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Europe now

Greece: Emerging from the legacy of the debt crisis (part 2)

Europe now

France Médias Monde

News & Politics

2.25 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm

0:02.0

.

0:03.0

I'm

0:04.0

.

0:05.0

. Welcome back to Europe now. I'm in Monasteraki Square, one of the most vibrant parts of central Athens.

0:39.3

People here are shopping, they're sipping their iced coffees, they're having a good time.

0:45.3

The Greek government says that the country has opened a new chapter

0:49.3

after Greece exited an enhanced EU surveillance mechanism

0:53.3

which had been in place for 12 years following the debt crisis.

0:57.0

But of course, there are still big economic challenges ahead,

1:00.0

and we're going to delve into some of those in this part of the show,

1:04.0

looking, of course, also at how the EU and its funding can make a difference.

1:15.6

I'm Nio Viringo.

1:16.6

I'm the head of the representation of the European Commission in Greece.

1:24.6

I think we have a very important role to make people understand what are the benefits of this fund and the benefits to their everyday life.

1:38.3

So there our role is very important to communicate the right messages to our compatriot, to understand that a lot of

1:46.7

things that they think that they have been made by like magic, for instance, it is because

1:55.4

they were the solidarity of the European Union through the funding, and we see it also with the Recovery and Resilience Fund,

2:03.6

which will inject 32 billion euros the years to come.

2:13.6

Do you think there's much awareness among Greeks that there have been these benefits,

2:18.3

or do they think that actually this is somehow not involving the European Union, that it's

2:23.3

other money or just Greek government funding? There we have a very challenging, we have a challenge

...

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