario Monti boasted on TV “ the biggest success of the euro “. Now do you understand why in 2012 Paolo Barnard defined Monti as a " liar and criminal "?

In fact, the great success of the euro consists in having the economy at pre-euro levels , this even before the coronavirus, with a real GDP lower than the 2001 values, also in per capita terms (graph below).

RECORD UNEMPLOYMENT

How can we forget the monstrous unemployment that has plagued Greece in the past decade, with the peak reached in 2013 (27.5%) and which has never been reabsorbed to this day (16.3% in 2020). This whole disaster is unprecedented, not even remotely comparable.

THE CUT OF REAL WAGES

Those who did not lose their jobs, however, suffered a sharp reduction in real wages , which from 2013 to date have stood at the levels of 1995-96. In 2020, the wages of Greek workers were down by -27.4% compared to the historical high of 2009 and by -16% compared to 2001.

PEAK INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION

Finally, industrial production , which in 2020 was traveling at the levels of 1980, when even Greece did not even have the “club leuropa” card. But you can live on tourism alone, right?

Joking aside, the data show (and there would be many others) how Greece suffered the damage of a war in peacetime, with all due respect to the rhetoric of Michel and various euro-addicts.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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The article Greece: pro-European rhetoric vs statistical information comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/grecia-retorica-europeista-vs-informazione-statistica/ on Fri, 04 Jun 2021 14:53:54 +0000.