FRANCE 24's Europe team brings you a new series of Europe Now programmes, focusing on "levelling up" – efforts aimed at making life more equal across Europe's many and diverse regions. We examine both national efforts to level up, and the role that EU funding plays in those attempts. EU structural and cohesion funds have become even more important in the light of the war in Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis, which threatens to increase unequal living standards around Europe.

For this first programme, we travel to Greece, a country still struggling with the legacy of the 2010 debt crisis and years of austerity measures. In this second part of the show, we take a broader view of the role of EU structural and cohesion funds in Greece's fragile economic recovery with Niovi Ringou, head of the EU Representation in Athens; with Yannis Tsakiris, Deputy Minister for Development and Investments; and with Giorgios Katrougalos, MP for the opposition Syriza party and a former Greek foreign minister.

Our reporter Luke Brown visits coastal communities in Greece to see how EU funds boost the "blue economy", and Sophie Samaille explains why claims that EU cohesion funds failed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic are fake news.

Show presented by Armen Georgian, produced by Johan Bodin, filmed on location by Johan Bodin and Stéphane Bodenne, with Luke Brown.

>> Watch part one of the show

^{_{Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the DG Regional and Urban Policy. Neither the European Union nor the DG Regional and Urban Policy can be held responsible for them.}}