How the world sees Greece
2013 Hermes Expo Hosted Panel On Greek Language & Culture Western Queens Gazette Important topics concerning the growth of Modern Greek language programs were debated at the Prometheus Greek Teachers Association and Federation of Hellenic-American Educators workshop on Saturday, April 13th, at the Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and ... |
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 News 10NBC | Police in Greece Make Arrests in Several Unrelated Burglaries Rochester YNN Police in Greece say they've arrested four men in connection with a string of unrelated burglaries. Police say they arrested Brandon Murray, 29, last week for two residential burglaries on Greenleaf Road. Police say he stole property from the home. Two Rochester man charged with burglaries in Greece, Parma, Irondequoit Several charged in Greece burglaries |
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Racism, Exploitation, Violence: The Reality of Migrants' Lives in Greece Huffington Post UK (blog) Greece: idyllic country of picturesque islands and sparkling seas that welcomes strangers, or land of serious human rights abuses and growing violence and xenophobia? While there is no doubt about the loveliness of Greece's landscapes, something brutal ... |
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 RT | Payback: Greek govt to launch legal battle for new WWII reparations from Germany RT A Greek Finance Ministry report leaked to local media earlier this month showed that Greece believes that Berlin owes it €162 billion – €108 billion for infrastructure damage during the occupation between 1941 and the end of the war, and €54 billion as ... Kerry Plans Visit To Athens Greece pursues WWII reparations from Germany Greece to pursue wartime damage claim from Germany to ease economic woes |
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Poll in European Union's six biggest countries finds Euroscepticism is soaring amid bailouts and spending cuts
Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union's worst ever crisis, new data shows.
After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations' bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders' efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project.
Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU's polling organisation, analysed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, show a vertiginous decline in trust in the EU in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy that are historically very pro-European.
The six countries surveyed – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Poland – are the EU's biggest, jointly making up more than two out of three EU citizens or around 350 million of the EU's 500 million population.
The findings, published exclusively in the Guardian in Britain and in collaboration with other leading newspapers in the other five countries, represent a nightmare for Europe's leaders, whether in the wealthy north or in the bailout-battered south, suggesting a much bigger crisis of political and democratic legitimacy.
"The damage is so deep that it does not matter whether you come from a creditor, debtor country, euro would-be member or the UK: everybody is worse off," said José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the ECFR's Madrid office. "Citizens now think that their national democracy is being subverted by the way the euro crisis is conducted."
EU leaders are aware of the problem, utterly at odds over what to do about it, and have yet to come up with any coherent policy proposals addressing the mismatch between the pooling of economic and fiscal powers and the democratic mandate deemed necessary to underpin such radical policy shifts.
José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, said on Tuesdaythis week the European "dream" was under threat from a "resurgence of populism and nationalism" across the EU. "At a time when so many Europeans are faced with unemployment, uncertainty and growing inequality, a sort of 'European fatigue' has set in, coupled with a lack of understanding. Who does what, who decides what, who controls whom and what? And where are we heading to?"
The most dramatic fall in faith in the EU has occurred in Spain, where the banking and housing market collapse, eurozone bailout and runaway unemployment have combined to produce 72% "tending not to trust" the EU, with only 20% "tending to trust".
The data compares trust and mistrust in the EU at the end of last year with levels in 2007, before the financial crisis, to reveal a precipitate fall in support for the EU of the kind that is common in Britain but is much more rarely seen on the continent.
In Spain, trust in the EU fell from 65% to 20% over the five-year period while mistrust soared to 72% from 23%.
In five of the six countries, including Britain, mistrust prevailed over trust by sizeable margins, whereas in 2007 – with the exception of the UK – the opposite was the case.
Five years ago, 56% of Germans "tended to trust" the EU, whereas 59% now "tend to mistrust". In France, mistrust has risen from 41% to 56%. In Italy, where public confidence in Europe has traditionally been higher than in the national political class, mistrust of the EU has almost doubled from 28% to 53%.
Even in Poland, which enthusiastically joined the EU less than a decade ago and is the single biggest beneficiary from the transfers of tens of billions of euros from Brussels, support has plummeted from 68% to 48%, although it remains the sole country surveyed where more people trust than mistrust the union.
