Afterword

Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan

IN RECENT YEARS, as tensions between Athens and Berlin over the former’s debt crisis have deepened, Germany’s past was staged not only on the streets of Greece, where portraits of Chancellor Merkel and Finance Minister Schäuble, rendered as Nazis, decorated demonstration posters. Under the shadow of sour negotiations, the Greek government announced it would seek 162 billion euros in damages from Germany over unpaid WWII reparations and a forced war-time loan. Later, citing a figure of 341 billion euros, Justice Minister Paraskevopoulos raised the possibility of property seizures should Germany fail to respect its alleged obligations. Prime Minister Tsipras and other prominent politicians spoke of “an open wound” and a “moral issue.” For the most part, Berlin and German media hit back with anger and denial, some complaining about “moral blackmail.” Germany’s debts and reparations have been legally, politically, and definitively resolved during its reunification, Merkel insisted; 1989, we see once more, continued to re-sequence history and signal a new “Stunde Null” and a new national project....

Author(s):  
Neofytos Aspriadis

During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak all countries around the world used several kinds of response strategies to protect public health and control the outbreak. The main aim was to stop the disease from spreading into the community and put a pressure on the health system of the countries. However, severe measures like lockdown of cities and countries brought side-crises like economic pressure on the individuals, corporations and even the state itself. Although the Greek Government was considered to have managed the first phase of the crisis in March effectively, during the aftermath of the first phase, the complete opening of the economy and tourism, the lowering of measures leaded to the increase of new cases. The increased number of cases together with the late imposition of a new lockdown, leaded to the perception of a governmental failure. This perception mobilized direct or indirect image restoration strategies by officials of the Greek Government to maintain the positive image of their handling despite the general perceptions. This paper explores the image restoration strategies used by the prime minister of Greece for the handlings of the second phase of the pandemic in Greece. The methodology used is discourse analysis with the tools of Image Restoration Strategies by Benoit (1995) from October till December 2020.


Author(s):  
Yu. Kvashnin

Debt crisis in South European region turned out to be the focal point of the European debt crisis. It made explicit fundamental disproportions in the development of the Eurozone, in particular strict division between the Center and the Periphery. After joining to the Eurozone South European countries faced further deterioration of their positions in the global markets and fixing of an unfavorable type of their international specialization. Such situation can be seen most evidently in the case of Greece.


Significance The prime minister and finance minister, Aymane Benabderrahmane, has loaded some substantive policy reforms into the 2022 budget law, including a provision for reform of the subsidy system, revisions to the investment law and changes to income tax. Impacts There is a high risk that within the next five years there will be a slump in oil and gas prices. Algeria’s heavy reliance on hydrocarbons makes it particularly vulnerable once momentum builds up for global decarbonisation. Subsidy reform will entail price increases, even if they are gradually applied.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Chara Vavoura ◽  
Ioannis Vavouras

The issue of public debt sustainability is of exceptional importance in the case of Greece. As a rule, the relevant analysis is limited to the examination of the fiscal policy measures reported to contribute to reducing public debt leaving out the investigation of the factors that caused the country’s debt crisis. The objective of the present paper is to explore the determinants of Greece’s debt crisis and the strategy required to address it. Our work highlights the issue of social development, which is found to be a necessary condition for ensuring the long run sustainability of the country’s public debt.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Katsampoxakis ◽  
Haralampos Basdekis ◽  
Konstantinos Anathreptakis

This study aims to assess the impact of specific corporate and market features on the profitability of firms. More precisely, the variables examined for the purposes of this study are firms' size, financial leverage, accruals, volatility of profitability, growth rate of the Greek economy, the 10-year Greek government bond yield, and the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The empirical results exhibit an average profitability of 10.71%, which varies significantly both between firms and during the time period examined. Another finding of this study is the verification of the theoretical relationship between the above variables and Greek firms' profitability between 2004 and 2012. Whereas variables such as firms' size, volatility of profitability and accruals do not seem to affect firms' profitability in a statistically significant way, the signs of the coefficients are consistent with those found the literature review.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicos Souliotis ◽  
Georgia Alexandri

This article traces the transfer of competitiveness and cohesion policies from the European Union (EU) institutions to the national and subnational authorities in Greece, both before and after the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that prior to the crisis, the flexibilities of the EU governance system allowed the Greek central government to use the competitiveness and cohesion agenda, as well as the associated funds, to build a domestic socio-political consensus focused on the idea of ‘convergence’ with Europe. The crisis-induced bailout programme deepened neoliberal policies and reorganised vertical and horizontal power relations: policy-making powers have been upscaled towards the supranational level, while the national authorities have been socially disembedded.


Asian Survey ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Lam Peng Er

In 2019, Singapore celebrated its bicentennial and reflected on its journey from a British colony engaged in entrepôt trade to a successful sovereign state anchored in ASEAN. The ruling party announced that Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat will be Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s successor. Presumably, Heng will play a key leadership role for his party in Singapore’s upcoming general election.


Author(s):  
Stathis N. Kalyvas

Greece’s historical development gives credence to two competing narratives. The first identifies Greece as a small and vulnerable nation, one marked by crises and failure. The second narrative acknowledges the success of nation-building—indeed, the metamorphosis of Greece—having come through exceptional challenges. To reconcile these two narratives, I draw upon neo-Marxist political economy—which stresses its ‘semi-peripheral’ position in the global economy—and build on recent studies that focus more on the domestic institutional constraints on development. I disaggregate Modern Greek history into seven, intertwined, political and economic ‘boom, bust, and bailout’ cycles. Greece is an ‘early late modernizer’, to borrow Seymour Martin Lipset’s formulation. As one of the early ‘new nations’ on the European stage, Greece attempted a number of highly visible and risky modernization leaps intended to reduce the gap that separated it from the more advanced states of the continent. Predictably, these leaps and their failures attracted considerable global attention, way out of proportion to the country’s size, resources, or strategic importance. They did so due to the perception that its modernization effort was deeply intertwined with processes of much broader historical and global significance; the stakes were high, hence the need for some sort of intervention. That these foreign interventions ultimately turned out to be favourable to Greece should not detract from the fact that they were often perceived negatively in Greece. The recent debt crisis is part of a similar pattern and a Greek recovery would validate this interpretation.


Significance The cabinet enters office just in time to host a fresh visit from the IMF, expected later this month. Despite another landslide victory in parliamentary elections on April 24, Prime Minister and Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) leader Aleksandar Vucic has been in no rush to form his next government. With parliament dissolved in early March, this has been a wasted year for reforms, economic or other. The next government must start working effectively if it is to make up for this, even partly. Impacts Dusan Vujovic, confirmed as finance minister, will remain the focal point for implementing the SBA. A new law on financing local government is likely to be adopted in late August or early September. This will transfer a portion of revenues from income tax from local authorities to the central government. The new government will need to come up with a less ambitious plan for public sector redundancies in 2016 and 2017.


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