I was born in Athens 48 years ago, but left the country at the age of 17 to study and build my businesses abroad. Recently, on one of my trips back to the Greek capital, I got a rude shock. The contrast between the land I had left and the Greece of today is heart-wrenching.
Gone is the optimism and hope of a country which joined the EU and went on to look forward, through membership, to ever-greater prosperity. Today a dull and weary resignation to future decline, with no apparent end, has settled over one of the most beautiful countries in the world. With collapse of hope has come physical decline: boarded-up shops, the sprawling obscene political graffiti and the endless rows of beggars.
Even the Athens of just a few years ago was a vastly different place. In 2004, with victory in the European football championship and then the Olympics, the country was able to celebrate on the international stage, and the world celebrated with it. The party continued for another four years, helped by booming industries such as tourism and shipping, which propelled Greeks to a standard of living which was comparable to their western European counterparts. But that’s nothing like the Athens of today.
Since the global financial crisis hit in late 2008, the rest of the developed world has largely recovered; Greece, on the other hand, seems to have been stuck relentlessly in a downward spiral. It is hardly the poorest country in the world. But I struggle to find another example of a country of 11m inhabitants who grew used to the western European standard of living but now must live with a lot less. The decline is dramatic. In round numbers, about one third of our GDP has evaporated in the past five or six years. Another 10pc to 15pc or so has gone in the past few weeks alone. Now these 11m must make do with about half the wealth they were used to just six years ago. Has this even happened anywhere else before in the modern world in peacetime?
The fallout is clear to see. When the banking system collapsed in Cyprus, where both my parents were born, my philanthropic foundation set up a ‘Food from the Heart’ initiative, handing out a free lunchtime snack to the needy in Nicosia and Limassol. The idea I would soon be contemplating a similar project for the vastly bigger and more prosperous population of Athens barely entered my head.
Yet, by last month, we were handing out around 2,500 snacks every day in the Greek capital. A sandwich or croissant might not sound a lot, but for some people it’s vital.
Soon our daily handouts may rise to more than 3,000. I am already working to open another two or three centres in Greece to do my bit to help. Greece needs our help now.
I offer no panaceas – indeed, it would be wrong for someone who has spent most of his adult life outside the country to start lecturing Greece and her leaders on the way ahead. For the moment, however, the food queues remain. And those queues don’t just contain the unemployed or homeless. Today it is shop workers, clerks and even professionals who line up – all facing the grim prospect of being without work for the foreseeable future. For them the optimism of 1981 has gone. No one knows when or how it will return.
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is founder and chairman of the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation
The Telegraph