In Britain, where Eurobarometer regularly finds majority Euroscepticism, the mistrust grew from 49% to 69%, the highest level with the exception of the extraordinary turnaround in Spain.
A separate, more detailed study published this week on the impact of the currency and debt crisis and the austerity policies that have followed also found steep falls across the EU in faith in democracy and national political elites.
The study for the Cabinet Office by the European Social Survey, linking university researchers across the EU, found that soaring unemployment, anxiety and insecurity had eroded faith in politics.
"Overall levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy [declined] across much of Europe, but this varied markedly between countries. It was significant in Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, particularly notable in France, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, and reached truly alarming proportions in the case of Greece," it said.
The financial crisis "not only eroded the objective economic conditions of many citizens, but also created widespread anxiety about a country's future even among those who did not experience hardship directly".
Faced with this erosion of political support and the battering traditional politics is taking from populist newcomers such as Beppe Grillo's Five Star movement in Italy, policymakers appear at a loss.
On Monday, Barroso said the austerity policies being applied, mainly under pressure from Berlin, had reached the "limits of political and social acceptance" and were "unsustainable" in their current form. On Tuesday, though, the commission in Brussels sought to row back on his remarks.
Within the eurozone, the key response to the crisis, apart from bailouts, has been to embark on a systematic surrender of budgetary and fiscal powers from national governments and parliaments to Brussels, as well as having countries being bailed out overseen by a "troika" of technocrats and economists from the commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These are "federalising" steps in a long process of eurozone integration that might see it transformed from a currency into a political union.
"The EU has hit home and is here to stay as a watchdog of budgets, labour markets, pensions etc. This is unprecedented, and risky," said Torreblanca. "Unless it is fixed, it will feed the vicious circle between anti-EU populism and technocracy which we are currently seeing operating."
Barroso argued strongly in two speeches this week that federalism was the only answer to Europe's crisis of finances and of confidence. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, brushing off widespread fears of a new German "hegemony" in Europe and the eurozone, also said that governments had to give up much more power to Brussels.
"We still haven't found the answer to the question of whether we're actually now prepared to unite on common economic parameters inside the single currency area," she said in a Berlin debate with the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk. "If we want to have a common currency, a common Europe, we have to be ready to give up our hard-won habits … That means we have to be prepared to accept that in the end Europe has the final word in certain things. Otherwise we can't keep on building this Europe … To an extent, we have to jump over our own shadows. I'm ready for that."
But Tusk delivered an unusually stark warning that German prescriptions could bring increasing nationalism and populism across the EU in a backlash that was already well under way.
"We can't escape this dilemma: how do you get a new model of sovereignty so that limited national sovereignty in the EU is not dominated by the biggest countries like Germany, for example," he said pointedly. "Under the surface, this fear will be everywhere: in Warsaw, in Athens, in Stockholm. It will be everywhere without exception."
Aart de Geus, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German thinktank, also warned that the drive to surrender more key national powers to Brussels would backfire. "Public support for the EU has been falling since 2007. So it is risky to go for federalism as it can cause a backlash and unleash greater populism."
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 Greek Reporter | Brain Drain Big Strain On Greece Greek Reporter He added that, “When the hospitals in Greece close due to underfunding and most of the medical institutions are understaffed, when we have no possibility for work here and the politicians seem to have deleted our generation, then a big part of the ... University ends Greece program amid turmoil |
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Figures for 2012 show 154 reported cases of racist violence, including 25 in which victims said perpetrators were police
The number of racially motivated attacks increased in Greece last year, as did the severity of the violence involved, human rights groups have said.
The Racist Violence Recording Network reported 154 cases of racist violence in 2012, including 25 in which the victims said the perpetrators were police. The figures were released a week after more than 30 Bangladeshi workers suffered shotgun wounds on a strawberry farm in southern Greece during a dispute with foremen over back pay.
Kostis Papaioannou, the head of the National Commission for Human Rights, said the number of attacks recorded had increased 20% from the previous year. But, he noted, the true number could be much higher because many victims are afraid to come forward, fearing further mistreatment by authorities or deportation for entering the country illegally.
There have been numerous reports of police, who are at the forefront of a government crackdown on foreigners in the country illegally, mistreating immigrants during routine document checks on the street or during detentions. The police have repeatedly said they investigate all reported cases of mistreatment.
The network, composed of 30 aid and human rights groups, records cases only when it has spoken to the victim themselves.
The 2012 figures show "some very interesting and very worrying tendencies regarding racist violence in Greece", Papaioannou said. "We have both an increase in the numbers of attacks but also – which is really worrying too – we have an escalation in the intensity of this violence."
The incidents have spiralled as Greece's economy has worsened over the past few years. Relying on international rescue loans to remain solvent, the country has imposed deep spending cuts that have sent unemployment soaring to around 27%.
The vast majority of attacks occurred in Athens, mainly in inner city neighbourhoods. Immigrants are often set upon by groups of men wielding metal bars, chains, brass knuckles, broken bottles, knives and wooden clubs. The victims suffer from broken bones, damage to sight and hearing and extensive bruising, the network said.
One fatality was recorded last year – a 31-year-old Egyptian man who died of head injuries 17 days after falling into a coma following a severe beating, the network said.
Reza Golami, the head of an association of Afghans living in Greece, said many migrants have become too afraid to leave their homes.
"There live with fear inside them, whether it's the fear of the police or the fear of racists," he said. "They don't dare leave their homes to buy a loaf of bread. This is not something that affects men alone, but even women and small children. We have witnessed hundreds of such cases."
Authorities have vowed to crack down on hate crimes in the financially struggling country. Greece is main entry point for migrants entering the EU illegally, and there has been a surge in popular support for Golden Dawn, an extreme-right xenophobic party, as the financial crisis has deepened.
The government has set up a special unit within the police to deal with racist crimes – a move the rights groups welcomed but said didn't go far enough.
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News 10NBC | Two Rochester man charged with burglaries in Greece, Parma, Irondequoit News 10NBC Both men are charged with four burglaries – one in Greece, one in Parma and two in Irondequoit – and criminal possession of weapon. They are being held in the Monroe County Jail in lieu of $25,000 cash or bond. They are due in court on April 25. |
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 New Straits Times | Racist attacks on the rise in Greece, rights groups say; police accused in ... Fox News ATHENS, Greece – The number of racially motivated attacks increased in Greece last year, as did the severity of the violence involved, human rights groups said Wednesday. The incidents have spiraled as Greece's economy has worsened over the past few ... Violent racist attacks increase in Greece A racist attack every 2 days in Greece Racist Attacks Rise In Greece |
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Online campaign to boycott Greece's "blood strawberries" FRANCE 24 Activists are calling them “blood strawberries” following the recent shooting in one of the fields in the small village in Greece's Peloponnese region. As we can see from these amateur images relayed by local media, around thirty strawberry pickers ... |
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 Bloomberg | Greek Tragedy, by the Numbers Bloomberg Greece's gross domestic product shrank 14 percent from the end of 2009 to the end of 2012. That's already a sharp drop, but it doesn't include the contraction that might have been suffered by the country's big shadow economy. Below, another view of ... |
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New Straits Times | NGOs: Violent Racist Attacks Increase in Greece ABC News The number of racially motivated attacks increased in Greece last year, as did the severity of the violence involved, human rights groups said Wednesday. The incidents have spiraled as Greece's economy has worsened over the past few years. Relying on ... A racist attack every 2 days in Greece Violent racist attacks increase in Greece |
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 Kathimerini | National Bank of Greece postpones share issue vote to April 29 Kathimerini Greece's largest lender National Bank (NBG) has postponed until next week a shareholder vote on its 9.75 billion-euro recapitalisation plan, after too few shareholders turned up to approve it at a repeat meeting. Wednesday's assembly required a quorum ... National Bank postpones share issue vote again |
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Spotlight: Jared Anderson fills position as interim Greek Life Coordinator UTM Pacer The Coordinator should have a passion for the Greeks and the school he or she works for as well as an in depth knowledge of how Greek Life operates. Although Anderson has only been Interim Coordinator for Greek Life at UTM for a few short months, he is ... |
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Greek finance minister rejects call for tax relief measure in new austerity bill Fox News Greek finance minister rejects call for tax relief measure in new austerity bill. Published April 24, 2013. Associated Press. ATHENS, Greece – Greece's Finance Minister has rejected a called from the government's Socialist coalition partners to add tax ... Greek finance minister rejects tax relief call |
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